The dark clouds threatened to ruin Serhiy and Tania’s beach wedding. But when the couple walked down the long white staircase to greet their guests, the empty chairs indicated there was a bigger problem. Half of his guests were missing.
His family and friends sent their apologies, but explained that the risk of attending the ceremony would have been too great.
What would happen if they were caught by one of the recruiting squads now roaming the streets of Ukraine?
With many of its soldiers dead, wounded or exhausted, the Ukrainian government has stepped up efforts to mobilize more men.
A new law introduced in May requires all men between 25 and 60 to register their data in an electronic database so that they can be called up.
Recruiting officials are on the hunt for those who avoid registering, which has pushed more men who don’t want to enlist into hiding.
In the southern city of Odessa, Tania says quietly that she understands why her friends and family don’t want to fight.
Her father died at the front in October during the Battle of Avdiivka, and the 24-year-old is now terrified her husband will be conscripted. “I don’t want this to happen to my family twice,” she says.
More than two years after the start of the war, almost everyone knows someone who has died.
Grim news has come from the front that Ukraine is being vastly outnumbered and outgunned by Russia.
Over the phone, Maksym, a friend of the couple for 15 years, tells those stories. Among the dead are around a dozen of his friends and acquaintances.
“There are more than a million police officers in Ukraine, why should I fight if they don’t?” he asks.
Maksym, who has a young daughter and a wife who is seven months pregnant, said he regretted not being able to attend the wedding.but that he was afraid that the recruiting agents, whom he compared to bandits, would “catch” him.
Mobilization squads have a fearsome reputation, especially in Odessa, for taking people off buses and train stations and transporting them directly to readiness centers.
Those who do not want to be recruited avoid public transportation. Also restaurants, supermarkets and weekend trips to the park to play soccer.
“I feel like I’m in a prison,” says Maksym.
One Tuesday morning, a dozen recruiting officers went to Odessa’s main train station, led by a veteran sailor, Anatoliy, and his younger, more muscular counterpart, Oleksiy.
They detained the men of serving age to verify that they were registered in the database.
But they had difficulty finding men to recruit. Most were too young or had received some type of exemption.
After a couple of hours, Anatoliy admitted that it was possible that the men were hiding.
“Some people run away from us. This happens quite often,” she notes. “Others react quite aggressively. “I don’t think these people were well educated.”
At the recruiting center around the corner, an optimistic note taped to the door notified potential recruits that those who had come voluntarily could skip the lines.
But there were no lines. A solitary man sat waiting to be attended to.
When I asked him if he was there by choice, He told me that they had “kidnapped” him that morning and had taken him against his will.
“The officers surrounded me so I couldn’t run,” he stammered in shock. “I am devastated.”
One of the center’s officers, Vlad, admitted that there are almost no volunteers lately.
Vlad fought some of the fiercest battles along the eastern front line in Donbas before artillery shrapnel hit him in the head, chest and legs.
He could not hide his contempt for those who hide. “How can I say this without insulting?” she asks out loud.
“I don’t consider them men. What are they waiting for? If we run out of men, the enemy will come to their houses, rape their women and kill their children.”
Vlad has experienced the horror of war firsthand.
This latest recruitment campaign has caused uncomfortable divisions in society, not only between those who serve in the military and those who avoid the draft, but also between friends, some of whom have partners on the front, and others who hide their boyfriends at home. .
The topic of mobilization sneaks into almost every conversation, which then tends to become heated.
Last month, someone threw an explosive in the yard of a recruiting officer’s home.
There is a surprising distrust among men who decide not to enlist. They do not trust officers after it was discovered that some were taking bribes to help men escape the country.
They also do not trust that they will receive adequate training.
On the outskirts of Odessa, Vova appeared timidly at the door of her apartment block, using her seven-year-old daughter as a shield.
The computer engineer does not leave home without itsince he knows that the officers can’t catch him if they are together.
Last year, on his way to work, the military ordered him off a bus at gunpoint, he said, and took him to a recruiting center.
He convinced the officers to let him go get some documents, but he swore to himself he would never return.
“I am not a soldier, I have never had a weapon, I don’t think it could be useful on the front,” he said.
He then rattled off the same list of reasons given by all the deserters we spoke to: a family to support, some minor medical ailment, and a defiant declaration that he was sending humanitarian aid to the soldiers.
But beneath these excuses is always the same fear: that, in a matter of weeks after enlisting, these men will end up being cannon fodder on a front line that, in their eyes, does not seem to be moving.
This is despite recent attempts by the government to give conscripts some leeway over the units and roles they are assigned to.
When talking to these men, there is a kind of disconnect. They are hoping for a Ukrainian victory, but one that doesn’t involve them.
“I am proud that many men made the brave decision to go to the front lines,” Vova said. “They are truly the best of our country.”
At a recruit training camp in a forest outside Kyiv, the leader, Hennadiy Sintsov, breathed deeply as he supervised men digging wells with shovels.
“It may seem like a trivial job, but it is as important as knowing how to shoot artillery,” he said. “It could save their lives.”
Sintsov, a patriotic volunteer with a revolutionary spirit, oversees the mandatory 34-day training program which all recruits must complete before being sent to their military units.
He insisted that these men would not be sent to the front immediately, and that they would continue to receive further training.
During a break from training, Sintsov’s recruits sat around smoking and joking.
They were a mixed group, mostly in their 40s and 50s – a pig farmer, a warehouse manager and a construction worker – who admitted they would prefer not to be there.
But these men also did not want to spend the rest of the war hiding.
One of them, Oleksandr, had already chosen to become a drone pilot. “I’m pretty scared, this is all new to me, but I have to do it,” he said.
But the 33-year-old tram engineer does not judge those who choose to hide. “I’ve made my decision, they can make theirs,” he said with a shrug.
Sinsov is concerned about how unmotivated his new arrivals are.
Despite daily reminders of fighting – air raid sirens and rolling power outages – he believes the threat of war has become too distant for those who live in the relative safety of cities like Odessa and Kyiv. and fears that another Russian breakthrough will be needed to convince those who avoid military service in Ukraine.
“Then we would see people searching for weapons and lining up at enlistment centers again,” he says.
Additional reporting by Thanyarat Doksone and Anastasiia Levchenko
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