Pro-Russian separatist militias have intensified the conscription of men – including Ukrainian passport holders – in the occupied areas of Donbass region, amid mounting evidence of casualties among the invading forces, according to the newspaper.The Guardian” British.
According to reliable sources from the region, forced conscription, an order imposed by the separatist authorities before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, revived once more in June through the spread of checkpoints and intensified patrols, in which Chechen fighters allied with Moscow are present.
These patrols and checkpoints seek men to recruit into the fighting. In one video filmed in late June, a woman in Makeivka, Donbass region, documented her efforts to prevent officials from the War Commissariat from dragging her husband into a car to take him to the recruitment office. .
The video shows an exchange of conversation between the woman, who does not reveal the face of two officials, one of whom was a large man with a pistol and wearing a black shirt, while the second person was carrying documents, including her husband’s passport.
The woman says in the video clip: “Please return his passport.. There are no martial laws to take my husband away from me, to which the first man replied: “General mobilization” for war.
And when the woman asks him, “What are you doing here?” Away from the battle fronts, he answers that he serves in the recruitment office.
The woman repeats her words harshly and painfully: “Why are you not at the front of the ranks,” before hanging on the golden bracelet on his wrist, saying: “You can go and fight wherever you want, but do not take my husband away from me.”
Here, a third man intervenes in a conversation while standing at the door of a store, by saying: “I know where they are taking my neighbors.” The woman responds: “Fighting is voluntary…it is voluntary and my husband does not want to participate in it.”
Another replies: “But he is able to fight,” and here the wife replies sharply: “But his passport is Ukrainian and he does not have to fight for you.”
Subsequently, a male voice can be heard, apparently the woman’s husband saying, “Why are you trying to force me into the car?” One of the men says to him, “Because we need to bring you to the recruitment office and check your documents.”
As the controversy continues, the woman describes how her other relatives went to fight and die. “No one wants to fight! We are tired of you and your war. You took all the men!”
She continues, “They are all young men, and we have already buried half of those who went to fight like my brother-in-law and my brother… the hell. We only had one male left in the house and he was a disabled child.”
For her part, Oleksandra Matveychuk, a human rights activist from the Center for Civil Liberties in Ukraine confirmed the authenticity of the video, which spread on one of the Telegram channels, before it was most likely banned by the separatist authorities, noting that the quarrel ended with the departure of the recruiters following they ordered the man to come to the recruitment office. Within two hours, it was not clear what had happened to the couple.
She said: “The compulsory conscription in the army of the so-called separatist republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, though I prefer to say, is imposed by the Russian authorities themselves.”
And she continued: “We saw men being arrested in the streets and having their passports taken away before they were forcibly sent to serve in the separatist forces, and following the invasion in February we received many letters asking for help and assistance from civilians to prevent them being forced to fight.”
‘Afraid in his apartment’
Matveychuk revealed a letter she received from a man in the Lugansk region who was hiding in his apartment to avoid conscription, in which he says: How can I sue the Russian authorities? This is a violation of my rights…Since February, I have not been able to go out into the street because of the massive deployment of patrol cars in my town looking for any man capable of fighting.”
“They hunt us like stray cats, and Chechen fighters help them look for men on wanted lists,” he adds.
Describing the circumstances of the video, Matvichuk said it was apparently filmed following a period in June when the recruitment teams were relatively inactive, and at the beginning of a new wave of forced recruitment.
“It seems that they started looking for men once more around June 23, and they set up checkpoints at the exits of cities on the highways,” she said, adding: “What happened with that man is very cruel, he is Ukrainian and they are asking him to fight his countrymen.”
The activist noted that the figures indicate that more than half of the men are subject to forced conscription and fight for Moscow and the separatist forces.
Renewed evidence of conscription comes amid well-documented cases of Russian casualties in the war, as the Kremlin begins mobilizing new volunteer battalions across Russia.
