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[excerpt]
In this Ukrainian village, almost no men are left

MAKIV, Ukraine — Few men of fighting age are left in this village in southwest Ukraine, and those who remain fear they will be drafted at any moment.
Their neighbors are already hundreds of miles east in trenches on the front lines. Some have been killed or wounded. Several are missing. Others from this rural area — about 45 miles from the borders of Romania and Moldova — have fled abroad or found ways to avoid the war, either with legitimate exemptions or by hiding.
“It’s just a fact,” said Larysa Bodna, deputy director of the local school, which keeps a database of students whose parents are deployed. “Most of them are gone.”
Ukraine desperately needs more troops, with its forces depleted by deaths, injuries and exhaustion. Despite Russia’s own enormous casualties, the invaders still far outnumber Ukraine’s defenders, an advantage that is helping Moscow advance on the battlefield. Ukraine’s parliament is debating a bill to expand the draft pool, in part by lowering the eligibility age to 25 from 27, but few decisions are being made in Kyiv that will quickly answer the army’s urgent needs.
Civilians here say that means military recruiters are grabbing everyone they can. In the west, the mobilization drive has steadily sown panic and resentment in small agricultural towns and villages like Makiv, where residents said soldiers working for draft offices roam the near-empty streets searching for any remaining men. Such tactics have led some to believe that their men are being targeted disproportionately compared with other regions or bigger cities like Kyiv, where it is easier to hide.
Locals use Telegram channels to warn of soldier sightings and share videos of troops forcing men into their vehicles — stoking rumors of kidnappings. Some men are now serving time in jail for refusing to sign up.
“People are being caught like dogs on the street,” said Olha Kametyuk, 35, whose husband, Valentin, 36, was drafted in June by soldiers who approached him and asked for his papers after he stopped for coffee on the main road outside Makiv. Despite a diagnosis of osteochondrosis, a joint disorder, he passed his medical exam in 10 minutes, she said, and deployed to the front, where he was wounded.
“The whole village was taken this way,” said Valentin’s mother, Natalya Koshparenko, 61.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/03/15/ukraine-village-mobilized-men-war/