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Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 23 [432]
@Velund
Ukraine's leading paper recently published a long-form article about the absurdity of the country's mobilization system.
It was straight out of Hašek novel. I felt like I was reading "The Adventures of the Brave Soldier Schweik".
Before I describe the system in brief, I have to set the context. The context is that at this point, no normal person in Ukraine is "not afraid" of the "regional recruitment centers". There have been dozens of widely publicized cases in Ukraine, where people died within the walls of recruitment centers, died a suspicious death which was claimed as suicide, or were literally beat half to death on the street - before hundreds of witnesses.
Yet somehow, the AFU continues to mobilize new troops. This is a short story about those people:
In a nutshell:
1) They keep grabbing the same guys: drunks, drug abusers, people missing a kidney, or suffering from epileptic seizures. Things like that. Then they drag them to the local recruitment office.
2) At the local recruitment office - is your last chance to get out before a long journey begins. Here, a medical commission must certify your suitability for service. The problem? They don't listen to what you tell them, but instead request "recent" documents from your doctor certifying that you indeed have the ailments you claim. You could be barely standing on your legs, and they will still enlist you if you are not able to produce the necessary documents. The doctors that work within the recruitment centers certify everyone as "healthy", with the only exception seemingly being persons with amputated limbs.
3) After you have been certified as medically fit, your phone and other property is confiscated, and you are placed in a "distribution center". The "distribution center" is usually located within the same building as the Territorial Recruitment Center itself. If you are lucky, you may spend only one night in the distribution center, before being sent on the next leg of your journey. If you are not lucky, you could spend up to 3 weeks living in a cramped room with 50 other guys who haven't showered. It was in such a place, that there occurred a riot on June 2nd of this year, in a suburb of Kiev's. The mobilized men barricaded themselves inside their barracks, and took some officers hostage.
4) From the distribution center, your next stop is the "training center". Every morning, a bus arrives at the distribution center to pick up a batch of potential soldiers. Some people try to resist getting into the buses, so then they are beaten and shoved into them. Others try to jump out the windows, or escape while the bus is stopped in traffic. Once you arrive at the training center, you are ordered to stand in a line and look smart. At this point, several commanders from different Ukrainian brigades will arrive, and start examining "the goods". Drunks, junkies, and people with mental illnesses are immediately swept aside. Nobody wants them. Next, are filtered out the guys that "may" have a potentially legitimate reason for a deferment - but seem to have some kind of problem with their documents. Recruits are selected from whomever remains. On certain days, this may be just 1 or 2 individuals. The other 20-30 guys, are put back in the bus, and taken back to the distribution center.
5) If nobody picked you, and you were returned to your "distribution center", then they will keep you there for several more weeks, and take you on several more trips to the "training centers". In some cases, representatives of the "Territorial Recruitment Centers" will offer bribes to brigade commanders to take some "long time passenger" off their hands, and help them meet their quotas. The article interviews some guys that were taken to the "recruitment fair" more than ten times. Eventually, however, they have to release them. Knowing full well that they are un-recruitable, the drunks and junkies solemnly promise to return upon the next summons - and they do. In this way, you can have "professional recruits". Guys that get picked up every few months, driven around a bunch of training centers, and then released again as a total undesirable.
The problem for Ukraine - as the article discusses - is that the manpower hunger is becoming so acute, that brigade commanders are becoming increasingly more willing to take on the burden of these "undesirables". Soon, maybe even the mentally ill will be judged fit.
Source: pravda.com.ua/rus/articles/2025/06/16/7517270/
