Afrasianet - Author: Ian Braud - Western media largely ignore the fact that Kyiv is forced to snatch young people from the streets for conscription amid numerous army shortages and defections.
The American magazine "Responsible Statecraft" publishes an article on the phenomenon of the "bus" in Ukraine, where the authorities kidnap or forcibly detain young men and transfer them to recruitment centers, and presents horrific incidents (deaths, torture, videos) and the spread of the phenomenon of desertion, while questioning the silence of the Western media and the consequences of this on the legitimacy of Ukraine's military efforts and Western support.
The following is the text of the article:
The bus, a well-understood term in Ukraine, symbolizes the way young Ukrainians are held against their will, often involving violent conflict, where they are pushed into a minibus that takes them to an army recruitment center. Until recently, the management of the recruitment process was choosing easy targets. But last month, Jerome Starkey, the defence editor of the British newspaper The Sun, wrote a harrowing report on a recent trip to the frontlines in Ukraine, during which he claimed that his Ukrainian colleague " He was forced to join his country's armed forces."
This case was striking for two reasons: first, that it is rare for the mainstream Western media to cover the subject of forced mobilization, and second, unlike most cases of conscription, this incident occurred after the car of Western journalists was hijacked by three gunmen who insisted on driving them to a recruitment center. "I saw at least 12 dismal men, most of them in their 40s and 50s, carrying bundles of papers," Starkey wrote. They were called to side rooms for mock medical examinations to prove their fitness to fight."
The operation drew criticism after high-profile incidents in which men died even before they were put on uniform. On 23 last month, Ukrainian Roman Sobin died of severe and severe head trauma after being forcibly recruited, while Ukrainian authorities claim he fell, but his family has initiated legal action against the Kyiv government. In August, a 36-year-old male conscript died suddenly at a recruitment centre in the Rivna region, although authorities claimed he died For natural causes. In June, 45-year-old Ukrainian-Hungarian Joseph Sebastian died after being beaten with iron bars after being conscripted. Last August, a conscript died of his injuries after jumping from a moving vehicle that was taking him to the recruitment centre, while the Ukrainian military denies this version of events.
Any internet researcher will find thousands of incidents, most of which were filmed this year alone, including a video of a recruiting officer chasing a man, shooting him, and another video of a man strangled to death in the street with a recruiter's knee on his neck. In many of them, family members or friends struggle desperately to prevent their loved ones from being taken against their will.
If videos of this kind had been published so widely in the United States or Britain, the public would have expressed great concern. However, the Western media remains largely silent, amid a lack of understanding of why.
Last year, Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustam Umarov claimed that he would put an end to the phenomenon of "buses." It is true that Ukraine is taking steps to modernize its military's conscription system and make it more attractive to men under the age of 25, but there is little evidence that these efforts are having the desired effect. A year later, the phenomenon of "buses" appears to be getting worse, as it continues to be widely ignored by the Western press.
The Institute for the Study of War in Washington often reports on Russia's troop mobilization efforts, but not on the dark and desperate aspects that lead to the "buses." You won't find reports on this in the New York Times, because it contradicts the narrative that Western-backed Ukraine could turn the war upside down, relying instead on stories like Ukraine's points for a game of drone killing, or the designer who sewed Zelensky's now-worn black suit.
Meanwhile, the Washington Post is quietly beating the drums for the recruitment of 18-year-old Ukrainians, even though this is a controversial political issue among Ukrainians. This is because the issue of "buses" is just the tip of the iceberg. If Ukrainians find it difficult to encourage young people to join the army voluntarily, it will be difficult to get them to stay without fleeing.
In January this year, it was reported that some 1,700 soldiers of the 155th Anna Kiev Mechanized Brigade, who had been trained in France and had been equipped with self-propelled howitzers, had been absent from their units without permission, 50 of them while in France. In June last year, a Ukrainian soldier was shot dead by a border guard while trying to escape and cross the border into Moldova.
In the first half of this year, more than 110,000 cases of desertion were reported in Ukraine. Last year, Ukrainian prosecutors initiated more than 89,000 actions related to flight and unauthorized abandonment of units, a number three and a half times higher than in 2023. More than 20% of Ukraine's 1 million troops have jumped the fence in the past four years, and the numbers are rising all the time.
The desertions appear to be driven in part by a growing shortage of infantry on the front line, meaning soldiers rarely get rest and recreation, and often blamed on a lack of adequate equipment. Of course, widespread and increasing desertion rates from the Armed Forces of Ukraine appear to be sparking more violent recruitment practices and then civilian protests. Last month in Odesa, a group of protesters against forced detention overturned a minibus recruitment.
The growth of buses and the increase in fleeing are also followed by the growth of support among ordinary Ukrainians for ending the war. Support for ending the war through negotiation has risen from 27% in 2023 to 69% in 2025. Similarly, support for Ukraine to "keep fighting, until you win the war," a completely deceptive slogan, fell from 64% to 24% over the same period, according to the results of a Gallup poll.
President Zelensky has long claimed that Ukraine's military impasse is linked to a shortage of weapons, not a shortage of people. He hopes to secure Western support for the fight for another two or three years, but is silent on whether he will get troops or political support from the Ukrainians to do so. For now, Zelenskyy's message seems to be: "Don't mention the pressure gangs, the killings in detention centers, the deserters, or the decline in popular support, just give me more money."