In the city center of Odessa, a young man struggles as best he can: overpowered by a dozen men in black uniforms, he is dragged into a van to be taken to the recruitment center. These videos circulating on social networks terrify Sasha. To avoid mobilization, the forty-year-old hardly leaves his house and scans the alerts on Telegram messaging which indicate in real time the location of recruitment officers. “On Grouchevsko Street, there is a crowd of soldiers and police, it’s a raid.”
At the foot of his building in the south of the city, Sasha watches the comings and goings and tells us of his terror of joining the front. “I don’t want to be mobilized. I have two friends on the front, they said such terrible things to me, I can’t”he worries. Everywhere on the Eastern Front, the army is retreating, due to lack of weapons and soldiers.
“Bring back men at any cost”
The mobilization law of May 8 was supposed to facilitate recruitment. On the ground, Dymitri, a recruitment agent, saw the pressure to perform increase. “The orders were to bring back men at any cost. At first, we used to just patrol. Now we carry out raids in shopping centers, restaurants.”
On social networks, the scenes of forced boarding shock both the civilians who do not want to leave and the soldiers who are impatiently awaiting reinforcements.
