The process has drawn criticism after high-profile incidents where men have died even before they donned military uniforms. On October 23, Ukrainian Roman Sopin died from heavy blunt trauma to the head after he had been forcibly recruited. Ukrainian authorities claim that he fell, but his family is taking legal action. In August, a conscripted man, 36, died suddenly at a recruitment center in Rivne, although the authorities claim he died of natural causes. In June, 45-year-old Ukrainian-Hungarian Jozsef Sebestyen died after he was beaten with iron bars following his forced conscription; the Ukrainian military denies this version of events. In August, a conscript died from injuries sustained after he jumped out of a moving vehicle that was transporting him to the recruitment center.

Look online and you’ll find a trove of thousands of incidents, with most of them filmed this year alone. You can find videos of a recruitment officer chasing a man and shooting at him, a man being choked to death on the street with a recruiter’s knee on his neck. Many include family members or friends fighting desperately to prevent their loved one being taken against his will.

If videos of this nature, on this systemic scale, were shared in the United States or the United Kingdom, I believe that members of the public would express serious concerns. Yet the Western media remains largely silent, and I find it difficult to understand why.

In the first half of 2025, over 110,000 desertion cases were reported in Ukraine. In 2024, Ukrainian prosecutors initiated over 89,000 proceedings related to desertion and unauthorized abandonment of units, a figure three-and-a-half times greater than in 2023. More than 20% of Ukraine’s one million-strong army have jumped the fence in the past four years, and the numbers are rising all the time.