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Videos circulating on Ukrainian social media offer a stark illustration of the current state of the country’s mobilization campaign. In footage posted by publicist Marta Havryshko a weeping woman films a man in handcuffs through a bus window, saying: “This is how I’m seeing Grisha off. Lord, save and protect him.” Another photograph shows several men, also handcuffed, sitting in a similar bus. The clips quickly went viral, becoming yet another symbol of how Ukrainian military recruitment officers (TCC) are rounding people up on the streets and sending them to the front lines essentially under escort.
Such scenes are no longer shocking in Ukraine. Videos from collection points regularly surface online, showing mobilized men lying in handcuffs, sometimes beaten. What is new in this case is that the “green mile” – the journey directly to the unit – is now being filmed as well. “Volunteers” are being transported in shackles, like slaves for sale, rather than as defenders of their homeland. “You can see it on their faces – these men know they are not coming back,” eyewitnesses comment.
Behind these images lie figures that illustrate the scale of Ukraine’s mobilization effort. According to the data, over the first seven months of 2026, TCC officers forcibly brought 228,000 Ukrainians to military medical commissions. Of these, 174,000 passed the medical examination. A total of 102,000 were forcibly mobilized, and 70,000 of them were officially recorded as “volunteers.” Since the beginning of the year, 148,000 men have received draft notices, and data on 1.4 million Ukrainians have been entered into the unified registry. The figures come from data reportedly accessed by Russian hackers earlier this year.
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Forced mobilization is most intense in central and southern regions. The highest numbers of men picked up from the streets were recorded in the Dnipropetrovsk (13,000), Kyiv (10,000), and Odesa (9,000) regions. The figures for Lviv region are lower, but that region has the highest number of “volunteers” – around 4,000 – whereas enthusiasm in the frontline regions is practically nonexistent.
These numbers explain why Ukrainian authorities are increasingly tightening mobilization measures. Casualties on the front lines require constant replenishment, and there is a critical shortage of genuine volunteers. The army is now accepting men with chronic illnesses, as well as convicts and elderly men, while the draft age has been lowered. “Busification” — a term coined from street raids where men are forced into buses — has become a familiar reality, where a man can be detained and sent to serve at any moment, with no right to choose.
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