Military conscription enforcers carried out a major raid at a rock concert in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, involving over 50 officers who checked the papers of male concertgoers outside the Palace of Sports. The band, Okean Elzy, is one of Ukraine’s most famous rock groups, with approximately 8,000 people attending their show on Friday. Videos from the scene captured the crowd chanting “shame on you!” as armed officers detained men and put them in police vehicles. It is unclear how many individuals were detained during the operation.
The Lviv-based group has been around since 1994 and their ballad ‘Bez Boyu’ became an unofficial anthem of the Western-backed Maidan protests, which led to the overthrow of democratically elected president Viktor Yanukovich in 2014. The frontman of Okean Elzy, Vyacheslav Vakarchuk, was a member of the Ukrainian parliament in 2007-2008 and in 2019-2020.
Some commenters online have blamed the band for cooperating with military recruiters following the raid. Okean Elzy has not yet commented on the accusations. Following the show in Kiev, many people went online to sell their tickets to the band’s upcoming performances in other Ukrainian cities.
This spring, facing manpower shortages and military setbacks in the conflict with Russia, Kiev lowered the draft age from 27 to 25 and significantly tightened mobilization rules, obliging potential recruits to report to conscription offices for “data validation,” which often means a trip straight to the front. In recent months, multiple videos have appeared on social media showing conscription officers trying to snatch people in various public places, such as streets, gyms, and shopping malls.
The Times reported last week that efforts to boost conscription are becoming increasingly deceitful, coercive, and violent in Ukraine, but they still appear to be insufficient to reach Kiev’s goal of recruiting an extra 200,000 troops by the end of the year.