2023-12-29 06:44:21
Nestled behind a curtain of trees, the restaurant with its cozy atmosphere in the center of kyiv gives the illusion of peace in a country at war. “I was having lunch with an old friend. It was Christmas time, it was 2 p.m., the service was in full swing”, remembers a young man met in the capital; he requested anonymity. Their conversation revolves around mobilization in the army, an eternal subject since the start of the war, but which has just taken on a brutal intensity: President Volodymyr Zelensky mentioned the probable mobilization of 450,000 to 500,000 new recruits during a press conference on December 19. Since the summer of 2022, and ever more insistently, the general staff claims to lack as many men as ammunition. This time, the figure launched is phenomenal for an army which has 1 million soldiers and could put the country in a delicate social and political situation.
Under the dim lights of the restaurant, the young man explains to his guest that he benefits from a reprieve – like many others – thanks to his employment in a strategic civilian sector. A clear and perfectly legal situation. But what is still clear with troops exhausted by twenty-two months of fighting, waiting for relief, in a war that never ends? Until now, Ukraine has not experienced general conscription, remaining in a sort of limbo: men aged 18 to 60 must register and are prohibited from leaving the country. But the commitment remains voluntary, becoming obligatory – for those who are suitable – only in the event of a nominal invitation. There the unknown begins.
How and to whom are these invitations distributed? They often seem to fall without any real logic, landing at one neighbor but not at another, or in several copies. It happens that they demand the incorporation of soldiers already mobilized, or sometimes even dead ones. To make matters worse, checks are increasing in public places, gyms, saunas, shopping centers: some men have found themselves confined, almost overnight, after a medical examination. kyiv, until now rather spared, is now increasingly targeted by these « raids »the name given by the population.
Read the report: Article reserved for our subscribers War in Ukraine: “By dint of crossing all the levels of fear, I understood that I am nothing, just a living body”
The young man on parole remembers saying to his friend at the restaurant: “the circle tightens”, all in telling him how some of his friends now live cloistered, for fear of finding themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was then that the restaurant door suddenly opened to reveal a dozen men in balaclavas, military uniform, weapons at their sides. The young man believed in the arrest of an oligarch. In fact, the war had just arrived at dessert time. In a flash, the servers vanished through the back door. Only the bartender remained, stuck behind his counter. At the end of the “raid”, three clients were finally summoned to the military police station the next day. Including the young man.
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