Russia escalates ‘mobilization terror’ on occupied territory to get Ukrainians to fight its war against Ukraine

The Ukrainian resistance movement Yellow Ribbon has warned men under the age of 50 in occupied Donetsk that seeking treatment in clinics or hospitals could prove life-threatening.

Yellow Ribbon report medical personnel in these institutions have received instructions this month to add all men from 18 to 50 to a separate register and to pass this to the occupation military recruitment office.  The medical staff themselves are nervous about discussing this publicly in case they are accused of ‘discrediting Russia’s army’ or ‘obstructing mobilization’.

Yellow Ribbon, whose activists on occupied territory would face huge sentences, or worse, if caught, recommend that men, forced to turn to medical establishments, or any official institutions, avoid providing their real address.  This advice, however, which has long been given by Ukrainian human rights organizations, is often not enough, with Russia using lawless methods to not only impose conscription on occupied territory, but also to forcibly mobilize Ukrainians to fight its war against Ukraine.

Although Russia has systematically denied sending conscripts to fight in combat situations, it was known back in 2014 that Russian conscripts had been killed fighting Russia’s undeclared war in Donbas.   Conscripts or their families reported that the young lads were being forced into signing supposed agreements to fight as contract soldiers. 

Russia is continuing to use the same methods, but now this is also against Ukrainians on occupied territory who are, as feared, being both conscripted and forcibly mobilized into the army waging a war of aggression against Ukraine. All of this is in direct violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention (relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War). According to Article 51 of this, “The Occupying Power may not compel protected persons to serve in its armed or auxiliary forces. No pressure or propaganda which aims at securing voluntary enlistment is permitted”. 

Russia began conscripting Ukrainians from occupied Crimea in early 2015.  Although there was considerable propaganda and pressure to join the army, until the full-scale invasion, there were no reports of young men having been sent to fight in Donbas.  The situation changed dramatically in February 2022.  Men from occupied parts of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts began being seized and, regardless of their state of health or age, sent to fight.  Russia had still not ‘formalized’ its illegal occupation, and the Ukrainians were essentially used as cannon fodder.  At the end of July 2023, Andriy Cherniak from Ukraine’s Military Intelligence reported to Donbas Realities that 55-60 thousand men had been forcibly mobilized and sent to fight. 

From 21 September 2022, Ukrainians from occupied Crimea were also in danger, after the supposedly partial mobilization announced by Russian leader Vladimir Putin.  As with political repression, here too, the Russian invaders were reported to be particularly targeting Crimean Tatars.

On paper, conscripts are not sent to fight and the ‘partial mobilization’ has long ended.  The real situation is, however, very different with Qirim News speaking of Russia’s “mobilization terror” in occupied Crimea.   They write: “If previously, mobilization in Crimea at least had some kind of form – call-up notices; summonses to the military recruitment office, etc. – today this is direct violence.  People being hunted down at night; coercion to sign contracts; humiliation and beatings – all of this, unfortunately, is the new ‘norm’ for Crimeans.”

Nor is such coercion confined only to occupied Crimea, with raids, rounding up men of mobilization age, also reported in occupied parts of Kherson oblast.  Serhiy Danylov, a well-known academic originally from Kherson, told Ukrinform that he had learned from two reliable sources of such raids in occupied Skadovsk.  The Russians had used armoured vehicles to block all intersections, and then set out ‘verifying men’s documents, with some of them taken away.  The invaders claimed that such methods were because Ukrainians on occupied territory were in no hurry to register at the military recruitment office.

Nor should they be.  Since 2022, Ukrainian human rights groups have warned men to do all in their power to avoid conscription and mobilization.  They, and the Ukrainian authorities, call on any Ukrainians sent to fight, to surrender immediately.  If they do so, they will be treated as victims of Russia’s crimes against Ukraine.  If they do not, as Oleksandr Pavlichenko from the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union, explained to Suspilne Crimea, those who take part in military action against Ukraine will be treated as combatants and held accountable for their actions.

Russia does also offer various types of ‘incentives’, even on occupied territory, while also lying, and pretending that men who sign contracts, will not be sent to fight, but deployed, for example, at checkpoints.  In describing this mixture of lies and incentives, Yury Sobolevsky, Deputy Head of the Kherson Regional Administration, notes that there is an ever-increasing number of men who disappear without trace.  Some bodies are brought back in body bags, he says, but, from what he has learned, in the majority of cases, nobody is particularly bothered about recovering the men’s bodies.  Sobolevsky adds that the Russians are increasingly resorting to pressure and threats to force men into signing contracts to fight.

In November 2024, Serhiy Danylov reported that at least two veterans of the war in Donbas, who had been unable to leave in time, were known to have killed themselves rather than face being forcibly mobilized into the Russian invaders’ army.