Surge in violence

Ukraine’s military ombudswoman says such attacks are now “regular” and “a major problem” as the country struggles to mobilise men to fight in the fifth, draining year of Russia’s full-scale invasion. It’s not a topic people here care to discuss much, wary of feeding Russian propaganda. But the latest National Police Service report recorded more than 600 assaults on recruitment officers to date and warned that the aggression has become “increasingly threatening”. The first big alert came in April when several recruiters were stabbed, one fatally. Then this month in Lviv, some 200 protesters surrounded officers attempting to detain a suspected draft dodger and smashed and overturned their car. The riot made headlines as President Volodymyr Zelensky condemned violence against serving soldiers. His controversial decision since then to sack Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov – over a clash of character and vision with Ukraine’s commander-in-chief – means attempts to address the conscription crisis will stall. But the anger that just exploded in Lviv suggests that the need is urgent.

‘Busification’

The reasons appear to range from plain fear of the front line – now everyone knows someone who’s been injured or killed - to a reluctance to sign up for a war that has no end in sight. The only surge of enthusiasm since the initial rush to the front was in late 2023, when Ukraine launched a counter-offensive to seize back territory in the south-east. It didn’t last. That’s when the “brutal mobilisation” phase began, according to opposition MP Oleksandr Honcharenko. He blames that for the backlash. “These officers are hunting for people on the streets and sometimes using quite violent methods,” the MP says. “Violence leads to violence. It’s a huge problem and it’s going to get worse.” Military analyst Ivan Stupak agrees. “We started to suffer a lack of manpower on the battlefield, constant losses,” he recalls. “Ukraine’s high command had to refill these losses so they started busification.” That’s the term Ukrainians use for mobile patrols that end up with men bundled into buses, and off to serve. “When they need an extra 5,000 men, they start grabbing them - and if they refuse it turns into fights on the street.”

The professor’s story

So for every story of a draft officer attacked, there are accounts of violence by recruiters themselves. Ukraine’s Human Rights Commissioner recorded more than 6,000 such complaints last year - double the 2024 tally. They include claims of abuse and unlawful detention as well as poor conditions at recruitment centres. Kyrylo Ogdansky still gets upset when he talks about what happened to him in Dnipro last November. The university professor, who is exempt from the draft, was approached in the street by a man in plain clothes who wanted to check his call-up status. There are rules about such patrols, including having police officers present, so Ogdansky objected. Then he was assaulted. “One of them knocked the phone from my hand and two pushed me into the bus from behind. When I asked what’s happening, one started to beat me to the head. He hit me in the nose several times,” Ogdansky tells me. He remembers the threat to send him straight to the front line. “He said ‘I can call the commander and you’ll go to Pokrovsk’.” Instead, the professor spent two weeks in hospital with a suspected neck injury and big purple-black bruises beneath his eyes. He has made formal official complaints but was hesitant about speaking publicly, aware that such things look bad for Ukraine in the middle of a war. “Russian propaganda uses such things very actively. But such a problem exists,” Ogdansky explains his decision. “If everyone is silent, then why would it stop? I understand the problem of conscription, but no official has the right to act like this.”

Vasyl’s story

It’s clear that Vasyl Krupych experienced horrors at war. He volunteered at the very start and has survived some of the grimmest battles. Krupych is proud of his service - a tattoo on his neck declares “Glory to the Ukrainian Armed Forces” – but he suffers from nightmares. When his vehicle was hit by an FPV drone, he was badly injured but managed to drag one friend to safety. He saw two others burned to death. Now, when we discuss the increase in attacks against draft officers, his words drip with hurt. It’s not just about what he suffered himself: that case is still going through the courts. It’s also the gulf between what he has endured and those doing everything possible to avoid the same. “We are doing our duty. We fought, we defended our people - and now they are attacking us.” I wonder what he thinks might motivate people to serve, instead of coercing them, and he mentions raising salaries. But then he shrugs. “It can’t be done differently, it can’t. Our lads need to be replaced. But nobody volunteers,” he says. “Everyone is afraid to die.”

What to do?

In his six months as defence minister, Mykhailo Fedorov did start introducing reforms to tackle the growing crisis. He began with moves meant to make military service more attractive: fixed-term contracts for new recruits, with the option to defer further service, and better salaries, especially for the riskiest roles. But it was an early work in progress and overhauling conscription was still on his to-do list when he was sacked. Proposals have included handing draft patrols over to police, who are less personally invested in the task. There’s talk of proper training, too, for officers, and psychological screening. Ukraine does admit openly that it has a problem, which is new. But it now has only an acting defence minister, and still no solution.

The US president is under pressure to hit back at Iran after the deaths of three US service members over the weekend. But rumours are spreading across the administration that the Pentagon is concealing a shortage of interceptor missiles, which are needed to resume the war. There are also suggestions that the White House does not want to know about the scale of the shortfall. Sharing “bad news, or realistic news, doesn’t seem to end well for anybody”, an insider told The Telegraph. Another said a “culture of silence” was causing problems for Pete Hegseth, the US defence secretary. Analysis by the Royal United Services Institute in March calculated the US and its allies had burned through more than 11,000 munitions in the first 16 days of war, and predicted they were a month away from running out of critical munitions. Mr Trump has put the US on a war footing in recent days, suggesting the war on Tehran could resume with greater ferocity and on a greater scale than before. Following the deaths of two US service members at an air base in Jordan, and a third in Iraq, the president declared on Monday: “Every time Iran kills an American soldier they will pay for that killing many times over!” Mr Trump, writing on social media, said he had passed that directive to Mr Hegseth, Dan Caine, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, and other military leaders.

F-35 and F-16 fighter jets, from bases in Britain and Germany, have reportedly been deployed to the Middle East, while aerial refuelling aircraft are said to be on the way. The US has recently struck bridges around Bandar Abbas, one of Iran’s few major ports. Mr Trump has repeatedly threatened to hit Iran’s civilian infrastructure, but has stepped back from the brink until now. US forces had largely concentrated their fire on Iranian targets along the coast, but after the ceasefire collapsed last week, targets have moved inland. One source said the Pentagon was growing convinced that the way to unblock the Strait of Hormuz was by escalating the conflict and becoming more aggressive. Masoud Pezeshkian, the Iranian president, said on Monday his country was engaged in a “full-scale war”, but questions are being raised about whether the US is prepared to resume a fully fledged conflict. A ceasefire came into effect in early April and, although marred by tit-for-tat strikes between the US and Iran, helped conserve munitions supplies. But the reported shortage would undermine any attempts from the US side to escalate, and pose an increasing risk to American troops. Ryan Brobst, of the Foundation for Defence of Democracies, said there were particular concerns about US stocks of Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (Thaad) interceptors and Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (Pac-3) missiles. “The main effect of depleting air and missile defence stockpiles is that you assume more risk to forces being targeted,” he said. “So, for example, you would launch one interceptor at an incoming missile instead of two interceptors at an incoming missile, which would then decrease the probability that you actually intercept it.” The US military’s stockpile of Tomahawk and Thaad missiles have plummeted since Operation Epic Fury. Projections by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies suggest it will take until 2031 to restore Tomahawk stocks to pre-Epic Fury levels and 2029 for Thaads.

US stockpiles are a closely guarded secret within the administration, with relatively few people having access to the information. The question now being raised is whether they are being kept fully informed. There is concern that members of the Pentagon are reluctant to deliver frank assessments to Mr Hegseth that potentially leave them exposed and in the line of fire. Some are now questioning whether the administration’s moves to escalate the war are being made with a clear-eyed assessment of the military realities and the risk to American troops. A source told The Telegraph that a culture of silence had taken hold as Mr Hegseth had acquired a reputation for purging senior members of the military. “I question how honest the Pentagon is being with [Mr Hegseth] or the White House, since bad news, or realistic news, doesn’t seem to end well for anybody,” the individual said. “Everybody is doing the best they can to keep the [department] running as efficiently as possible for the sake of our troops, in spite of the chaos factor above us – and also keep our heads in the process.” Another source said: “This culture of silence has been a problem [for Hegseth] since he shrunk his circle to just a handful of individuals. “When he advises the president, or when he goes to Congress, he doesn’t have full information because his top aides are trying to stay off his radar.” Mike Duffey, who would take a key role in replenishing missile stock as the Pentagon’s under-secretary for acquisition, is a “nice guy” but “very loath to bring bad news to Pete” and “pretty much stays out of his orbit”, the source added.

A US official told the Washington Post that the US was “planning for a wider war” but that this would be limited by dwindling stockpiles of air defences and long-range munitions. “We do not have enough to safely sustain operations, and I don’t think the White House is aware of that,” the official said. It is not the first time that the Pentagon has been accused of a lack of transparency in how it is conducting the war. The department did not disclose three strikes against US forces last week, which injured dozens of US soldiers and damaged several helicopters, according to The New York Times. The Pentagon insisted the military had not withheld or misrepresented US casualties in the war. “Claims of concealment are fabrications meant to further distress the American people in the wake of three service members killed in action,” said Sean Parnell, its chief spokesman. Last Tuesday, Democrats blocked the $1.15tn (£860bn) defence bill known as the National Defence Authorisation Act, complaining that Congress had been left in the dark by the Trump administration. Anna Kelly, a White House spokesman, insisted the military had enough stockpiles of munitions. “The United States military has more than enough munitions, ammo, and stockpiles to serve all of President Trump’s strategic goals and beyond, and Operation Epic Fury has exposed what happens when you mess with the United States,” she said. “Even still, the president has urged our defence contractors to constantly produce more made in America weapons, which are the best in the world. Democrats destroyed our military, but President Trump rebuilt it.”