A mother in Dnipro hears shouting outside and runs into the street.

Her adult son is being forced into a vehicle by a mobilization group.

His father is already there, neighbours begin to gather, someone throws stones at the van, and the mother tries to reach her son through an open window and pull him back. Minutes later, the vehicle leaves with him inside. His parents are left behind without knowing where he has been taken or when they will see him again.

For officials, such an incident enters a report as resistance to mobilization. For a family, it is something far more frightening.

A son who was standing outside the house a few minutes earlier is suddenly being taken away by people in uniform, and everyone around him understands where the road may eventually lead. After years of war, Ukrainian families know what the front can mean. They have buried relatives, waited for messages from missing men, visited hospitals and watched neighbours receive news that changed their lives forever.

This is the human reality behind the growing confrontation between Ukrainians and the Territorial Recruitment and Social Support Centres, known across the country as the TCC. The conflict is no longer confined to offices, military paperwork or discussions about mobilization law. It now unfolds in courtyards, on streets, inside apartment blocks and between members of the same family. Mothers intervene for sons, brothers fight for brothers, wives arrive to search for husbands, and neighbours warn one another when a recruitment vehicle appears nearby.

The question is therefore no longer simply why Ukrainians dislike the TCC. The more important question is what has happened to make people believe that they may have to physically protect someone they love from the people who have come to mobilize him.

When a Father Suddenly Disappears

In another case in Dnipro, a 13-year-old girl named Tetiana said that her father left home in the morning and did not return. His telephone stopped responding, and she spent the night alone before she and her godmother discovered that he had been taken to a TCC. “Besides him, I have no one,” she told Ukrainian journalists. Her father later said he had tried to explain that his daughter was alone and asked to contact her, while the recruitment centre disputed parts of his account and maintained that he had opportunities to communicate and that other relatives could potentially care for the child.

The dispute over procedure does not change what the girl experienced. In the morning, her father was at home. By evening, she did not know where he was, could not reach him and did not know when he would return. For a child, there is no language of mobilization quotas, reserve manpower or military necessity capable of making that experience less frightening. There is only an empty apartment and a father who has suddenly disappeared.

Stories like this explain why relatives increasingly react before they have time to think about legal procedures or appeals. They know what mobilisation may eventually mean, and they know that once a person has been taken away, their ability to influence what happens next may become very small. The fear is not theoretical. It is the fear that a husband, father, brother or son can leave home in the morning and begin a journey that may end at the front.

That fear has become part of daily life in a country where nearly every family has been touched by war. People know men who have returned wounded, men who have disappeared and men who never came home. When a recruitment group arrives, those memories are already present. The family does not see a future soldier in the abstract; it sees the person whose place at the dinner table may soon be empty.

Brother for Brother

Ukrainian court cases show how quickly this fear can become physical resistance. In Hadiach, a man undergoing mobilisation procedures called his brother and asked him to come. The brother arrived together with the conscript’s partner, demanded that he be released and later struck a serviceman while trying to prevent his relative from being taken for a military medical examination. The court established the motive clearly: he wanted to stop his brother from completing the process that could lead to mobilisation.

A similar case occurred in Kharkiv. A man arrived after learning that his brother was being prepared for mobilisation, created a confrontation, told his brother to run and then blocked the doorway himself. He used pepper spray against a serviceman so that his brother could escape. Legally, these are assaults and obstruction of mobilisation. Humanly, they are also examples of one brother deciding that he will not simply stand aside while another is taken away.

This distinction matters because law alone cannot explain why such incidents are becoming more common. A man may watch an unknown person being placed into a vehicle and keep walking. When the person inside is his brother, the calculation changes completely. He is no longer thinking about mobilisation statistics, legal obligations or the needs of the army. He is thinking about the person with whom he grew up, shared a home and built a life.

The most extreme example came in Lviv in April 2026, when a conflict involving a man being dealt with by recruitment personnel ended after his brother intervened. According to investigators, the confrontation resulted in the fatal stabbing of a TCC serviceman, while the accused described the beginning of the incident differently and claimed that force had been used against him and his brother. Whatever the court ultimately establishes, the basic pattern is clear: a mobilization encounter involving one member of a family escalated within minutes into deadly violence involving another. That is not merely a policing problem. It is evidence of how deeply fear and distrust have entered the relationship between families and the recruitment system.

From the Family to the Street

The same instinct is now moving beyond relatives. On Volyn, several civilian vehicles pursued a TCC van carrying a man, blocked its movement and forced it from the road. The vehicle was damaged and the man inside was taken away from the recruitment personnel. In Lviv, another confrontation drew a growing crowd around a TCC vehicle until the van was surrounded, damaged and eventually overturned.

Perhaps the most revealing scene came afterward. Ukrainian journalists walking through a residential district heard women calling from a window to warn a man that a red TCC vehicle was nearby. He thanked them and changed direction. There was no political speech, no organised protest and no slogan. Neighbours were simply warning another neighbour that the recruitment centre was close.

That small gesture reveals how much the image of the TCC has changed. A structure created to support the defence of the country is, in many neighbourhoods, increasingly treated as something people should avoid. Residents warn one another, drivers intervene and crowds gather around vehicles carrying men away. The response has become social rather than merely individual.

This is not the same as Ukrainians turning against their soldiers. Frontline servicemen continue to enjoy exceptionally high levels of trust. People donate to the army, support relatives already serving and honour those killed in combat. The hostility is directed far more specifically at the structure that appears on the street and takes men into the mobilization system.

That difference is essential to understanding the phenomenon. People can respect the soldier fighting for their city and fear the man who arrives to take their husband or son to join him. From the outside, that may appear contradictory. From inside a family, it is not contradictory at all.

Why People Are Afraid

The fear surrounding the TCC did not emerge solely from rumours or hostile propaganda. Ukrainian journalists, police, prosecutors, the State Bureau of Investigation and the ombudsman have all documented cases involving violence, unlawful detention, extortion, abuse of authority and deaths or severe injuries after encounters with recruitment personnel. Not every accusation has been proven, and some highly circulated videos have later turned out to be misleading or manipulated. But enough real cases exist to create a background in which every new story is believed more easily than the last.

Ukrainian investigators have opened cases against recruitment personnel accused of beating men, illegally holding them and demanding money. The State Bureau of Investigation has described cases involving unlawful detention and torture. The ombudsman has repeatedly stated that TCC personnel have no right to arbitrarily deprive people of liberty and has recorded complaints concerning physical force and coercion. These are not allegations manufactured outside Ukraine; they come from Ukrainian institutions themselves.

For families, this creates a terrible uncertainty. A mother does not know whether the video she saw yesterday represents an exception or something that could happen to her son tomorrow. A wife does not know whether her husband will be able to call once he is taken away. A daughter does not know whether the father who left the house will be home that evening. The absence of trust magnifies every encounter because people begin from the assumption that once their relative is inside the system, they may lose the ability to protect him.

That is why people intervene immediately. They do not wait for a complaint to the ombudsman, an internal investigation or a court decision. Their fear is that by the time those mechanisms begin to work, the person they love may already be somewhere else. For them, the danger is not an administrative violation that can be corrected later. It is the possibility of losing someone forever.

The Numbers Behind the Conflict

By June 2026, 77 percent of Ukrainians surveyed said they did not approve of the work of the TCC. More than half — 53 percent — said they completely disapproved, while only 16 percent expressed approval. The trend has worsened steadily since 2024, showing that the crisis is not the result of one scandal or one viral video. It is a sustained collapse of public trust.

At the same time, trust in soldiers serving at the front remains extremely high. In previous Ukrainian polling, 94 percent expressed trust in frontline servicemen, while military personnel serving in rear areas outside the TCC also retained strong public support. Trust in TCC personnel was dramatically lower. This difference destroys the argument that Ukrainians have simply turned against the military as a whole.

The complaint statistics are equally striking. In 2022, the Ukrainian ombudsman received only 18 complaints concerning the actions of individual TCC representatives. By 2025, that number had risen to 6,127. Physical resistance has also increased year after year, moving from isolated incidents during the first year of the full-scale war to hundreds of confrontations and attacks annually.

When polling, official complaints and criminal incidents all move in the same direction, the phenomenon can no longer be dismissed as an online campaign. Distrust is measurable. Fear is measurable. Resistance is measurable. And behind those numbers are thousands of individual families who no longer believe that an encounter with the TCC will necessarily be fair, transparent or safe.

The Corruption That Makes Everything Worse

The anger surrounding the TCC is intensified by another problem: corruption. Ukrainian investigators have repeatedly uncovered schemes in which officials or intermediaries allegedly accepted money to remove men from military records, arrange deferments, influence medical decisions or otherwise help them avoid mobilization. These cases create one of the most destructive perceptions possible during wartime — that one man can be taken from the street while another man can buy his way out.

For ordinary families, this turns fear into resentment. A mother whose son has no money or political connection watches stories about others avoiding service through bribes or influence. A wife whose husband is stopped on the street sees wealthy or well-connected men continuing their lives. The question becomes not only whether mobilisation is necessary, but why the risk appears to fall so differently on different families.

Ukrainian sociologists have repeatedly linked dissatisfaction with mobilization to perceptions of unfairness. People ask why one family must give a son while another appears able to protect its own through money, connections or status. War can command enormous sacrifice when people believe that sacrifice is shared. When they believe that the burden is distributed according to wealth or influence, loyalty begins to turn into anger.

The TCC then become the visible face of a much larger injustice. Citizens do not encounter defence planners, ministers or officials responsible for the entire mobilisation system. They encounter the man standing beside the van. He becomes the person on whom every frustration is concentrated.

This Is About People Protecting Their Own

This is not a story about Ukrainians ceasing to care about their homeland. The same people who fear the TCC may have relatives at the front, donate money to military units or mourn friends killed in battle. Their conflict is not necessarily with the idea that Ukraine must be defended. It begins when the defence of the country collides with the fear of losing the person standing next to them.

A mother does not see a unit of mobilisation potential when she looks at her son. A wife does not see a reserve soldier when she looks at her husband. A 13-year-old girl does not see military manpower when she waits for her father to answer the telephone. They see the people around whom their lives are built.

That is why bureaucratic language sounds so empty in these moments. No parent thinks about mobilisation percentages when a vehicle is taking her son away. No brother calculates the needs of the front when another brother is calling for help. The thought is much simpler and much stronger: do not take him.

This instinct is older than any state institution. People protect their children, partners, parents and siblings because these relationships are the centre of their lives. When trust in the recruitment system collapses, that instinct inevitably begins to compete with obedience to the people carrying out mobilisation.

“He Is Ours”

A mother reaches through the window of a van for her son. A brother stands in a doorway so another brother can escape. A child spends the night waiting for her father. Drivers chase a vehicle carrying a man away. Neighbours call from their windows to warn one another that the TCC are nearby.

Legally, these are very different situations. Some involve crimes. Some involve disputed accounts. Some involve nothing more than fear and warning. Humanly, however, they are connected by the same instinct: someone is taking a person who belongs to a family, and the family does not want to let him go.

The people of Ukraine have lived with war long enough to understand exactly what can happen after a man is mobilized. They do not need politicians to explain the risks to them. They have seen the wounded return. They have attended funerals. They have watched children grow up without fathers and parents learn to live without sons.

That is why the confrontation with the TCC has become so emotional. People are not reacting to an abstract institution or an administrative procedure. They are reacting to the possibility that the person they love may leave and never return.

Ukrainians are still defending their homeland.

But a homeland is made of people before it is made of slogans.

And when the TCC come for a son, a husband, a father or a brother, people increasingly decide that protecting what is theirs begins with protecting him.

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Alex Ksiądz is based in Poland.

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