Fight violence with violence

Beaten and murdered draft-dodgers, and beaten and murdered draft officers. Prison for helping others evade mobilization. Random attacks on military veterans. Epidemic of anti-military arson

Continuing on the theme of yesterday’s post on morale problems, today’s post will have a look at random violence with a common denominator - by or against military personnel (and their vehicles).

Mobilization violence

On June 24, mobilization officers in Lviv crushed a man’s legs with the door of a bus. Soon after, the regional mobilization office put out a statement blaming the man for ‘provoking a conflict’.

On June 25, Zelensky fired the governor of Vynnytsia oblast, after he set mobilization officers on random young men while drunk. This May incident was captured on video and went viral:

On June 26, Mykhailo Podolyak, advisor to the president’s office, called forced mobilization violations of human rights in a TV interview, but blamed it on local excesses, and stated that mobilization officers wouldn’t be punished for it. I’ve written several times here about how the government tries to divert popular anger about mobilization against the mobilization officers themselves.

The SBU (Security Services of Ukraine) arrested 7 bloggers in Odessa for spreading information about mobilization on June 27. On June 10, the owner of a telegram channel in the western Vynnytsia region (former president Poroshenko’s supposedly antionalist stronghold) was arrested by the SBU after publishing the location of mobilization officers. He faces up to 8 years in prison for ‘obstructing the work of the army’.

On April 1, a woman was sentenced to 5 years in prison for the same offence in the northwestern Volhyn region. Her telegram channel had over 20,000 subscribers. After cooperating with the prosecution, she was given a 2 year probation period.

On June 27, a government representative criticized the appearance of a new mobile phone game which simulates crossing the Tysa river, situated on the border with Hungary. I remind the reader that as of June 12, 35 men have been found dead in the river - they drowned while trying to escape Ukraine. In the ‘Tysa’ game, the player must tap the screen as quickly as possible to reach the EU border, otherwise you drown.

Border guards at the Tysa.

A new record was broken on June 25 - 100 men were stopped all at once from escaping at the border in the Odessa region. The last record was 47 people on June 14 (check out this post of mine), so this seems to be developing exponentially.

This time, they were trying to cross by foot, but had been driven close to the border. The crossing had been organized by an Odessan who took from 5 thousand to 18.5 thousand USD from each man. The organizer planned to make $1 million USD all up, but was instead arrested, along with a law enforcement agent who helped him. Another 17 were captured the same day trying to get to Hungary.

On June 30, there was another case where a man trying to escape the country was shot and killed. Strana.ua’s source in law enforcement relayed this information, claiming that it took place in the Chernivtsi region, near the Romanian border, when border patrol spotted two men. When the border patrol officers tried to apprehend these draft-dodgers, one attacked the officers with pepper spray, another with a machete to the leg. Both were shot, one in the head. The border patrol officer responsible for the killing has reportedly been charged with murder.

On May 25, some draft-dodgers attacked border patrol and took their weapons, ending up eventually in Romania. On May 19, strana reported on another murder of a draft-dodger near the border in the Vinnytsia region. There was another such case in the Zakarpattya border region on May 17.

And on March 27, a video went viral of a man in military uniform shooting his AK into the Tysa, stating:

Draft-dodgers pay a thousand dollars to swim across the Tisa, and a border guard with an AK-74 does this