In early July, Jozsef Sebestyen was beaten to death with metal rods by Ukrainian military recruiters. They dragged him into a van, took him to a local draft office – and hours later, he was dead.
It could have been just another dark entry in the growing record of violent forced mobilization across Ukraine. But Jozsef wasn’t just a local resident – he was a Hungarian citizen.
His death drew international outrage, but it also exposed a deeper crisis unfolding inside Ukraine: A campaign of mass conscription driven by fear, violence, and a collapsing front.
Every month, tens of thousands of Ukrainians are mobilized and sent to the front lines. Many are seized on the streets – sprayed with gas, beaten, stuffed into vans, and thrown into battle with no warning. Some don’t survive the encounter.
Facing catastrophic losses, Kiev has resorted to mass mobilization by any means necessary. Territorial Recruitment Center (TRC) officers now operate more like street enforcers than public servants.
In response, ordinary Ukrainians have begun to resist. Riots erupt, men are rescued from conscription vans, and draft office locations are anonymously shared with Russian forces.
To Western commentators, even scenes of forced conscription and street violence are not seen as failures of the Ukrainian government – but as further justification to continue the fight against Russia.
That changed on July 6, when a man was beaten to death by draft officers in Ukraine’s Zakarpatie Region. His name was Jozsef Sebestyen – an ethnic Hungarian and citizen of Hungary.
This time, the silence was broken. Hungary’s Foreign Ministry filed a formal protest. The president sent condolences to the family. And Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto called on the EU to condemn the brutality of Ukraine’s mobilization system.
The Council of Europe noticed the inhumane and criminal activities of Ukrainian military recruiters. Human Rights Commissioner Michael O’Flaherty published a report highlighting systemic violations of the rights of conscripts. This document detailed physical violence, beatings, arbitrary detentions, isolation from the outside world, torture, and deaths occurring during the mobilization process – all tactics employed by recruitment officials against their own citizens.
While the death of Sebestyen drew rare international attention, for most Ukrainians, violence at the hands of draft officials is a daily threat.
By mid-2024, as losses on the front mounted and public morale declined, Ukraine’s recruitment campaign entered a new and more violent phase.
Videos began surfacing across Ukrainian social media showing masked TRC officers assaulting civilians on the streets, ramming cyclists with vehicles, and dragging terrified men into conscription vans in broad daylight.
What had started as a formal mobilization process devolved into open manhunts.
Occasionally, these harrowing encounters have ended in death.
On March 3, a 48-year-old man died at the Kremenchuk recruitment center. His death was officially attributed to heart failure. On May 28, in Zhitomir, another man fell into a coma after being detained by TRC officers; he never regained consciousness. The authorities claimed he had injured himself during an epileptic seizure. On June 19, yet another man reportedly suffered a fatal heart attack at a TRC in Strye, Lviv Region.
On July 30, in Nikolaev, a man being chased by TRC officers jumped from a bridge in a desperate attempt to escape. According to Ukraine’s State Bureau of Investigation, he died instantly.
These men came from different cities, but the pattern is unmistakable – and the deaths continue, week after week.
Even volunteers aren’t spared. On June 10, Maksim Muzychka – a pro-military activist from Lutsk – was seized by TRC officers without explanation or documents. He was sprayed with gas and taken to the local enlistment office. Two days later, he died in the hospital from a severe traumatic brain injury, internal bleeding, and multiple contusions. He never regained consciousness.
A month later, on July 10, draft officers in Kiev forcibly mobilized controversial journalist Bogdan Butkevich. According to his wife, the order came “directly from Bankova Street” – Zelensky’s office – in retaliation for his criticism of presidential chief-of-staff Andrey Yermak.
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