'Be prepared. Civilians hate us.'
Mobilization civil war. $100 per busified man. Mobilization chronicles - killing the proles, mobilizing the blind. Purging the left - and the right? Leaked SBU plans to arrest Ukrainian neonazis?
Today’s agenda:
Mobilization chronicles of the past weeks - beatings, deaths. Mobilizing the blind. Women save men
Mobilization civil war - a possible military veteran kills a mobilization officer, two explosions at other mobilization centers
Reactions - top USAID-supported (not for long!) ‘liberals’ call to mobilize/enslave anyone criticizing mobilization online, and use interpol to ‘extract’ Ukrainian abroad criticizing it. Others call to give all mobilization officers guns so as to kill any civilian threats. Immense hatred towards ‘civilian scum’.
‘I want death for death. I want every draft dodger, every liar, everyone who hid their cowardice and lived their life barking in our faces—"I'm the economic front"—to be afraid of their own shadow.
Purges of the left and right - the Worker’s Front of Ukraine, Azovites worry that the SBU is after them. Possible motivations behind a government purge of Ukrainian neo-nazis
Writing about mobilization can be monotonous - the fate of the common man is nasty, brutish and short. To remedy that, I decided to collect as many different mobilization events from the past 10 days or so. My source is Artem Dmytruk, a parliamentarian from Zelensky’s party who had to flee for his life in 2024 and now resides in the UK. He often posts TCC (Territorial Recruitment and Social Support Center) content.
On January 23, Dmytryuk published the following interesting text and video:
For each person brought to the TCC, a group receives an average of $100, though the price may vary depending on the region.
In a single day, a group of 3 to 6 people gathers between 5 and 20 individuals. When it comes to checkpoints, buses transport hundreds per day.
The TCC building has two exits—one is a one-way trip, and the other costs between $3,000 and $10,000 to go home, but only until the next time.
January 26, mobilization officers try to capture a man while taking the bus:
January 28, Kyiv region:
On January 29, Dmytruk published the following videos and caption:
THE SCARIEST PART IS THAT THIS IS NORMAL!
In Odessa, a half-blind young man was taken by the TCC while walking his dog and was immediately sent to training.
A woman reported that her son has extremely poor eyesight, is being monitored at the Filatov Clinic, and is almost blind in one eye. According to her, he was taken while walking his dog, brought to the Suvorov TCC, and then transferred to the regional center.
The mother went to the TCC, where she was told she needed to pay $8,000 to get her son released. Later, she found out that he had already been mobilized and sent as an assault trooper to the 91st Brigade, to a training camp near Zhytomyr.
She also claims that along with her son, people with active tuberculosis, young men aged 22 and 24, and a cook from a café were sent there.
So, is this woman also a Kremlin agent?!
January 30, Odessa - the TCC tried to capture a father and truck-driver, but were stopped by a crowd of civilians:
Odessa, January 30: policemen do their best to earn their $100:
February 3, Dnipro: a man was saved from mobilization:
February 3, unknown city: a man resists mobilization officers:
By the way, Dmytruk isn’t likely to be making things up when it comes to $100 per captured man. The whole process has long been run as a conveyer belt. A TCC official anonymously stated the following in commentary to the Ukrainian media resource TSN on December 23:
"Previously, it was necessary to have one summons or one draft dodger per day, or even better, both. In general, the planned number depends on the total number that is sent down the chain from top to bottom — the number of people that need to be mobilized,"
He also claimed that those TCC employees who do not meet the plan are themselves sent to the front.
Once ‘busified’ by the TCC, the victim can also be released - for a price:
"These are all rumors, but these rumors are regular — like how a TCC guy can earn some extra cash. A person gets into the minibus and knows that they will go through the military medical commission, and in the evening, they could be already at the training ground. Or they don’t know, but we do. So, they can be released. Not for free," the military man admitted.
Mobilization civil war
On February 1, what should be predictable happened. This is the official Ukrainian military statement on it:
On February 1, 2025, at a gas station in the city of Pyriatyn, a shocking incident occurred during the escorting of conscripts to the 199th Training Center – an armed attack on a serviceman of the Poltava District Territorial Recruitment and Social Support Center (TCC).
An unidentified man wearing a gray balaclava and pixelated trousers [Ukrainian military camo] approached the serviceman of the Poltava TCC, threatened him with a hunting rifle, and demanded that he hand over his weapon. After being refused, the assailant shot the serviceman. As a result of the severe injury, the soldier died on the spot.
Following the attack, the perpetrator seized the serviceman’s assault rifle and fled along with one of the mobilized conscripts.
Photos showing the arrest of the alleged perpetrator were published soon after by the police. He was apparently a resident of the Poltava region, born in 1984. Poltava, by the way, is about as ‘truly Ukrainian’ as it gets, culturally speaking. He was also arrested along with the man he saved, who was born in 1988. According to strana, he was captured at an Okko gas station in the very same town of Pyriatyn.
Then on February 2, there was an explosion at the Rivne regional TCC. According to police, one person died and 6 were injured. At first, local media claimed several people had been killed.
And on February 3, the Dnipropetrovsk regional TCC published the following statement about yet another attack:
This evening, an explosion of an unidentified object occurred near the building of the Pavlohrad Territorial Recruitment and Social Support Center (TCC). According to preliminary information, one man was injured as a result of the incident. His condition is reported to be mild.
In an even more interesting turn of events, some on Ukrainian twitter started sharing information on February 2 that the shooter was himself a frontline veteran. Recall that he was wearing Ukrainian camo during the attack.
Context
I sometimes find it hard to cover mobilization stories, since they are so constant. Here are some recent deaths in TCC centres. Rivne and Poltava figure in several of them, but they hardly stand out.
June 2024: “Man dies after TCC in Zhytomyr region: relatives say it was a murder, military registration and enlistment office says it was alcohol and epilepsy” (TSN)
October 2024: “A man's body with signs of suicide was found at the Poltava Regional TCC.” (Glavcom)
December 2024: “In Volyn, TCC representatives beat a man and took him directly from the hospital” (UNIAN)
January 2025: “In Sumy, a man died after being beaten at the TCC.” (BBC)
Or this video from November 2024, where a woman in Kostopil, Rivne region, cursed TCC officers for stealing a man she was probably married or related to:
You are scum, animals, I wish a bullet would kill you
Reactions
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