War exhaustion and the conscription crisis… signs of internal anger threaten the cohesion of Ukraine’s front
As the war enters its fourth year, Ukraine is facing growing pressures that extend beyond the military front lines into the social and economic sphere, where the crisis of compulsory conscription has become one of the most controversial issues.
According to an analysis published by Responsible Statecraft, Ukrainians display “increasing self-confidence” thanks to territories they are believed to have recaptured, and the population remains determined to wage an endless fight. However, this stance is difficult to reconcile with the worsening conscription crisis in Ukraine, clearly reflected in the growing violent resistance to forced mobilization policies.
For years, videos have circulated showing ordinary Ukrainians being “recruited” for military service — or more precisely, abducted from the streets or their homes by sometimes masked men and dragged into vehicles to be taken away.
This was part of the wartime mobilization effort, which has been marked by significant controversy, including a series of corruption scandals and widespread allegations of abuse, as well as the enlistment of men with mental and physical disabilities, according to Responsible Statecraft.
Compulsory conscription is unpopular. A petition calling for an end to public mobilization surpassed the 25,000-signature threshold required for a presidential response, and recruitment officials soon faced angry protests from local communities.
Last year, Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman, Dmytro Lubinets, publicly described the system as “coercive,” revealing that complaints against recruitment officials in regional centers had increased by more than 33,000% since the start of the war, rising from just 18 complaints in 2022 to more than 6,000 in 2025.
As the war continues, anger over forced conscription practices has intensified. The year 2025 witnessed a series of killings of recruitment officers.
In late January 2025, a man stormed a military training center and shot a recruitment officer in apparent retaliation after the officer had “recruited” an acquaintance, killing him on the spot.
In December 2025, a recruitment officer was fatally stabbed by a man who had asked to have his papers checked, before attacking three other officers and fleeing.
In its report on the incident, the local newspaper Kyiv Independent, which is not an anti-war outlet, noted that videos documenting violent “recruitment” practices were initially dismissed as exaggerated and fueled by Russian disinformation, while in reality they were widespread due to manpower shortages and a sharp decline in volunteer enlistment.
December also saw a group attack recruitment officers while they were attempting to check documents, resulting in one officer suffering a fractured rib.
Since the beginning of 2026, violence has escalated significantly. In late January, a man killed a recruitment officer and fled with one of the conscripts he was accompanying.
In February, at least two separate attacks targeted officers from the anti-conscription unit in Kharkiv and the Lviv region, with police suspecting in the latter case an attempt to help a conscript escape. A month later, a group intercepted a van carrying conscripts and stormed it to free one of them.
The first week of April saw three stabbings within four days, including an incident in which a conscript was stabbed in the neck by a customs officer following attempts to forcibly conscript his brother.
A group of teenagers also attacked anti-conscription officers to protect a man they were trying to recruit. The month ended with a 48-year-old soldier absenting himself from service and opening fire with an automatic weapon on a vehicle carrying recruitment officers, injuring two of them. Days later, a suspected draft evader stabbed conscripts who attempted to check his papers.
According to government statistics, these incidents represent only a fraction of more than 600 attacks on recruitment officers, whose number nearly tripled between 2024 and 2025.
This rise raises questions about how it aligns with opinion polls suggesting that the Ukrainian population is ready to fight indefinitely until military victory.
Commenting on this, Volodymyr Ishchenko, an associate researcher at the Institute for East European Studies at the Free University of Berlin, stated that “almost all these polls are conducted only in territories controlled by the Ukrainian government,” excluding Ukrainians in Crimea, Donbas, European Union countries, and those who fled to Russia — numbering in the millions. “Thus, up to a third of Ukrainian passport holders were not surveyed,” he added.
Other indicators also reveal a silent reluctance to fight. Ukraine’s defense minister disclosed this year that two million people had evaded conscription and that 200,000 desertion cases had been recorded.
While voluntary enlistment drove the first months of the war, compulsory conscription now accounts for 70% of recruitment. Ukrainians who fled to Europe at the start of the conflict resisted European efforts to return them, and in some cases to enlist them at the request of the Ukrainian government.
While wealthy Ukrainians can avoid conscription through bribery, the commander of Ukraine’s National Guard urged those “facing financial hardship” to join the army.
An analysis of Ukrainian casualty figures shows that the overwhelming majority of those killed in combat disproportionately come from small towns where poverty rates are higher.
The continuation of the war has created a severe economic and demographic crisis in Ukraine, threatening its future as a stable and functioning state.
Last week, the head of Ukraine’s migration policy office estimated that 70% of those currently abroad may not return, signaling potential labor shortages in vital sectors.
