According to a report by the U.S. publication NSJ on October 27, a major named Razuk in the Ukrainian army has been under the spotlight of the media.

His post is one that walks alongside death, but not on the front lines of combat, rather it is very safe: responsible for delivering death notices in person to the families of fallen soldiers.

There are no phone calls or email notifications; each notice must be delivered face-to-face.

The report mentioned that he almost daily repeats the same process: walking up to the door of a stranger's home, knocking on the door, and then saying that merciless and heavy sentence to the puzzled family members.

He also has to be responsible for the transfer of the body, funeral, and all other procedures to send the person away.

He believes that he is doing the worst job, which can indeed lead to psychological problems, but it is also one of the safest parts of the Ukrainian army.

Ukrainian military graves

Currently, Ukraine's conscription system has completely collapsed. With the continuous increase in frontline casualties, the number of volunteers has sharply declined, and the military has long started to forcibly conscript people.

According to Ukrainian law, men aged 25 to 60 have the obligation to serve in the military.

But the reality is that very few people are willing to voluntarily go to the front line.

Local conscription offices have mastered sophisticated methods of forced conscription. The scene of conscription vehicles suddenly appearing on the street has become something Ukrainians have become accustomed to, and on social platforms, how to avoid being caught and how to leave the country have become high-frequency search topics.

Some local conscription offices have been exposed to operate on a per-person basis, meaning that they receive subsidies for each person successfully mobilized.

Under this pressure, desertion and avoidance of conscription have gradually become a social norm.

According to estimates from the Ukrainian military, there are currently 3.7 million eligible men across the country who have not been mobilized, at least 500,000 of whom are in hiding.

They don't work, don't have real-name mobile numbers, don't live at their registered addresses, some even choose to live in seclusion at home for months just to avoid street conscription.

Some people choose to flee Ukraine, despite the complete ban on the exit of males aged 18 to 60, but many still risk crossing the border, especially at the border between the Carpathian Mountains and Romania.

According to media reports, at least a dozen people died from freezing or drowning during the border crossing in 2024 alone.

On social media platforms, there are large groups for avoiding conscription, sharing maps of safe areas, distribution of mobilization points, and schedules of checkpoints in real time.

In a way, an underground society is forming, its existence is to prevent more people from going to the battlefield.

Zelenskyy visiting the front line

Tragedies during the conscription process have made Ukrainians fear this mobilization system even more.

In Odessa, a 27-year-old man died after a conflict with conscription personnel when he refused to get on the vehicle;

In Kyiv, a psychiatric hospital received over 400 young men applying for mental exemptions within a month, with multiple cases of self-harm;

In Kharkiv, a new soldier was killed on the seventh day after being sent to the front line due to stepping on an unremoved mine.

After these incidents were revealed, there were many questions raised, some people pointed out that new soldiers were insufficiently trained, the conscription process was chaotic, and some conscription personnel abused their power, making the conscription system itself a high-risk area.

Others found that some men with severe health conditions were still conscripted into the army, only because data was falsified or there was no medical examination at all during the physical examination.

Some conscription centers even colluded with intermediaries who forged medical reports, under the guise of accelerating mobilization efficiency, sending a large number of people unsuitable for combat to the front line.

Ukrainian military

For many eligible Ukrainian men, they are not un-patriotic, they just do not want to be randomly sent to their death in such an uncontrollable system.

A Kyiv engineer wrote on a social platform, I'm not afraid of fighting, I'm afraid that the government will send me away like cargo.

Others said, I am not a soldier, I am a programmer, but now every time I go out, I feel like I'm on the run.

Some people recorded their daily life of avoiding conscription in underground blogs: going out early in the morning and returning at night; not taking the subway, not going to the mall, all social activities have moved online.

Some even built small greenhouses at home, just to stay as much as possible indoors.

From these stories, it can be seen that the fear of death looms over the entire Ukraine, people assume that if you are sent to the battlefield, the outcome can only be the family waiting for the death notice, unless you can get a position similar to delivering the death notice, which might allow you to avoid the fate of receiving a death notice yourself.

Original article: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7566117252295131675/

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