Ukrainian men dragged from concert to the front

Ukrainian military recruiters struck this weekend against the country’s nightlife in search of recruits to send to the front. Video clips from several different cities show men being dragged away by uniformed personnel.

Over the past weekend, the Ukrainian rock band Okean Elzy played at the Sports Palace in Kiev. Three nights in a row. The band is described as the country’s most famous and successful rock band, and earlier this year performed in, among other places, Malmö.

But already the first performance on Friday night had a dramatic ending. Outside the arena, which can accommodate up to ten thousand spectators, uniformed personnel from Ukraine’s Territorial Center for Recruitment and Community Support – TCK, were waiting.

TCK checks male concertgoers to see if anyone is evading conscription. Those who do not have their papers in order are taken into custody. Several put up physical resistance.

Striking against the elite

This is far from the first time such scenes have played out in Ukraine. Ukrainian social media has been flooded with similar video clips over the past two years showing TCK personnel rounding up young Ukrainian men.

What is new, however, is that recruiters are now targeting concerts, nightclubs, and cafes where Kiev’s elite and their children frequent. Places that have so far been relatively spared from such coercive measures.

Previously, it has mainly been men in rural areas and in cities other than the capital who have risked being forced to the trenches. Those with money and status have had an easier time avoiding it.

In addition to the Sports Palace, checks are also carried out during the weekend at places such as Good Wine, which is a slightly more upscale shopping center in Kiev, and the popular restaurant Avalon, writes AP. Another sign that the war is increasingly affecting a previously protected social group.

Need more soldiers

Ukraine is in desperate need of men to send to the front against the Russians. This has led the government to step up efforts to capture those trying to evade conscription.

“The feeling of constantly being in danger inside is back,” says a 27-year-old man to AP who was at the Okean Elzy concert.

The 27-year-old has previously avoided conscription due to university studies. But after a change in the law this spring, such exemptions are no longer granted, and now he is part of the group of men who may be ordered to the “meat grinder”.

READ ALSO: Ukraine tightens conscription law

Stopped by women

Uniformed personnel dragged men away from more places than central Kiev over the past weekend. Similar scenes were also reported from Odessa, Dnipro, and Kharkiv.

And in Transcarpathia on the border with Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania, far from Kiev, women and children blocked the road into a village.

The reason was a white minibus with uniformed government personnel that the villagers believed was from TCK, and that they intended to fetch their men. The women, among other things, threw stones at the minibus, which later turned out to be a bus with border police.

And in another part of the same oblast, there are reports of a welder who was carrying out maintenance work on a bridge and simply cut a hole in the bridge structure to crawl inside the bridge, over the Tisa River, to the Hungarian side.

All to avoid risking their lives on the battlefield.