The woman shrieks in anguish. Along with a friend, she stands by the van feverishly pleading. But the officers are unmoved.
Next to her, a dog barks. The van begins to move. The man – a father, a husband, a brother? – who’s been bundled into it tries desperately to get out.
But the door slams shut as the van roars off. The women stand forlorn and watch it disappear into the distance.
They know that their loved one has been dragged off to an unknown future that contains the real possibility of a very violent death.
All of this has been caught on film and uploaded to the internet, yet another example of a new genre of viral content in Ukraine: press-gang porn.
A lack of promised weapons from allies, plummeting morale and years-long fighting have created a chronic manpower shortage for Kyiv. Now, reviled press gangs stalk the country, forcing the recalcitrant into battle.
It means another war has broken out – within Ukraine. The men run away, the press gangs chase them. And often do far more than just chase.
In Odessa, military recruiters have stormed trams and trolleybuses, hauling off male passengers as watching women lob obscenities at them. In Kharkiv, a man waiting at a bus stop was beaten by a press gang before bystanders rushed to form a protective circle around him.
Men are being subjected to heavy-handed recruitment tactics
Other cases are yet more disturbing: men dragged into vans after being tasered. A diabetic stripped of his jacket and denied medication.
Earlier this year, in yet another brutal display, a conscription officer fired at a man trying to flee from a recruitment centre. The bullet shattered his car window, but the man managed to drive off without injury.
Later that month, a 65-year-old pensioner was not so lucky trying to escape. He was caught, detained and beaten so severely that he suffered brain injuries and spinal trauma. His pleas for justice have so far gone unanswered, the case quickly buried in a system devoted to enlistment above justice.
In some instances, the press gangs are deadly. In June, in the city of Uzhhorod in Western Ukraine, draft officers grabbed Jozsef Sebestyen, a dual Ukrainian and Hungarian citizen, outside a café, dragged him along with other hapless ‘recruits’ into a forest, and punched and beat him with iron bars. He was then taken to a recruitment centre and forcibly conscripted.
He later told his family that the officers told him that if he didn’t sign the recruitment papers he would be sent to fight on the ‘zero-line’ against the Russians, where the enemy is only yards away and the combat unremitting.
Having reported from the zero-line myself, I can testify to the horrific dangers soldiers face there every day.
Sebestyen died in a psychiatric hospital on July 8, while the circumstances surrounding his death continue to be denied by the military.
On July 30, Ukrainian authorities opened an investigation after a detachment of draft officers stopped a man in one of the industrial districts of the city of Mykolaiv in south-eastern Ukraine to check his registration documents.
Whether they were aggressive or threatening is yet to be determined, but what is clear is that he immediately began running towards a bridge across the road. Then he jumped off, plummeting to his death.
Pasha is a 25-year-old officer who has seen combat but now works in recruitment. ‘It got much tougher to recruit people in the autumn of 2024 largely due to lots of negative media and the press gangs,’ he tells David, pictured
No military-age man feels safe. A friend recounted a recent fraught encounter: she and her husband were out shopping when draft officers approached. They rushed to their car and locked themselves inside. The officers knocked on the window, demanding to see the relevant papers.
Though her husband produced legitimate exemption documents, the officers wouldn’t leave, demanding they step out of the car to ‘discuss things further’.
The couple refused and made a call to a contact in the military who could confirm the exemption. A tense standoff ensued for nearly two hours, until a call from the authorities finally got the recruiters to disperse.
My friends were lucky: the officers were unwilling to break into the car. Many would not have been so fortunate.
And then there is the corruption. One man named Artem was seized by draft officers as he was leaving Sunday Mass in Uzhhorod.
Despite having paperwork proving that he was the only carer of his disabled 66-year-old mother and therefore exempt from military service, he was detained and beaten as officers tried to force him to ‘volunteer’ for the army.
When he refused, he was taken to a forest near the Slovak border and filmed being made to ‘illegally cross’ the border in order to extort ‘release’ money from his family, who reportedly paid $2,000 (£1,500) and then a further $15,000 (£11,000).
On social media, the anger is raw. One Telegram user summed up the surreal nature of the scenes: ‘They’re catching men on the street like Pokémon.’
Things have got so bad that defence minister Denys Shmyhal was hauled before MPs to answer questions about conscription practices. Mobilisation efforts were, he said, going ‘according to plan’.
Their methods may be shocking, but the inescapable reality is that Kyiv has no choice except to press its citizens into service. The situation is dire.
According to an unnamed senior Ukrainian official, Ukraine is mobilising 30,000 men a month, but only a third are fit to fight.
This means that gaps left by battlefield losses are not being filled. Soldiers are often deployed to the front in brutal conditions. They must fight every day, often for months, without the possibility of rotation.
This, of course, results in widespread desertions.
In the Anne of Kyiv Brigade, for example, up to 1,700 soldiers were AWOL between March and November 2024 – a staggering figure when you consider that most brigades consist of between 4,000 and 5,000 men.
Vasiliy, a 23-year-old with a master’s in engineering, is one of the 500 who took up the government offer to men aged 18-24. Indeed, he signed his papers only the day before and tells me why. ‘The war will be going on for a long time,’ he explains. ‘So, the smart move is to join on my own terms’
A former Azov Brigade general claims that ‘drivers, artillerymen and cooks’ are holding the line. A ‘maximum of 12 fighters hold sections between three and six miles wide’.
Ukraine is doing what it can to increase the numbers. It moved the mobilisation age down to 25 in 2024, but President Volodymyr Zelensky has refused to move it lower for fear of losing the next generation – the future of the country.
If men aged 18-24 were mobilised, it would provide an estimated 800,000 recruits. Kyiv has introduced ‘special contracts’ for this cohort in July, offering added perks such as increased salaries and free university education. But according to presidential adviser Pavlo Palisa, the program recruited just 500 recruits in opening weeks. This clearly won’t solve the problem.
Then there is the sheer size of the enemy. Despite 30,000 casualties a month, Russia is still able to mobilise more men than it is losing due to the lucrative benefits on offer.
New contract soldiers receive a welcome bonus of 400,000 roubles (roughly £3,700), plus other perks.
Earlier this month, the deputy head of Ukraine’s military intelligence, Vadym Skibitsky, said that ‘the Russian Federation’s recruitment plans are being fulfilled by at least 105 to 110 per cent each month’.
In 2024 alone, the Russian army added 430,000 men to its ranks – without mobilisation.
Many of those men will, of course, perish in Ukraine’s ‘meat grinder’, but Putin benefits from what I call the despot dividend.
He can happily send hundreds of thousands of his soldiers off to die. He is not accountable to anyone, least of all his ‘electorate’.
Ukraine, meanwhile, is struggling to back-fill casualties from existing units. The overall manning level of the army is likely to exceed 70 per cent of what is expected, but in frontline units this can fall to between 50-60 per cent and even 30 per cent in some cases.
Alona is a 23-year-old lieutenant who’s been recruiting since 2022. She accepts there are problems. ‘The main difference between now and 2022 is that, back then, there were a lot of motivated people,’ she tells me
Ukrainian and western estimates put the number of mobilised men in 2024 at around 200,000 – insufficient to maintain their forces adequately.
To make matters worse, Russian attacks are becoming ever more aggressive and now are no longer confined to Ukraine. On the night of September 9, swarms of drones – at least 19, some reports say more than 20 – crossed into Polish airspace from Russia and Belarus. Polish jets scrambled, Nato aircraft joined in and several of the drones were brought down.
But the message was clear: Moscow is probing Nato’s eastern frontier as deliberately as it does Ukraine’s air defences.
And if all that wasn’t bad enough, Ukrainians must now also contend with the fear that US President Donald Trump will sell them out to Moscow.
In meetings last month with Vladimir Putin in Alaska, and Volodymyr Zelensky in Washington DC, Trump made it clear that he wants to end this war – even without an interim ceasefire.
Worse, Trump had already weakened his hand to Russia before negotiations had even started by not enacting the secondary sanctions he announced in July.
He then ruled out putting American forces on the ground, showing that he is not willing to deploy the only threat Putin really cares about, that of US action – even if both Trump and Zelensky say they want a European security presence in Ukraine. The situation is bleak.
I have come to Odessa in southern Ukraine to find out whether, in the face of its recruitment crisis, an unreliable US, and the Russians’ relentless bombardment, the Ukrainians can fight on.
The 39th Coastal Defence Brigade, known as the ‘Black Sea Cossacks’, is a unit of the Ukrainian Marine Corps based in the city.
The Brigade is fighting at the front in the nearby region of Kherson. With the press gangs so heartily loathed in the country, the military is trying to entice recruits through more traditional methods. I have come to its recruiting centre to see how it’s responding to the challenge.
The decor is edgy, clearly geared towards the young. On one wall is a poster portraying the Kremlin and the famous St Basil’s cathedral exploding under bombardment.
‘Everyone has a dream. Dreams must come true,’ it reads.
On the far wall as you walk in are four large pennant banners. One bearing the Brigade’s insignia shows a sabre crossed with an arrow placed over a heart. Beside it are the insignia of three constituent battalions: an animal of some sort, a snake over two arrows and a bull.
Alona is a 23-year-old lieutenant who’s been recruiting since 2022. She accepts there are problems. ‘The main difference between now and 2022 is that, back then, there were a lot of motivated people, and professionals from civilian life,’ she tells me.
‘Nowadays, people are less motivated because of everything that has been going on. The demographic is more blue-collar guys, generally between 30 and 40 years old.’
She understands why there is a reluctance among Ukrainians to enlist. ‘The recruits have trust issues,’ she explains.
The quality of commanders differs from brigade to brigade, so the main goal is to show people the battalion commanders care about their people, to close this gap of trust between civilians and senior military personnel. They interview every candidate to find their strengths and pick their positions accordingly.
Pasha is a 25-year-old officer who has seen combat but now works in recruitment. ‘It got much tougher to recruit people in the autumn of 2024 largely due to lots of negative media and the press gangs,’ he tells me.
‘When I joined, I felt there was no alternative but to fight. I didn’t even realise I’d get paid. Nowadays, a lot of people get injured, some desert for their own reasons, and I won’t judge,’ he says.
‘Some brigade commanders don’t care about their men.
‘The sergeants don’t really train or speak to their subordinates. So people get scared and leave the combat zone.’
Pasha has no doubt that he will continue to fight, whatever Trump’s peace plans.
‘I can’t even remember what it was like not to fight and serve,’ he tells me without emotion. ‘For me, there is no going back.’
I want to meet a recruit, and am introduced to Vasiliy, a 23-year-old with a master’s in engineering from the city of Kostiantynivka in Donbas.
He is one of the 500 who took up the government offer to 18-24 year-olds. Indeed, he signed his papers only the day before and tells me why.
‘The war will be going on for a long time,’ he explains. ‘So, the smart move is to join on my own terms, pick the brigade I want, instead of being hauled off the street and put somewhere my life is at risk.’
He shows me his army contract, and we pose for photos with him holding it.
‘This is like you’re a footballer signing for a big club,’ I say with a grin. He smiles weakly in return.
Vasily is doing his nation proud – it needs him more than ever. Putin will continue to attack, whatever he tells Trump.
He cannot allow himself to be the first Tsar in Russian history to lose in Ukraine.
And remember this: Putin threatens not just Ukraine, but all of Europe and the broader West.
It is up to Ukraine and allies such as Britain to finally stop him. No one else, least of all the US, is going to do it for us.
