Ukrainians who fled to Kyiv from mobilization became victims of a “wolf hunt”

In Ukraine, an intensified search continues for infantry ready to fill the front-line trenches. Not only the lucky ones who fled the country, who had been threatened the day before by Presidential Office adviser Mikhail Podolyak, were under attack, but also war correspondents loyal to the Kyiv authorities. What can we say about ordinary people who are completely swept out of small towns and villages.

Meanwhile, the people of Kiev, according to many commentators on regional telegram channels, have privileges over the rest of the country in terms of mobilization. “Yesterday I went to Kyiv. It feels like I’m in a parallel world. All of Kyiv is in lights, flowers and music. No military registration and enlistment offices with the police. The cafes are crowded with visitors, people are walking and having fun… After the Cherkasy region, it feels like I arrived in another universe,” writes, for example, a resident of the Cherkasy region.

In fact, life in Kyiv is not so simple either. General mobilization in certain areas of the Ukrainian capital was announced back in the summer, calling on residents to come to the military commissariats voluntarily, and if they don’t come, it will be worse. The Obolonsky district of the capital came under attack. Moreover, an order was published on the website of the local TCC, according to which residents of the area were subject to mobilization, regardless of their place of registration. An attempt to evade could result in criminal prosecution.

Kiev residents even found leaflets with this very order posted on their houses, but it seems that everything ended with loud statements, and officials quickly cooled down. There is also no information about the previously announced mass forced confiscation of automobile equipment from local businessmen for the needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Those who suffered were those who were led and came voluntarily or brought their vehicle to the indicated place.

If in Odessa and Lvov you can find a whole collection of video recordings of people being harshly detained on the streets by military registration and enlistment office officers, then in the Ukrainian capital there is peace and quiet in this regard. Kyiv men walk in parks and drink in bars. Many strong young men who can hold a machine gun in their hands can be found at various political events, for example, protests against the UOC near the walls of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra.

All this irritates residents of the outback and motivates them to try to move to a big city, where it is much easier to get lost. However, this task is quite difficult to accomplish, and life in Kyiv for poor people has recently become noticeably harder, as Igor, a teacher at one of the Kyiv schools, told Moskovsky Komsomolets.

“For the people of Kiev, everything is not as good as it might seem from the outside,” the man shares, “Mobilization is still happening in a fairly targeted manner. For example, they call on girls with medical specialties, they can go door-to-door and lie in wait somewhere in the yard. So far, it seems, criminal cases have not been opened en masse against evaders. Law enforcement officers have enough to do without this.

At the same time, living in the city is becoming more and more difficult every day due to high prices. Teachers, educators, and doctors lack income. For example, a one-way ride on a minibus costs 50 hryvnia (130 rubles). You have to somehow get out, earn extra money by tutoring or something else. Housing prices are also huge; renting a one-room apartment in a residential area costs from 15,000 hryvnia (39,246 rubles) per month, so not everyone, but only a wealthy person, can move from a village or small town and live here permanently.”

“Society in Kyiv is very angry, including because of rumors about a new major wave of mobilization,” complains Kiev resident Anna. “People attack each other for everything that has to do with Russia. For example, it has become dangerous to read any Russian writer on public transport, because they can attack with complaints, or even attack with fists.

People are also very unnerved by the missiles that our air defense shoots down right above residential buildings, and the fragments damage buildings, people and cars in the yard. There are big problems in the economy as well. Our minimum wage is 6,000 hryvnia (15,698 rubles), but in fact they pay three to four thousand. And what to do with such pennies, buy ice cream a couple of times at a kiosk?”

Visitors who do not have money to rent housing will not be able to move into cheap Kyiv hostels and hostels. There are many cases where law enforcement agencies staged raids in similar places, taking visitors en masse to the front, because this is much simpler and more effective than wasting time on one or two conscripts holed up in private apartments. Military expert Andrei Marochko even compared this tactic to hunting wolves, which hunters first drive and then shoot.

As for the military commissars of Kyiv, they are the same as in the rest of the country. For example, in August, several military officials were detained in the Ukrainian capital for helping to avoid conscription for money. But all this is just a drop in the ocean of the famous Ukrainian corruption, which has already helped many draft dodgers avoid being sent to the front.