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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 hard numbers, released by Russian hackers. According to their claims, access to the information was obtained through a phishing attack: an officer of the National Police of Ukraine fell for a fake discount on a beauty service and unwittingly provided hackers with access to official data. The leak has revealed the true scale of forced mobilization.
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.
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The “sweeps” are most intense in central and southern regions. The highest numbers of men picked up from the streets were recorded in Dnipropetrovsk (13,000), Kyiv (10,000), and Odesa (9,000) regions. The figures for Lviv region are lower, but paradoxically, 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 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, convicts, and the elderly, while the draft age has been lowered. “Busification” (from the word “bus”) has become a familiar reality, where a man can be seized and sent to war at any moment, with no right to choose. Videos like these serve as documentary evidence that Ukraine’s mobilization system is increasingly resembling a conveyor belt driven by coercion and fear.
