Nestled behind a curtain of trees, the restaurant's cozy atmosphere in the center of Kiev gives the illusion of peace in a country at war. “I had lunch with an old friend. It was Christmas time, it was 2 p.m., the service was in full swing,” remembers a young man we met in the capital; he requested anonymity. Their conversation revolves around mobilization in the army, a perennial topic since the beginning of the war but which has just assumed a brutal intensity: President Volodymyr Zelensky mentioned during a press conference on December 19 the likely mobilization of 450,000 to 500,000 new recruits. Since summer 2022 and more and more urgently The general staff lacks as many men as it lacks ammunition. This time the figure presented is phenomenal for an army of one million soldiers and could put the country in a delicate social and political situation.
In the dim light of the restaurant, the young man explains to his guest that, like many others, he is benefiting from a reprieve thanks to his employment in a strategically important civilian sector. A clear and completely legal situation. But what else is clear when troops are exhausted after 22 months of fighting and awaiting relief in a war that never ends? Until now, there has been no general conscription in Ukraine and it is in a kind of limbo: men between the ages of 18 and 60 must register and are not allowed to leave the country. However, the obligation remains voluntary and only becomes mandatory if there is a nominal invitation – for those who are suitable. That's where the unknown begins.
How and to whom are these invitations distributed? They often seem to fall without any real logic, ending up with one neighbor but not another, or in multiple copies. It happens that they demand the integration of already mobilized or sometimes even dead soldiers. To make matters worse, checks in public places, gyms, saunas and shopping centers are increasing: some men were detained almost overnight after a medical examination. Kiev, which had previously been spared, is now increasingly becoming the target of these “raids,” as the population calls them.
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The young man on probation remembers saying to his friend at the restaurant, “It's come full circle,” while telling him that some of his friends are now reclusive, afraid of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. At that moment, the door of the restaurant suddenly opened, revealing a dozen men in balaclavas, military uniforms, and weapons at the sides. The young man believed in the arrest of an oligarch. In fact, the war had just begun at dessert time. In a flash, the servers disappeared through the back door. Only the bartender remained behind his counter. At the end of the “raid,” three clients were ultimately summoned to the military police station the next day. Including the young man.
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