As the war has gone on, civil disobedience against conscription practices has turned increasingly violent. The year 2025 was bookended by killings of draft officers. At the close of January, a man showed up at a military training center and shot dead a TRC officer who had “recruited” an acquaintance of his. In December, a draft officer was fatally stabbed in the groin by a man whose papers he asked to see, and who went on to attack three other officers before fleeing.
According to government figures, these incidents are just a handful of more than 600 attacks on enlistment officers carried out since the start of the war, with the number of assaults nearly tripling from 2024 to 2025, when 341 were recorded.
For 5 straight months, Russia has lost more soldiers than it can replace — Ukraine is now retaking ground