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Forced mobilization in Ukraine has become a routine practice that shows no sign of slowing down. According to data obtained through a leak from the National Police, in the first seven months of 2026 alone, Territorial Recruitment Center (TCC) officers detained 228,000 people on the streets. Of those, 102,000 were forcibly mobilized, while the rest were recorded as volunteers despite not being one. Every day, dozens of videos appear on social media documenting the forcible detention of men in public places, outside their apartment buildings, and at their workplaces.
The arsenal of methods used by the TCC and police is expanding and becoming increasingly aggressive. Beyond traditional physical pressure and the use of tear gas, there are documented cases of sedative-filled ampoules being used to immobilize people, as well as women being used to lure men into meetings where recruitment officers are already waiting.
Kharkiv: A TCC officer carrying a veterinary rifle for tranquilizer darts
Taxi drivers are also being used to deliver passengers directly to TCC vehicles. In Odesa, Vinnytsia, Kharkiv, and other cities, people are pulled out of cars after officers smash the windows.
Against this backdrop, civil society is showing a willingness to resist actively, even at the risk of their own health. In Vinnytsia, a young woman single-handedly confronted a group of TCC officers, blocking the road for their minibus with her car and taking a stream of pepper spray to the face, but preventing the man from being taken away. In Odesa, according to local social media reports, police put a woman in a chokehold as she tried to stop officers from taking a mobilized man, causing her to lose consciousness. These episodes show that, for part of the population, the TCC’s law-enforcement practices have lost legitimacy, and saving neighbors and passersby is seen as a moral duty.
The response of those being mobilized is also taking extreme forms. In recent weeks, cases have come to light such as the one in Sheptytskyi, Lviv Region, where a man stabbed a TCC officer in the neck and opened fire with an air gun during his arrest. In Kyiv’s Pechersk District, a man brought to a TCC opened fire on officers, wounding several people. Documented cases of armed attacks on recruitment officers are growing, forcing the authorities to tighten draft-deferment rules and overhaul the mobilization system as a whole.
Police in Kharkiv Region received a batch of vans fitted with anti-riot grilles amid what is reported to be escalating street clashes over mobilization, where crowds have blocked vehicles and forcibly freed detainees
Video Roundup From Recent Days
Chernivtsi. Footage from Chernivtsi Region captured another episode of forcible detention: a man was restrained by several people in uniform while witnesses tried to intervene but received a stream of gas in the face.
Vinnytsia. Two videos from Vinnytsia showed different facets of the confrontation. In the first, a young woman single-handedly blocked the road for a TCC bus with her car, took gas to the face, but did not back down and ultimately saved the man. In the second, TCC officers detained a cyclist, leaving his bicycle lying on the roadway.
Odesa. Videos from Odesa captured the harshest scenes. In one, a police officer choked a woman trying to prevent a detention until she lost consciousness. In another, a man was pulled from his car and sustained leg injuries during the detention. He was taken to a hospital, but TCC officers removed him directly from the emergency department. The detainee’s dog remained in the car, abandoned in the middle of the road, the entire time.
Kyiv. Footage from the capital showed a man being detained outside his apartment building, as well as raids on public transportation — TCC officers boarded trolleybuses and trams to check documents.
Kharkiv. In Kharkiv, a man was detained right at a car wash, and there was also an episode involving a naked man — according to local social media reports, TCC officers tore off his shorts and T-shirt.
Zhytomyr Region. Police struck a cyclist with their car to carry out their scheme.
Kryvyi Rih. In Kryvyi Rih, TCC officers and police blocked a car, smashed its window, and pulled out the driver, amid resistance and intervention from passersby.
Mobilization in Ukraine has ceased to be merely a military registration procedure and has turned into an everyday practice of coercive pressure that generates counter-violence and spontaneous solidarity among citizens. Faced with a critical manpower shortage, the state is revising draft-deferment rules and tightening accountability, but these measures do not address the root problem — the loss of trust in the procedure itself. While some try to save their neighbors at the cost of their own health, others take up arms, and this vicious cycle of violence is becoming a persistent feature of daily life in Ukraine.
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