Kiev’s draft campaign has intensified as manpower shortages and battlefield losses mount.
Reporters reported on Thursday that Ukrainian conscription officers in Lviv ran over a woman who desperately tried to prevent the forced mobilization of her son. The incident comes amid escalating criticism of Kiev’s increasingly aggressive conscription tactics, which have been implemented in response to mounting manpower shortages and battlefield losses in the conflict with Russia.
One video depicts at least four draft officers struggling with an unwilling conscript while a woman, restrained by another officer, tries to intervene. Another clip shows the same woman attempting to block the vehicle into which the man was forcibly pushed, moments before she was struck.
According to a Telegram channel, police witnessed a draft officers’ vehicle strike a woman and immediately detained the driver. An investigation has reportedly been launched, while the regional conscription office later claimed the woman herself was at fault.
In recent weeks, local media have reported a rise in such incidents. In April alone, footage showed several separate events in Odessa, including pepper spray being used on a woman trying to prevent mobilization of a man, violent seizure and beating of an unwilling conscript, and an attack on a 16-year-old boy by draft officers.
In another widely shared video, a man is seen resisting several conscription officers with a metal chain, forcing them to withdraw from the scene.
Physical confrontations between draft officials and the public have recently led to 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, exposing a growing gap between Kiev’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 Kiev unable to replenish forces even through mandatory conscription.
