© Petrenko Stepan/TASS
Ukraine is commonly referred to as a democratic country. The West itself considers it neither perfect nor fully comparable with the "old" European democracies. In the rankings drawn up by Western agencies, it traditionally occupies some happy middle ground, with both shortcomings and achievements outlined. The reason to reflect on its achievements was the "strengthened democratic tendencies" during the latest mobilization wave. President Vladimir Zelensky revealed a new "draft plan" to recruit at least 300 thousand people by spring.
Men are being literally scratched together amid the hysterical mobilization campaign, as Ukrainian reporters would put it. Today, almost no one can avoid forcible attendance at recruiting centers. They conduct raids in bars, restaurants and even at cemeteries, grabbing people right in the streets and in transport and hanging up conscription announcements in entrances and on lampposts.
Thus, the city of Uzhgorod saw recruiters interrupt a party at one of the local bars to distribute draft notices. With the same purpose did they come to the funeral of a deceased serviceman in the exurban area. In the Lvov region, a notice was even handed to an amputee.
In Kiev, recruiters walk around the apartment blocks. If people refuse to let them in, they throw notices into mailboxes or glue them to the front door, with watchmen and janitors also engaged in distributing activities. Summonses are served in public transport, next to enterprises, offices, via employment centers and by proxy of employers.
In Lvov, they took a different track and set up roadblocks at all the city exits. Now any driver or passenger is given a notice, regardless of their health, reservation or PDQs.
So, there is hardly a place left in Ukraine not affected by mobilization. Recruiters take everyone to a single man.
A legal basis has been formed to justify this move, entitling the army to recruit the male population from the streets, places of residence, and public places. Under the new norms, one cannot change his lodgings without permission from the military enlistment officer. And the enabling framework is constantly evolving, like it has been reported in Kiev’s Goloseevsky district. Ads were pasted at the entrances indicating the procedure for mobilizing both people and private transport. So far, this only refers to the period until February 23, and then it just depends.
Today, the male citizens of Ukraine prefer informal employment in order to keep a low profile. Civil servants and sizeable enterprises alone are forced to comply with all the formalities. In Kiev and Lvov people are outraged and looking for a better place to hide, while Odessa has switched to active resistance. On Saturday, recruiters went on a "hunt" to the famous Privoz market. Among those taken away were both the buyers and sellers. Still, the catch proved hardly impressive, as people fought for their fellows fiercely. Now the mobilized are simply loaded into buses and trucks like cattle without any summons, and taken to conscription points.
In general, the Ukrainians say confrontation has formed between recruiters and the people. The former are brought to hospitals en masse with serious injuries. So, in a residential complex of Odessa, two men attacked several recruiters and took away their tablet containing information with lists for service.
Still, all-out mobilization does not concern everyone, which is characteristic of Ukraine’s democracy. As Verkhovna Rada speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk said, "not a single son of a people's deputy was mobilized for service." Their draft-aged kids prefer to spend time outside Ukraine.
Stefanchuk himself took his family to Poland a year ago, the next day Russia’s military operation began. President Zelensky sent his family to the Albion even before. The son of former deputy head of the presidential office Alexey Danilov, who until recently assured that conscripts were lining up at recruitment centers, is in Miami.
Petro Poroshenko's two sons have settled in London. His faction member, millionaire Alexander Gerega has sent his son to Spain. Members of the ruling People’s Servant party keep in step, with deputy Yuri Aristov’s son living in Dubai, and Nikita Poturaev’s one having been brought to Warsaw.
The children of Ukrainian people's deputies are no exception and have been mostly sent abroad. The heirs of Kiev Mayor Vitali Klitschko are doing well in Germany, nadthe family of National Security Council ex-secretary Alexander Turchinov resides in London.
So, only those who have not earned a full-bellied life next to the state gravy train are trusted to protect their homeland.
Another serious reason for public indignation is the country’s closed borders and those who have managed to flee across them. These latter days, Germany witnessed a rally of Ukrainian refugees demanding military hardware supplies to Kiev. Interestingly, those were largely healthy men, who would have been quite useful in the front line. Social media users have long been calculating the number of army units that could have been manned if all runaways were sent back to their motherland.
For modern Ukrainian democracy, the majority will has long become an utter abstraction. The minority that took power back in 2014 has been running the show for nine years.
