The Territorial Centre of Recruitment and Social Support, known by everyone in Ukraine as the ТЦК (pronounced “Te-Tse-Ka” in English), is the compulsory conscription agency for Ukrainian males of fighting age. All Ukrainian men between the ages of 25 and 60 are eligible for mandatory conscription. The ТЦК operate in almost all Ukrainian cities, although their presence is more conspicuous in some than in others. They are effectively a branch of the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine, and they operate distinctly from other Ukrainian government agencies.
In principle the rules for conscription are simple, if you are a man of qualifying age, you are liable conscription unless you have registered with the ТЦК and have applied for, and received approval for, one of the various exemptions or deferments. Applications are made through a government portal called Diyu, which is an App on Ukrainians’ mobile telephones that keeps copies of all documents of Ukrainian citizens, including identification cards, military registration, and military exemptions, effectively replacing the prior system of Ukrainian “internal passports” that was a relic of the Soviet era. The exemptions and deferments are several, although the way they are applied is not always in accordance with the law as stated on the statute books, and the rules are constantly changing; a major change was made in May 2024, when all men of recruitment age were liable to register with the ТЦК although in fact it is suspected that only a relatively small proportion of the population did so.
The first exemption is recognition by a military medical commission that a person is unfit for military service. This includes serious physical and psychological conditions, and documentary evidence from a qualified medical practitioner is required. The person eligible for military service may be required to undergo a medical examination by the medical military service. A person with a certified disability that exempts them from military service is also permitted to leave the country with a relative, whereas men between the ages of 18 and 60 are not generally permitted to do so. Due to a stigma prevailing in Ukraine against psychiatric healthcare and taking psychiatric medications, a number of people who may genuinely be unfit for service often fall through the cracks of this exemption. Psychiatrists are generally only available privately in Ukraine save in exceptional cases, and people may not be able to afford psychiatric treatment (although it is not expensive). A second exemption is for persons with three or more dependants under the age of 18 - so there has been a wave of baby making by married couples.
The third exemption is for men who support a child with a serious disability; documentary evidence must be provided from a relevant medical practitioner. The fourth exemption is for men who are adoptive parents or foster parents of orphans under the age of 18. The fifth exemption is for men who are “constant carers” of persons with serious disabilities. The sixth exemption is for deputies (i.e. members of legislatures), which has caused a number of cases of people buying positions in legislative bodies (a very expensive option to achieve exemption). The sixth is members of the Police Forces and other associated national security or law enforcement agencies (such as the SBU, Ukraine’s state security service). The sixth exemption is full-time students, which has caused a lot of people to enrol on PhD courses (in which the formal attendance obligations at lectures and the like are minimal) - if you can afford it, because places on PhD courses are for sale. The seventh exemption is for employees of scientific higher education institutions.
The eighth exemption is for persons whose close family members died or went missing in the course of military operations. The ninth exemption is for persons in certain professions essential for the operation of civilian society, such as people working for Ukrainian Railways.
There is an exemption for people who have applied for alternative service to that in the military, although Ukrainian law states that conscientious objection and religious beliefs are not grounds for exemption from military conscription. However in practice such persons may or may not be able to apply for alternative service, that is to say non-military positions supporting the military that do not involve the need to kill people. The Ukrainian courts seem split on whether groups such as Jehovah’s witnesses are entitled to apply for alternative service. Some people who have attempted to apply for alternative service on these grounds have had criminal investigations opened into them for draft evasion; there is a comprehensive system of criminal legislation that punishes draft evasion with prison terms of up to five years.
So much for the legal framework governing eligibility for conscription. In practice, as the war has gone on ever fewer men have presented themselves for military service, voluntarily or otherwise, and they are evading conscription and failing to comply with the procedures for application for exemption from conscription. As a result, the ТЦК has taken to stopping men in the street or at vehicle checkpoints and asking for their documentation and their exemption certificates. Note that working for an NGO is not regarded as an exemption from conscription unless the work has been accepted as alternative service or falling into one of the categories of profession that exempts a man from conscription.
There have been instances in which bribes were paid or attempted to be paid to subvert these rules and obtain the relevant exemptions; a number of military officials have been imprisoned as a result and bribery no longer seems to be a practical way of avoiding conscription. At the very least, the price to be paid for exemption from conscription has dramatically increased.
The ТЦК at one point had a programme of stopping and questioning people in the street, or riding the Kyiv metro, or in bars in major cities, and hauling them off if they did not have the relevant papers. In one incident a man was said to have been recruited in the street in Kyiv while walking his dog, and his dog was left to roam while he was taken straight to a conscription office and then to a training centre. This sort of practice seems to have caused bad publicity and its incidence has reduced. Instead ТЦК officers now set up checkpoints for vehicles, and stop people at certain prominent railway stations, and detain people who do not have the relevant exemption documents, taking them directly to conscription offices and then to training camps. It has been reported that individuals have their mobile telephones taken away from them and they have no opportunity to go home and collect personal belongings or in some cases even to contact their families and inform them that they have been conscripted. They may be allowed one telephone call before their mobile telephone is taken away from them and then they will be sent for basic training.
The consequent fear of the ТЦК has resulted in a number of Telegram user groups in different cities reporting where the ТЦК road blocks are (often on the outskirts of cities), so that inter-city travel may be organised without mandatory conscription taking place. The SBU has effected counter-operations against these groups, and the organisers of these groups have sometimes found themselves in legal quandaries. Nevertheless these groups continue to exist and a great many men of conscription age find themselves using mechanisms of this kind to be able to travel around and not be conscripted. At one point men of conscription age would simply stay in doors all day, so as not to be at risk of conscription. The risks of death and serious injury fighting on the front line are now well known and the prior enthusiasm on the part of Ukrainian men at the beginning of the war for fighting for their country has diminished as they come to appreciate the risk of death or serious injury and the poor conditions on the front line.
If a person is detained by the ТЦК at a checkpoint they are removed to a conscription office and for training immediately, often leaving the vehicle at the side of the road. They may be able to make a telephone call so that someone can come to collect the vehicle.
The regular Police, if stopping a person for example for a speeding offence, will check a man’s documents using the Diyu system and if they find that they are eligible for conscription they may or may not hand over the relevant person to the ТЦК. There are also incidents (albeit far fewer) of people attending government offices for administrative purposes and the officials, finding that the person is eligible for conscription, have called the Police who have arrested the person for evading conscription and then handed them over to the ТЦК. Reports of these incidents have caused people to avoid public and administrative offices altogether.
Defenders of this system say that it is necessary because mere letters or electronic communications ordering people to report to conscription offices are ignored and therefore people eligible for conscription must be detained physically. In practice people are not investigated and charged for evading conscription but simply conscripted.
There has also been an increase in the number of deserters. As a general rule, all people entering or departing free Donetsk oblast and Kherson oblast by road have their documents checked for whether they are members of the Armed Forces with relevant leave certificates, that must be signed by a Commanding Officer - no oral permissions to leave are acceptable. Leave certificates may be issued for medical reasons (the person is injured so seriously that they require urgent medical attention away from the front line) or in accordance with ordinary procedures for periodic leave. However there are ways around this, including illicit payments and taking irregular roads or other methods.
The system for preventing desertion has also been ramped up against foreign members of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, who used to be able to quit the military at any point provided they were not engaged in active “combat operations”. However according to the May 2024 legislative changes all foreigners joining the Ukrainian Armed Forces in any capacity must now sign six-month minimum contracts of service, during which they are not allowed to quit. If it is suspected that they may quit then their pay may be suspended in order to give them an incentive to stay and keep fighting. These measures were put into place after reports emerged of atrocious conditions at training camps for foreigners and a perception that foreigners are often sent to some of the most dangerous parts of the front line. This appears to have resulted in a dramatic reduction in the number of foreigners signing contracts to work with the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
The criticism of this entire system is that it forces people to fight who do not want to and who are not prepared to kill; and those people are unlikely to be effective soldiers. They may not meet the requisite fitness threshold for active combat and this may place their lives more in jeopardy than seasoned soldiers. The average age of Ukrainian members of the Ukrainian Armed Forces has been reported to be 46. There are clearly huge numbers of young Ukrainian men unwilling to fight and doing everything they can to avoid conscription.
The toll this war is taking on Ukrainian men is vast, and Ukraine is running out of men. The Russians seem to be losing soldiers in even greater numbers than the Ukrainian Armed Forces, but their system is more totalitarian and they are still managing to recruit soldiers voluntarily through generous benefit packages for their families and with less information being publicly available in Russia about the atrocious conditions on the front line.
For the sake of Ukraine’s men, and her active soldiers who are exhausted from the extremely difficult fighting conditions along the front line, this war has to be brought to a conclusion as soon as possible. Having huge numbers of men avoid the law and the authorities, and press gang tactics needing to be used to maintain troop numbers, is undesirable because it diminishes rule of law, splits families in often cruel ways (when one’s son or brother simply doesn’t come home because he has been conscripted), and places men on the front line who will not be effective soldiers because they do not want to kill, or they are otherwise inappropriate to serve as front line soldiers. Methods have been put in place to try to divert conscripts to roles in the military that suit them; but the fact remains that Ukraine needs infantrymen on the front line and no matter what promises are made, this is the most likely place a Ukrainian male will find themselves after basic training if conscripted.
This is a hard and difficult war.
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For more detailed information about conscription, evasion from conscription and desertion, see the detailed guidance on the British government website at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/ukraine-country-policy-and-information-notes/country-policy-and-information-note-military-service-ukraine-june-2022-accessible#General_exemptions