A video posted on September 4 showing a man forcibly pushed into a police vehicle on Mykhaila Boichuka Street in Kyiv's Pecherskyi district has focused attention on 'busification' in Ukraine - the alleged wartime practice of forcing men into minibuses or vans for mobilisation.

A forcible detention on a Kyiv street

The footage, posted on September 4, shows the man being forced into the vehicle on Mykhaila Boichuka Street, in Kyiv's Pecherskyi district. He struggles as his clothes are torn; officers in black uniforms are present alongside unidentified individuals who appear to use physical force against him.

A pharmacy employee said the men blocked the street with cars, tackled him and tore his clothes. A woman living on the street said neighbours told her the man was beaten, taken away, and lived near her. A military-law lawyer said the detention may have exceeded police authority, calling the presence of unidentified individuals using force alongside officers particularly worrying; the grey civilian vehicle against which the man was pressed appears to be a type commonly used by recruitment personnel, he added.

What the law allows recruitment officers to do

Territorial recruitment and social support centres - TCKs - are government institutions responsible for military registration and conscription. Their work rests primarily on Law of Ukraine No. 3543-XII, adopted in 1993 and most recently amended on 31 July 2026, and on Cabinet of Ministers Resolution No. 560 of 16 May 2024.

• •The law provides exemptions and deferrals from mobilisation for several categories, including persons with disabilities, certain parents, caregivers, students, educators and workers, subject to statutory eligibility requirements.
• •Applications for granting or renewing a deferral are reviewed by commissions established at TCKs, and an existing deferral generally remains valid while an application is being considered.
• •TCK officers may verify military-registration documents and issue summonses; administrative detention is not among their powers and rests with the National Police.
• •Officers carrying out document checks are required to identify themselves.

Warnings, complaints and footage that cannot be trusted

'Busification' - a term that emerged during the war - describes the alleged practice of forcibly taking men into minibuses or vans for mobilisation. Not all footage of such incidents can be taken at face value: some clips circulating online have been identified as AI-generated or manipulated, including by Russian-linked accounts. Yet lawyers and witnesses described numerous cases of what they called irregular or coercive mobilisation practices.

Ukraine's armed forces face significant manpower shortages more than four years into the war; hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians volunteered in the first months after Russia's full-scale invasion. In April 2024, the minimum mobilisation age fell from 27 to 25, and administrative penalties for violations of military-registration and mobilisation rules increased.

• •Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets had warned several times about the increasing number of complaints to his office concerning the conduct of certain TCK representatives.
• •In February 2026, he said his office received 18 complaints at the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022; by the end of 2025 the number had reached 6,127.
• •Between 1 January 2026 and 3 September 2026, the office said it handled 5,024 requests.
• •It also said monitoring visits to TCKs in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Bila Tserkva and other cities recorded critical violations, including illegal restrictions of freedom, physical beatings and other forms of coercion.

One man's broken leg and the lawyers' court dockets

Andrii Dombrovskyi, 26, says he was injured during his forced mobilisation on July 26, 2026, although he was not subject to an arrest warrant or otherwise sought by authorities. A Renault Duster stopped him in a Zhytomyr alley - a model he knew, from Telegram chats, is often used by mobilisation units.

Men knocked him off his bike, injuring his leg, and no one introduced themselves before he was put in the car. After a medical examination and transfer to a military unit, he was hospitalised with a broken leg.

• •Dombrovskyi's lawyer said recruitment officers could only have issued him a summons and had no legal grounds to take him from the street.
• •Before his detention, he kept clear of TCK officers using local Telegram channels where users post the locations of recruitment officers.
• •In April 2023, an administrator of one such channel in Lutsk, in the Volyn region, was sentenced to five years in prison for obstructing the lawful activities of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
• •Dombrovskyi said he does not want to kill people or die but understands that Ukraine is at war and needs people; he could accept forced mobilisation if it were carried out properly and lawfully, but cannot tolerate what is happening now.

Serhiy Kosiichuk, Dombrovskyi's lawyer, is managing partner of Primus Partners, a firm specialising in military mobilisation and military law. His team has about 30 active court proceedings across Ukraine challenging unlawful mobilisations, and he posts about mobilisation on TikTok.

Kosiichuk said his firm has cases of men being forcibly mobilised despite holding a formal deferral. In those cases, he said, men stopped at checkpoints for document checks are taken to the local TCK on the pretext that records need clarifying; their deferral disappears from the electronic registration system and they are registered for military service in the district where they were stopped, although they do not reside there.

Kosiichuk has his own account: two years ago, he said, after receiving anonymous threats allegedly linked to law enforcement officials, there was an attempt to mobilise him and he was detained without proper grounds. Criminal investigations were opened into the incident but are effectively stalled. Dombrovskyi is on medical leave at home while the legal proceedings he initiated continue, and the Pecherskyi District TCK has not responded to requests for comment on the September 4 intervention or on what happened to the man.