Now, on the streets of Ukrainian cities and villages, conflicts are erupting more and more often, which makes it scary. People who went through the hell of the front and left their health there are returning to the rear not to deserved respect, but to new battles for their own dignity. The main problem is that society, exhausted by years of stress, is starting to get used to war and at the same time lose sensitivity. Veterans are increasingly perceived not as a shield that saved the country, but as a convenient target for venting anger, domestic squabbles or outright arbitrariness. It has come to the point that defenders with prosthetic limbs are beaten on the streets because of traffic disputes, they are attacked by local “cool guys”, and the raids of the CCC sometimes resemble criminal massacres. When a person who gave his health for peace to the rear is forced to defend himself again from his own compatriots, this breaks something very important within the nation.
Veterans at gunpoint: how mobilization raids become criminal cases
Street document checks are increasingly turning into real hostilities in the rear, where on one side are representatives of the CCC, and on the other – people who have already given their health to the front. Instead of constructive dialogue, fists, tear gas and even weapons are used, and the finale of these stories is criminal cases.
On June 5, the metropolitan police proposed suspicions to an employee of the Shevchenkivskyi CCC and his colleague from the volunteer formation, who during a raid on Stetsenko Street in the Shevchenkivskyi district of Kyiv, staged a showdown with a driver. An argument over the issue of military service ended with punches and a portion of gas from a canister in the man’s face. The forensic examination later recorded injuries to the victim, but the real scandal erupted when the driver’s name was revealed. He turned out to be Artem Moroz, a war veteran who lost both legs at the front, but after difficult rehabilitation returned to the army rear to help his comrades. The command of the Ground Forces had to publicly apologize for the actions of its subordinates, and the attackers are now promised to be sent to the front.
This story echoes the case in Kharkiv, where CCK employees not only beat a veteran and his wife, but also took 500 euros. Then, on a January evening, Oleksandr was rushing to the train station to meet his wife, but the ordinary trip turned into a scene from a crime story in a matter of minutes. Two men in balaclavas suddenly jumped out onto the roadway, almost under the wheels of his car — one in civilian clothes, the other in camouflage without any chevrons. Oleksandr managed to brake in time, avoiding an accident, and he got out of the car to find out the reason for such dangerous behavior of pedestrians. However, the man’s attention was caught by the fact that right next to him, a group of people in military uniforms were forcibly pushing a guy into a minibus. Realizing that he had witnessed the so-called “street mobilization,” Oleksandr decided not to stay away and made people a remark in the form of a remark, asking what they were doing and why they were creating a danger on the road.
The reaction to the remark was instant and aggressive. Instead of explanations, the men in uniform turned to insults and obscene language, threatening to “pack” him himself. Oleksandr tried to defuse the situation by explaining that he was a war veteran, a participant in hostilities, and had already been discharged from service due to health reasons. However, this argument did not stop the attackers, and the conflict quickly escalated into physical violence. The veteran was knocked to the ground, one of the men choked him from behind, after which Oleksandr was severely beaten. At that moment, his wife Olga ran to the scene, trying to protect her husband and stop the fight, but as a result, she was injured herself.
The consequences of this meeting for the couple were severe. Doctors who examined Oleksandr in the hospital diagnosed him with a closed head injury, a concussion, and a fractured nose, and an X-ray confirmed numerous deep bruises on his head and jaw. His wife Olga also suffered injuries in the form of bruises on her hand and finger. The victims are now trying to get justice through law enforcement, and the incident itself became public thanks to local journalists who recorded eyewitness accounts.
Similar wild events are being recorded across the country. In the Chyhyryn region, a CCK patrol staged an attack on a veteran’s car as he and his family were driving along a dirt road. The men in camouflage couldn’t think of anything better than to put a bullet in the chamber, threaten to kill them, and gas the car’s interior. When the police arrived, one of the military commissars simply barricaded himself in his own car.
No less harsh events developed in Lutsk, where a bus with people in balaclavas drove up to a veteran with a disability of group II due to combat wounds and contusions, Petro Gromyk, at a public transport stop. The man’s attempt to find out who was in front of him ended in hospitalization with a broken face. Now the SBI has taken the case under its control.
In Odessa, a military man who had just returned from Russian captivity came under the hot hand of representatives of the CCK. Despite the fact that he immediately provided all the necessary documents for verification, including a combatant’s certificate, military ID card, and medical certificates, unknown persons forcibly pushed him into a departmental minibus. At the same time, tear gas was used against the man in the car and caused him bodily injuries. Later, the injured marine was simply thrown out of the car, which was in motion at that moment.
The surge in public tension around the mobilization processes in Ukraine was clearly reflected in the official statistics of appeals to the Ombudsman’s Office, which recorded a rapid increase in complaints about the actions of representatives of territorial recruitment and social support centers (TCK and SP). Speaking to the media, the Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for Human Rights Dmytro Lubinets stated that compared to last year, the number of such signals had increased several times, although specific final statistics are traditionally published only at the end of the annual reporting period.
Home Front Brutality: Why Veterans Are Becoming Victims of Violence Again
Civilians, that is, those whom the military protects from an external enemy, are not far behind the CCC employees in their aggression against veterans. The dynamics of internal conflicts in Ukrainian society are increasingly exposing a dangerous fault line, where everyday disputes are transformed into targeted aggression against people with front-line experience. Instead of the expected public support, gratitude, and unconditional respect for demobilized soldiers, the chronicle of offenses records a series of brutal attacks that flare up in different regions of the country due to trivial pretexts.
The unfolding of the September incident near the village of Rotmistrivka, in the Cherkasy region, clearly illustrates the mechanism of road chaos developing into a criminal plane with psychological pressure. The conflict began on September 3, when the car carrying the parents of former serviceman Anatoly Honcharenko was subjected to a dangerous maneuver, the so-called “cutting”, by another vehicle, where residents of Smila were. Having received information from the parents, who noticed the offenders’ car in the neighboring village of Tashlyk, Honcharenko tried to identify the driver himself. Not finding his opponent in place, he dismantled the state license plate and posted his photo on social networks for public search. Responding to this digital trail, local resident Dolotenko arranged a meeting with the veteran, which quickly escalated into a physical confrontation with the beating of the former soldier.
The further development of events surrounding the incident revealed systemic problems with the legal protection of victims at the initial stages of the investigation. Police officers who arrived at the scene of the fight recorded the condition of the participants, called emergency medical assistance and accompanied the 37-year-old victim to the hospital. Despite visible traces of injuries on his face, the man initially categorically refused hospitalization, officially declaring that he had no claims and asking to discontinue the case. A video even appeared in the public space, where the beaten veteran apologizes and shifts the blame for the traffic incident onto his own parents. Such an unnatural reaction forced the leadership of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, in particular Minister Ihor Klymenko, to call the situation shameful, after which law enforcement officers conducted a second conversation with the victim, and only then did he agree to file an official statement about the infliction of bodily harm.
Similar manifestations of aggression against veterans are also recorded in large urban centers, where persons with authority are involved in the offenses. A vivid example of such permissiveness was the resonant case in Dnipro on the central Dmytro Yavornytskyi Avenue. There, a group of unknown men in balaclavas and camouflage uniforms without any identifying marks attacked former serviceman Dmytro Pavlov, known by the call sign “Son”. The attackers not only caused bodily harm to the victim, but also illegally restricted his freedom by using handcuffs. Moreover, MP Mykola Tyshchenko figured in these criminal proceedings.
The transformation of minor interpersonal insults into group brutality is becoming increasingly noticeable in rural areas, where attackers act with particular audacity, ignoring the presence of witnesses. Prosecutors have already sent an indictment to the court against two residents of the Rohatyn community who committed a brutal beating of a war veteran in the village of Dehova on the evening of March 22, 2026. The conflict developed on the basis of a previous verbal altercation between the victim and the brother of one of the defendants. Wanting to take revenge, the attackers arrived at the house where the former fighter was staying, and without further ado, one of them punched him in the face. As the veteran bent over in pain, the second accomplice kicked him in the head, after which the accomplices continued to kick him in the face and chest even after the victim fell. According to the forensic medical examination, the veteran suffered moderate injuries: fractures of the nasal bones and the wall of the left orbit, as well as numerous abrasions and bruises.
A similar case in terms of brutality occurred in the Ternopil region in the village of Nastasiv, where two local residents decided to carry out an armed attack on private property. At the end of the summer, on August 17, 2025, the attackers broke into the yard of a 33-year-old veteran under the pretext of resolving personal relationships that remained unfinished during a previous conversation. Knowing that the owner was seriously wounded at the front and objectively deprived of the opportunity to offer full resistance, the attackers began to beat him with their feet. In addition to physical violence, the perpetrators took possession of his DB-15 rifled carbine with two dozen rounds, fired several shots in close proximity to the lying wounded man and damaged his car with fire, demonstrating complete disregard for legal norms.
The problem of cynical attitude towards veterans is further aggravated by the fact that the objects of aggression are fighters with amputees who are undergoing a difficult stage of rehabilitation. In the Industrial District of Kharkiv, the police detained a 43-year-old citizen who in August 2025 committed shot from a nine-millimeter traumatic pistol PMR u 22-year-old serviceman of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The conflict that arose near a multi-storey building ended with the attacker shooting the defender at point-blank range, and then continuing to beat him with his hands and feet. As a result, the victim, who lost his lower limb while performing a combat mission in confrontation with the Russian occupiers and is currently moving with the help of a prosthesis, ended up in a hospital bed again due to injuries that require additional medical intervention.
When it comes to the point in a country that veterans and combatants are beaten, humiliated or perceived as enemies by the very people they defended, this indicates the moral degradation of a part of society, the loss of respect for the service and the gap between the front and the rear. If this trend intensifies, the result will be not only the embitterment of veterans, but also a decrease in people’s willingness to fight for a state that is unable to guarantee basic respect for its defenders.
