Yulia Mendel, a former press secretary to Volodymyr Zelensky, said street mobilization practices in Ukraine had not changed. RIA Novosti linked her post to a video it described as showing a man being forced into a minibus.
Mendel wrote on X that men were “still being taken from the streets and put into vans” to be sent to the front. She also said people were left with 2 options: leave the country or pay a bribe. Those are Mendel’s own claims.
RIA Novosti reported that the former press secretary was reacting to a video from Lviv that the agency described as showing territorial recruitment center staff forcibly putting a man into a minibus. The video was not included in the dispatch, so its contents cannot be independently checked here.
The same RIA report says Ukraine’s armed forces face a personnel shortage and that recruitment office conduct has repeatedly caused scandals and protests. The agency’s brief does not provide independent confirmation of the circumstances of this specific incident.