Ukraine Draft Officers Detain Men After Concert Amid Ongoing Russia War

Men who attended the Kyiv concert of a popular rock band had their papers checked on the way out. Some were detained. Tickets to subsequent shows suddenly became available.

Okean Elzy is one of the top bands in Ukraine. It has a stadium rock style and songs with patriotic themes that for decades have provided the soundtrack to anti-Russia protests.

Tickets to its concerts are highly prized. But they suddenly became available after the first of three sold-out concerts in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, on Friday night. The reason? Draft officers and the police had waited outside the concert hall, looking for men trying to dodge military service in the country’s war with Russia. They asked to see men’s draft papers and detained those who had not registered.

“People, help me please!” shouted a young man being dragged away from the concert hall by officers, a video shared on social media showed.

In another video shown on Ukrainian media, an officer wearing the dark blue uniform of the national police pointed at another young man leaving the show. “Wait, are we taking this one?” he asked.

The videos spread quickly, prompting a backlash among some Ukrainians who thought that corralling men at entertainment events was a step too far in the effort to add desperately needed recruits to the war effort.

One woman, Bozhena, 27, said, “My husband said, ‘No, thanks’” after seeing the videos, adding that they had decided to sell their tickets for the next concert and stay home. Like others in this article, she asked to be identified only by her first name to avoid drawing attention to her and her husband’s situation.

“When you leave the concert hall and face draft officers, this is scary but also not democratic,” she said.

Tickets for future Okean Elzy concerts immediately started to show up for resale online. One site, OLX, had dozens of postings. A music critic, Vadim Lysytsya, joked that the authorities could easily find draft dodgers by checking who was selling their tickets.

Similar document checks took place nationwide at concerts and performances that Friday night, a sign of a new phase in Ukraine’s attempts to enforce its draft laws.

In Cherkasy, a city in central Ukraine, draft officers showed up after a performance of the stand-up comedian Anton Tymoshenko. In Brovary, a suburb of Kyiv, they checked documents after a concert by a local band, 100lytsia. Recruitment efforts also took place in Kharkiv, Dnipro and other large cities. In Kharkiv, a concert was canceled after officers turned up to check the draft status of the band members.

The third year of the war has found Ukraine mostly on the defensive, losing ground against a Russian Army with superior numbers.

Although Ukrainian officials say that they have been successful in meeting mobilization targets, troops on the front lines have complained that reinforcements are often old, poorly trained or suffering from health problems.

“We are running out,” said one soldier, Lt. Maksym, who is serving at the front and asked to be identified only by his first name for security reasons. His brigade, the 28th, has lost many soldiers and its commander.

About six million men eligible to serve — about 16 percent of Ukraine’s population — have not renewed their contact and personal details with draft offices, as required by law, according to the lawmaker Oleksandr Fedienko, a member of the parliamentary Committee on National Security and Defense, in comments reported by Ukrainian news outlets.

Despite the possibility of being pulled aside by draft officers, young men have continued to visit cafes and restaurants and to attend concerts. Many such events also raise money for the army, and some of the most reliable donors are the young men who are eligible to serve.

The decision to raid concerts has highlighted a division long brewing in Ukrainian society between the young men who have gone to fight and those who have not. Some say those avoiding the draft should not be visiting concerts.

“Either you are a citizen and fulfill the requirements of the times, or you are a dodger,” said Capt. Oleh Voitsekhovsky, who is currently fighting in eastern Ukraine.

Others say they consider rounding men up during entertainment events a violation of their rights.

Iryna, 37, said that her husband had renewed all the data needed at the draft office but grew worried about attending the concert after seeing videos of men grabbed off the street.

“This is wrong,” she said. “People are scared to walk the streets. It has to be done differently.”

Though many men say that they fear serving on the war’s notoriously dangerous front, only about 15 percent of soldiers are deployed to frontline positions, said Mr. Fedienko, the lawmaker on the defense committee. The army also badly needs electricians, drivers, accountants and others in noncombat roles, he added.

In a comment to the state news agency Ukrinform, the press service of the Kyiv draft office said that all the officers at the Okean Elzy concert had followed the law. They added that such document checks were done regularly.

No draft officers could be seen at the Okean Elzy concert on Sunday, but attendees appeared relatively subdued. Women appeared to greatly outnumber men. Most of the men at the show seemed to be either students or soldiers on leave.

Mykhailo, a soldier who asked to be identified only by his first name because he was not authorized to speak publicly, said that he thought it was fine if draft officers showed up at concerts.

“Why should one guy hide while another is fighting?” he said.

Another man, Oleksiy, 35, was attending the concert with his wife after buying tickets in August. “We want to hear it, so we came,” he said.

“The draft office is doing its job, and when we were buying tickets, I knew it might be risky,” he acknowledged.

Oleksiy added that, although he had renewed his data with the draft office, he was still worried.

“I hope I’ll come back home tonight,” he said.

Nataliia Novosolova contributed reporting.

Our Coverage of the War in Ukraine

• U.S. Aid: President Biden announced $425 million in aid to Ukraine as he prepared to travel to Germany to celebrate the unified front of Western allies. The security package includes munitions, armored vehicles and other weapons.
• Russia Claws Back Land: Moscow’s forces have been recapturing some villages and land taken in a Ukrainian incursion into Russia. The advances could undermine Kyiv’s hopes of pushing Russia to the negotiating table.
• A Deadly Month: September was the bloodiest month of the war for Russian forces in Ukraine, U.S. officials said, bringing the number of Russia’s dead and wounded to more than 600,000 troops since the war began.

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