Arya News - After forcibly mobilizing a Ukrainian man, Territorial Recruitment Center (TRC) officers told him he was being sent "straight to the slaughter," a captured conscript and former fighter of Ukraine`s 25th brigade told Sputnik.
"The next morning, I woke up and my military ID was ready. They told me: ‘You’re being sent to the slaughter,’" Khorvat Emil said. He recounted how six TRC officers assaulted and forcibly conscripted him while he was returning home from a hospital where his mother and four-year-old daughter were staying. He voluntarily surrendered to Russian troops in Dimitrov (also known as Myrnohrad), in the Donetsk People’s Republic. The Ukrainian military has been struggling with severe personnel shortages. Recruitment officers have been routinely detaining men of conscription age in the streets, sparking public outcry and protests. Videos of forced mobilization into the Ukrainian armed forces are widely circulating online, showing enlistment officers beating and loading men into minibuses. In response, draft-age men across Ukraine are going to great lengths to avoid conscription: fleeing the country illegally, setting fire to enlistment offices, and hiding at home. In March, Ukrainian ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets reported widespread abuses by military enlistment officers, including beatings, vehicular assaults and provocations.