It looks like Ukraine’s military and police are now searching for draft-dodgers among young people on a night out in other parts of Ukraine.
Following a raid by police on Jugendhub, a Kyiv nightclub early on Oct. 28, when officers ostensibly on a drug raid took some of the club’s clients to a military enlistment office, a similar incident was reported over the weekend in Lviv, in the west of Ukraine.
Early on Nov. 4, around 20 military officers blocked Kryva Lypa Lane in downtown Lviv, a popular nighttime entertainment spot among the city’s young people. They asked all the young men eligible for conscription to show their documents (Ukraine changed the conscription age from 18-25 to 20-27 as of this year.) According to student Sophia Halan, who saw the incident, the police released only those who had identifying documents or a valid student ID.
Some of police officers also tried to get inside Paradox nightclub located on the same street. The police didn’t have the documents to search premises and the club’s security didn’t let them in.
In written comments, the nightclub’s administration said that they had had a closed party that night and “there were no students hiding in our place.”
Lviv police press service said on Nov. 4 that the police were “protecting public order” near the Paradox nightclub after they had received a call from a local military enlistment office earlier. In contrast to the incident at Kyiv’s Jugendhub, where the police said on Oct. 28 they had detained 17 people in possession of drugs and another 32 people who were allegedly evading the draft, all of those detained in Lviv were quickly released.
According to Roman Poronyuk, a spokesperson for the Lviv regional enlistment office, “everyone’s at home or is still partying” after the special operation on Nov. 4.
The head of the National Police Sergiy Knyazev wrote late on Nov. 4 that it’s “provocation” to think that police “are helping enlistment offices to recruit people to the army.”
“Police never interfere in the affairs of the armed forces, and such statements have nothing to do with reality,” according to Knyazev.
However, Taras Guk, a lawyer and an expert at Law Enforcement Agencies Development office, a Kyiv-based think-tank, said that Ukrainian law allows military commissars to send lists of persons who evade draft to the local police office.
“If these people have been identified beforehand, they could be delivered to the enlistment office,” Guk told the Kyiv Post. “Whether these requirements were met in this case is hard to say. But if this was a special operation, then officials of the National Police and the enlistment office abused their powers.”
