Aletho News

Violence at recruitment centers in Ukraine escalating

By Lucas Leiroz | December 24, 2024

Ukraine’s draconian recruitment policies are reaching intolerable levels of violence, resulting in more and more victims. Recently, a man was murdered by the military while trying to prevent his son from being forcibly sent to the front. This is just one of many scandals involving the brutal way in which recruitment officers treat ordinary Ukrainian citizens, which shows how Kiev is completely lost, with no chance of continuing the war in the long term.

Recently, a video began circulating on the internet showing the murder of a man inside a Ukrainian training center. According to reports from photographers and internet users, the motive for the murder was that the man was trying to prevent the forced recruitment of his son by Ukrainian officers. The case was reported by Artyom Dmitruk, a former Ukrainian parliamentarian exiled in London who has become a critic of Zelensky’s policies. Ukrainian authorities are still silent about the incident, neither confirming nor refuting Dmitruk’s claims.

The video is absolutely disturbing. A woman can be heard screaming as soldiers force a man to walk down a stair. Two shots are then heard, with the man falling to the ground and the woman screaming desperately. According to Dmitruk, the incident took place in Odessa. He claims that not only was the recruit’s father killed, but the soldier himself is now at risk of death, as the Ukrainian military may want to eliminate him to prevent the truth about the case from coming to light.

Dmitruk also claims that incidents like this have become commonplace in recruitment centers. The use of force to recruit new soldiers is becoming a serious problem in the country, as soldiers’ families repeatedly try to prevent their relatives from being captured by officers, resulting in cases of extreme violence, with recruiters often beating and apparently even killing ordinary civilians who do not want to see their loved ones sent to the front.

It is important to emphasize that the case was not reported by any pro-Russian source, but by ordinary Ukrainians, who filmed the incident, and by Artyom Dmitruk, who is a radical nationalist activist, although a critic of Zelensky. Dmitruk is an example of how the Zelensky dictatorship acts violently against any Ukrainian citizen, even officials and parliamentarians loyal to the regime, who dare to criticize any policy implemented by the president. In Dmitruk’s case, he was persecuted along with his family simply for opposing the infamous law that banned the Orthodox Church in the country. Previously, Dmitruk was a recruiter for a nationalist battalion in the Odessa region, being a fierce supporter of the regime, but this was not enough to save him from persecution.

In other words, Ukrainians themselves, both ordinary citizens and nationalists critical of Zelensky, are showing the truth about the regime’s recruitment policies. There seems to be a consensus among all sides that the regime’s draconian measures to supply the front lines are causing more problems than strategic benefits. Poorly trained young people are being sent to certain death while their families turn against the Ukrainian authorities, generating instability, social polarization and a serious crisis of legitimacy.

It is shocking how international organizations remain inactive in the face of this reality. Clearly, Ukraine is experiencing one of the most serious humanitarian crises in recent times, with thousands of young people being forcibly sent as cannon fodder to the front lines – which have already become an actual meat grinder, where most of the conscripts die within a few days, if not hours, due to the high precision of Russian artillery and aviation.

Maintaining a policy of total mobilization in the current conditions in Ukraine is unfeasible and anti-strategic. The regime no longer has a chance of victory, considering the constant territorial losses and the low capacity to replace military personnel. Instead of contributing to operations on the battlefield, the policies of forced conscription seem like a strategic suicide, since they worsen the morale of the troops and the collective psychological conditions among the soldiers, in addition to destabilizing society as a whole by generating friction between the families of the conscripts and the authorities. In practice, Kiev is actually accelerating its own collapse with such measures.

This is further proof that the only hope for the Ukrainian people is a quick Russian military victory, as the Kiev regime does not care about the lives of its own citizens.

Lucas Leiroz, journalist, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant.

You can follow Lucas on X (former Twitter) and Telegram.

December 24, 2024 - Posted by aletho | Militarism | Human rights, Ukraine