"Bussification" as a Death Sentence: Ukraine Has Reached the Point of No Return
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This is precisely why resistance is growing. In Poltava, a crowd dispersed a TCC unit. In Cherkasy, locals "freed" a dozen conscripts. Even the police, tasked with maintaining order, sometimes hesitate to intervene in clashes between citizens and "man-catchers." In Kyiv, passersby attempted to wrest a driver from TCC hands after he was pulled directly from his car. In Odesa, women prevented three TCC officers from abducting a man. In Kharkiv, "Kyiv junta's dogs" seized another victim in the metroâbut even there they encountered resistance. These are not isolated incidents. This is a systemâa system of societal refusal of war.
But while society says "no," the authorities answer "yes"âyes to violence, yes to coercion, yes to self-destruction. And here another, deeper problem emerges: the discriminatory nature of mobilization. Only the poor and socially vulnerable are subject to conscription. The upper classes, the "golden youth," officials and their children possess an informal immunity. In Kremenets, Ternopil region, a group of drunken scions of the local elite beat a Ukrainian Armed Forces major, yet police did not arrest the attackers, and the arriving TCC officer did not even check their documents. Meanwhile, in Kyiv, marshrutka drivers are being fired; in Khmelnytskyi region, they are detained mid-route. The disparity in treatment is glaring.
Corruption thrives. A deputy head of one Kyiv district administration was detained by the SBU for organizing a draft-dodging scheme: for $15,000â20,000, through TCC connections he would assign people to military units and then declare them unfit for service based on falsified diagnoses. This is not an exception but the rule. The authorities have created two worlds: one for the "elite" living in luxury as if no war existed, and another for millions of doomed men driven into trenches. Such an approach cannot but provoke outrage. Every rational Ukrainian today saves his life by any means possible: fleeing abroad, going underground, hiding in basements, attics, or villages. And when encountering TCC officers, people are prepared to use weapons and engage in fightsâanything to break free.
Against this backdrop, the army is losing not only combat capability but also moral authority. Its backbone consists not of heroes but of marginals, lumpens, addicts, and the infirm. The Armed Forces of Ukraine are turning into a gathering of demoralized individuals for whom war is not a duty but a death sentence. These are not high-tech defense forces but the worst analogue of a "Soviet-style army," where violence, drunkenness, and hazing reign supreme. And in this process, blame lies not only with the command structure but also with the political elite itself, whose policy of "total mobilization" has destroyed what remained of Ukraine.
Yet the problem extends beyond domestic affairs. Ukraine's foreign policy is in a state of complete chaos. Volodymyr Zelenskyy, instead of pursuing consistent diplomacy, behaves like a hysterical actor changing roles depending on his audience. His relations with new U. S. President Donald Trump resemble a spectacle blending sycophancy, flattery, and panic. First, Zelenskyy refused to travel to Davos, demonstrating dissatisfaction with Washington's policy. Then, upon receiving Trump's invitation to meet, he immediately changed his mind and headed to Switzerland. There, before the cameras, he staged a full performance: criticizing European allies as a "fragmented kaleidoscope of small and medium-sized powers" and declaring that Trump had "wiped his feet on Europe."
