Those who support Ukraine unconditionally, ask yourself this question: Does it look good for the United States to be unashamedly and unabashedly on the side of a military allegedly forcing those exempted from conscription — including mentally disabled individuals — to be conscripted at gunpoint?
Because that is, according to a Friday New York Times report, exactly what the Ukrainian military is doing.
In the latest dispatch confirming what we were all forbidden from saying in the months following Russia’s February 2022 invasion of its neighbor — that the government in Kyiv was likely to lose a war of attrition and, while it might not be as corrupt or malevolent as Vladimir Putin’s regime, was still awfully corrupt and occasionally malevolent — the Times’ Thomas Gibbons-Neff reported on what locals describe as “people snatchers,” Ukrainian military recruiters who, in what may be the understatement of the year, are getting “increasingly aggressive in their efforts to replenish the ranks.”
“Recruiters have confiscated passports, taken people from their jobs and, in at least one case, tried to send a mentally disabled person to military training, according to lawyers, activists and Ukrainian men who have been subject to coercive tactics,” Gibbons-Neff wrote.
“Videos of soldiers shoving people into cars and holding men against their will in recruiting centers are surfacing with increasing frequency on social media and in local news reports.”
Trending:
You know, videos like this:
🇷🇺🇺🇦🇺🇸
A future AFU soldier tried to escape from Lviv military officers but was caught up.The incident happened in Novoiavorivsk, Ukraine where several officers first twisted him, and when he tried to run away, they caught up with him & shoved him into a service car. pic.twitter.com/0MiksiXXji
— Astra MK (@TONYK619) July 18, 2023
Really? Tell me what do you think of FORCED RECRUITING FOR THE”GLORIOUS UKRAINE ARMY” one happened in ODESSA With his family in the car the other one west to buy food and got shoved into a van pic.twitter.com/wdlFESBJA2
— Black Lion💰🇷🇺🇲🇽🇺🇸 (@otello2011) July 9, 2023
Should the US stop any future aid to Ukraine?
While some of these videos no doubt come from the Russian propaganda mills still extant on social media, the Times is hardly a shill for Moscow — and the Friday report lends an imprimatur of fact to the uncomfortable truth. After all, if one of the chief cheering sections of the American left is forced to admit what Ukraine war skeptics on the right have been claiming for quite some time now, it’s hard to deny the claims are based in reality.
“Lawyers and activists say the aggressive methods go well beyond the scope of recruiters’ authority and in some cases are illegal,” Gibbons-Neff reported.
“They point out that recruiters, unlike law enforcement officers, are not empowered to detain civilians, let alone force them into conscription. Men who receive draft notices are supposed to report to recruitment offices.”
While this has “led to a number of court cases this fall as men challenge what they claim are wrongful draft notices, unprofessional medical commissions and forced mobilization,” Ukraine has been under martial law since the 2022 invasion, which has led to what Gibbons-Neff referred to as “a subjective interpretation — and abuse — of conscription laws.”
Take the case of Dmytro Yefimenko, a 34-year-old shop owner. After breaking his arm earlier this year, he believed he had a medical exemption. That didn’t matter to authorities, who reportedly took him at gunpoint to a recruitment center after he was stopped at a checkpoint. After a brief medical examination, he was detained there, but managed to sneak away during the overnight hours.
“Without any explanation, without documents, without reasons, an armed man got into my car and forced me to drive to the military recruiting center,” Yefimenko told the Times.
Exams since the incident have confirmed that Yefimenko is medically exempt.
However, his case underlines the problem for Ukraine: While its military has fought Russia valiantly, it’s still had to face troop replenishment issues against a foe that has a population about three times bigger than its own.
American estimates indicate that Ukraine has sustained roughly 150,000 casualties thus far. Russian numbers are higher, but Russia is also drawing from a much larger pool. Furthermore, the patriotic fervor of the early war days is wearing off. In those days, Ukrainian men of draft age rushed to be conscripted. Now, they’re avoiding the draft — and using predictably unsavory tactics to do so.
“While some believe that high casualty numbers are partially to blame for aggressive conscription tactics, others point to a different reason: many Ukrainian men have either fled or bribed their way out of the draft, leaving a shrinking pool of conscripts, some of whom are supposed to be exempt from mobilization,” Gibbons-Neff reported.
Wait — I thought we were supposed to believe that the moment Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy took office, he started throwing the corrupt bastards out, no? Sure, Kyiv used to be a hive of venality, but no longer, thanks to this brave actor-turned-politician. Give him your dollars, America! Give him your dollars, NATO! None of it could possibly be diverted into corrupt hands.
Again, no: Those who can are able to bribe their way out of service if they wish to. “Andrii Semaka, a soldier who in the early months of the war worked in the Vyzhnytsia recruiting center, said his office would bring in 15 to 20 potential conscripts a day,” the Times reported. “Roughly a quarter of them, he said, would bribe his superior, who remains in charge of the center, offering around $1,000 dollars to avoid being drafted. That price has only gone up since.”
The situation is bad enough that one Kyiv lawyer, requesting anonymity, called it “a war for poor people.”
Granted, one could make this claim about any elongated, unpopular conflict that relies heavily on conscription. (See also: Vietnam, American involvement in.) However, it’s difficult to keep pumping unlimited, unchecked amounts of Western money into what’s being billed as Ukraine’s great patriotic war if the people who are fighting it aren’t terribly patriotic about it.
Zelenskyy has promised to change the conscription system to crack down on corruption, although — aside from the August firing of 24 regional chiefs of recruitment amid bribery allegations — he hasn’t done anything terribly specific to stop it. Firing chiefs won’t do much, Ukrainian critics of the conscription system said, because that didn’t replace the rotten structure beneath the rotten chiefs.
“Nothing has changed — quite the opposite, because they have tasks to send a certain number of guys to the front, and they catch everyone they can,” said Tetiana Fefchak, a lawyer who represents men challenging the government in conscription matters.
“People snatchers” who “catch everyone they can” and force them into military service. This sounds like something out of Voltaire’s “Candide,” not a valiant cause that Americans should be backing, whatever the cost. Yes, obviously one who values international legal norms, human rights, and a sound world order should prefer Kyiv to Moscow, but this is scarcely a choice to be made without any hesitancy.
Sixty years ago, one who values those same things should have also supported South Vietnam over North Vietnam, after all. It didn’t take long, however, for Americans to realize the perils of cosigning an ally’s cause at any cost. Sadly, Washington, D.C., remains blissfully ignorant of history and continues to amble into an unwinnable trap which condemns us to repeat those ugly lessons.
