The broken and the unbreakable. Mobilization events

2 billion euros of annual mobilization corruption rent. Free men and bare-breasted women.

May 19. A man is dumped on the street of Odessa. His face is bloodied. He writhes, face down.

Local telegrams say he’d been left there by the Territorial Center of Recruitment and Social Support - the TSK. They beat him and left him. He was probably unwilling to accept the new life in the Ukrainian Armed Forces he’d been proposed, so to speak.

May 12. The eastern city of Kharkiv. A man throws himself from the third story of the city’s TSK. No signs of violence visible on his body other than the fall. An investigation opened. The crime - suicide.

So goes the laconic report on the event by the city police. But other versions exist.

His name was Oleksiy. According to his friends and family, he was a committed pacifist, as well as a cyclist and photographer.

They have different recollections about his final days.

The TSK first abducted him on May 8-9. Then they beat him. They told him they’d make him a cripple for resisting mobilization. Then they released him, and Oleksiy told close ones what had happened in detail.

Then the TSK abducted him a second time on May 10.

This time, he wasn’t released. Instead, he was buried in a closed coffin. His face was too broken to be shown.

Relatives claim the police had been trying to prove Oleksiy was mentally unstable. His many friends disagree. He was also preparing for an upcoming cycling competition.

Or a second incident in the same city.

On May 11, TSK officers endure ‘provocative actions by a civilian’. Of course, ‘the TSK leadership and other TSK servicemen condemn the decision of one soldier that let himself engage in the conflict which grew into a physical confrontation’. Of course, ‘we state the following: any physical or psychological pressure is unacceptable and forbidden.’ Nevertheless, ‘a criminal investigation is to be conducted into this event.’

The above post by the Kharkiv TSK was in response to a video showing their ‘serviceman’ punching an unarmed man in the stomach twice, while his colleague checks the civilian’s documents.

It soon emerged that the ‘provocative civilian’ is a 8th grade teacher. He teaches history, human rights, and the newly introduced patriotic lesson ‘Defense of the Fatherland’. He was hence apparently legally exempted from mobilization. One has to wonder how his recent experiences might change the format of his patriotic lessons.

The video, as usual, invited mass anger at the TSK. Kharkov’s mayor Igor Terekhov defended the teacher against the TSK, though he was quick to preface his post with the admission that ‘there are many good men in the TSK’.

What kind of men are in the TSK?

The western-funded Special Anti-Corruption (SAP) prosecutor gave one answer on May 8. Head of the Lozova TSK (a town close to Kharkov), Artem Trebesov. The SAP announced it had suspicions regarding the correspondence between Trebesov’s incomes and his assets.