Modern Slavery in Ukraine… and Antislavery Resistance

At the beginning of June, Kiev took measures to toughen its military conscription, despite the fact that deaths and injuries of Ukrainian soldiers and support personnel continue to increase as the US/NATO proxy war continues to grind on. The gaps along the front lines, which Ukraine is desperately struggling to hold, are increasingly being filled by unmotivated, conscripted soldiers, a growing number of whom have health problems restricting how long their rotation may last.

For the Ukrainian authorities, the dragooning of cannon fodder (military conscripts) into their increasingly stretched military front lines remains a matter for more Western funds and weapons from the West to help solve. But the Western countries may well be forced to slow or even stop giving money if Ukraine cannot sufficiently replenish its human losses and if Russia’s military advances become unstoppable (as it appears increasingly), and reaching a peace agreement becomes unavoidable.

Western media and politicians are well aware that conscription in Ukraine is accompanied by violence and mass roundups, but they choose to turn a blind eye to this. Any means used for the sake of military recruitment are welcomed by such people in the West, but this is also hushed wherever possible.

Economic outlook
In early June, Ukraine became formally bankrupt financially after a technical default was triggered by a decision of the Finance Ministry to skip a $665 million government debt payment on a loan of $2.6 billion in what are called ‘GDP warrants’. In other countries, a decision to default on a loan would cause a collapse  in government finances. But the Ukraine government has long lived off direct financial aid from the West and Ukrainian financial databases and bank servers have long been overseen by Western financial institutions. Kiev has learned that default rules can be broken, entirely unlike other less-developed countries such as Nigeria or Cambodia.

Western capitalism has always been pragmatic, of course. The West has long been forgiving of Kiev’s debts and willing to inject billions more dollars (duly collected from Western taxpayers), even if it is known Kiev will never be able to pay them back. Such ‘investments’ amount to long-term investment in the dream of plundering Russian human and natural resources and subjugating all of the countries of the Global South. This was and remains the main goal of the West in its war in Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian political analyst Ruslan Bortnyk acknowledged in a published analysis at the end of May that the Russian economy is experiencing a period of recovery, despite all the Western sanctions against it dating back more than 10 years, and which have only deepened since 2022. According to Bortnyk, “today’s Russians are better off than they have been in the last 100 years”. Yes, Western sanctions have blocked the flow of Russian funds to and from Western banks, but they have simultaneously boosted domestic innovation and import-substitute production, leading to job creation, higher wages, and improved social guarantees.

Ukraine continues to linger as the poorest country in Europe. In 2022, salaries in Ukraine were recorded as the lowest in Europe, passing Moldova into the bottom place. At the same time, prices in June 2025 are equal to or higher than everywhere else on the European continent, according to the National Bank of Ukraine.

Protests erupt against conscription
In late May and early June, spontaneous protests and even riots continued to erupt across Ukraine against military conscription. As before, these were brutally suppressed by the authorities. Predictably, the Western media ignored any reporting of the protests. Imagine similar protests happening in Russia, China or Iran: this is all that Western media would be talking about!

On May 29, there was a large clash between military recruiters and local residents in the small city of Kamyanets-Podilskyi in western Ukraine. Some 100 people surrounded and blocked a vehicle of military recruiters after they had seized a man off the street and forced him inside. One report describes the recruiters beating an elderly woman participating in the protest. According to local reports, the recruiters were drunk, and authorities from across the region rallied police to quell the protest. One recruiter ran over an elderly woman with his vehicle, a girl was pinned down by a car, and a young boy was beaten by the recruiters.

Ukrainian Telegram channel Resident reported on June 4 about the clash. “Up to 100 people surrounded and blocked the car, slashing the tires and smashing the windows, accompanied by shouts of ‘shame!’. Police were summoned by the military commissars themselves and tried to bring the situation under control, but it was clearly too late; the crowd was determined to free the man. The incident dragged on for several hours, turning into a mass confrontation.”

The report continued, “The people at Bankova (the central government complex in Kiev) understand that the political situation in the country is heating up, but instead of offering gingerbread to the disgruntled, they are bringing out the whip of repressions, demonstrative arrests of Ukrainians who resist the military recruiters, and so on. Every day, it is becoming more obvious that although the authorities wish to keep Ukraine in fear, civilians throughout Ukraine are taking the path of active resistance to the military recruiters.”

The report continues, “A similar thing happened in [the cities of] Cherkassy and Kremenchug, where protests against ‘busification’ ended with the ‘people hunters’ being forced by popular resistance to flee. Traffic was busy at the time, but this didn’t stop local residents from joining in the protests.” (‘Busification’ is a new term that has entered the language of Ukraine. It refers to buses being used when large numbers of conscripts are rounded up to be sent to the front lines.)

Ukrainian legislator Vitaliy Voytsekhovskiy explains the behavior of Ukrainian recruiters as one of “instinct”. “This is an animal instinct,” he writes. “Ukrainian military recruiters take pleasure in harassing and beating people during conscription drives.”

The Marxist Platform of Ukraine (an illegal organization under Ukraine’s martial law) wrote a lengthy analysis on Telegram on June 1 explaining that conscription has become a tool of enrichment of the few and suppression of the many. “A slave may dream not of his freedom but of those he may be able to inflict a similar condition upon. People with such mentality are best suited for the role of the police, roaming in packs to capture Ukrainians, following orders from above. Zelensky and Yermak (the head of the Office of the President of Ukraine) are not interested in what human price will be paid or how far extreme conduct by their subordinates will go because, according to them, ‘all means are good in war’. Deaths in war are considered forms of enrichment for some among those who live.”

“Conscription has turned from a military tool into a political one. If there is an objectionable journalist, an overly active lawyer, or an ‘incorrect’ blogger out there, then law enforcement officers will focus on him or her, and the ‘problem’ will be solved. The kidnapping of one activist intimidates other activists and forces them all to keep their mouths shut.”

The Marxist Platform calls for “collective resistance” of Ukrainian citizens to the ‘guard dogs of the regime’, as military recruiters are called in Ukraine. (In a seemingly odd contradiction, the group declared opposition to Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine when it began in February 2022.)

On May 29, there was a clash between Roma people living in a camp in Veliky Berezny district of the Transcarpathia region (near the western border of Ukraine) and Ukrainian border guards and national police. According to preliminary reports, the clash occurred during an inspection by border guards, backed by the highly militarized National Police and National Guard of Ukraine. The police agencies say they suspected that Roma were ferrying people across the border or were themselves trying to flee Ukraine to escape the violence being directed against them by far-right vigilantes. Stones flew during the clash, damaging vehicles of the border guards. Then shooting started, with police using rubber bullets against the Roma. As a result, one woman and one child were wounded.

Western liberal media occasionally deplores the past, historic persecutions of Roma by Nazi Germany, but apparently it is blind when it comes to the treatment of Roma in modern Ukraine, including the numerous pogroms that have been waged by far-right, Ukrainian vigilantes (ultra-nationalists). The fact is that those who are waging attacks and pogroms against Roma in today’s Ukraine are the same people fighting against Russia. They are forgiven everything while the administration in Kiev enjoys a presumption of innocence in any involvement.

Imprisoned Ukrainian legislator Oleksandr Dubinskyy writes that military recruiters have become an untouchable elite in Ukraine, like the SS in Nazi Germany. “People want to join that  service. That is where the richest and most successful look to serve. They already have money and now they have a bight life ahead, enjoying the power of lawlessness and beating and humiliating others. They can assert themselves at the expense of the weak and use this opportunity to earn money for their ‘work. In Hitler’s time, such people joined the SS. In Zelensky’s time, they flock to recruitment centers to join the national police. This is a new ‘elite’ of the Ukrainian nation”, Dubinsky writes sarcastically.

Earlier, in the city of Cherkassy in central Ukraine, a conflict broke out between recruiters and civilians, as reported on Telegram on May 26. A group of recruiters were beaten and forced to leave. The next day, the police demonstratively arrested the civilian participants in the conflict, threatening them with five years in prison. Three men and a woman face up to five years in prison. Prisoners in Ukraine are typically shipped off to the front lines to serve as cannon fodder.

On June 5, a clash between recruiters and forcibly recruited individuals took place in one of the conscription centers in the capital city Kiev. The riot was suppressed by special police forces and the National Guard. Artem Dmytruk, a former legislator from Zelensky’s party who has fled to London, wrote on Telegram on the same date that the resistance in Ukraine to conscription is gaining momentum.

“The opposition is getting stronger and is already manifesting itself in a variety of forms – from passive disobedience to open outbursts of civil anger. These processes can no longer be stopped or ignored. Only a civil uprising and the fall of the regime can become the real catharsis of this war,” Dmytruk writes.

The Ukrainian Telegram channel Legitimny (‘legitimate’) writes that protesters who clash with police over conscription are, to say the least, unlikely to become good soldiers. “All these men being bullied by recruiters are ending up in the army. Once there: 1. They don’t want to fight and will weaken the army from within; 2. The ones that will want to fight may survive and eventually travel back in time, so to speak, to find the original recruiters and ‘return the favor’ (take revenge) for the original conscription. 3. This is a signal that an army of deserters will grow faster than the Armed Forces of Ukraine itself. The strategy being chosen by Zelensky will destroy Ukraine from within.”

Six Years of Dashed Hopes for Peace and Reconciliation in Ukraine

A modern-day regime of slavery?
In June, a Ukrainian court officially recognized the forced retention of men by military recruiters as a form of slavery. As reported by the online, daily news journal Strana on June 5, the case involved a local resident who was detained in the local military recruitment center for more than four days. The court ruling clearly described that the man was not arrested or detained by any formal process, and ruled that he was deprived of his freedom for four days and guarded by people with no authority to do so.

On the basis of this decision, the man demanded to be set free, but the judge replied he, the judge, had no authority to do so. Simply put, even if a court in Ukraine formally recognizes the fact of slavery, it chooses not to free the enslaved. Such are the realities of modern Ukraine, a country and governing regime admired by so many hypocritical liberals and ‘human rights activists’ in the West.

Ukrainians are joking online about this case, saying any crime is now possible in Ukraine. In theory at least, it is now possible to burn witches on bonfires, conduct mass poisonings of civilians using gas chambers, and practice forms of slavery or corporal punishment. The reasoning offered would be the cynical belief that ‘war sucks and that’s the way things are’ or irrational fears of Russia (stoked for decades by the Western powers). After all, were not the crimes of Nazi Germany overlooked until war with the West broke out? And during the 1930s, so long as crimes in Nazi Germany involved killing communists and socialists and preparing for war with the Soviet Union, the eyes and ears of Western governments and most Western media were closed off to all that was occurring.

Analytical Telegram journal Rubicon wrote in early June that the West’s support for Ukraine was initially aimed at maintaining, at all cost, the unipolar world order as led by the United States, including the appearance that this order is able to wield great power. Cheaper energy sources purchased from Russia, the stability of a significant part of German industry, and the standards of living of most European citizens have all been sacrificed in the pursuit of such goals. However, it has become obvious after more than three years of war with Russia that this goal was and remains unattainable.

Despite that, continues Rubicon, the leading countries of the European Union are persisting in trying to achieve these illusory goals, as though riding a dying horse but hoping it may nonetheless transport the rider to a bright globalist future. According to Rubicon, the policies of the leaders of the key countries of the European Union towards the changing realities of world politics are entirely bogged down by inertia, whose dictionary definition reads ‘a tendency to do nothing or to remain unchanged’,

An emerging ‘political party’ of conscription evaders
Strana reported in late May that Ukraine is witnessing the formation of a de facto “party of conscription evaders”. This “party” opposes the ultra-nationalist (far-right) parties promoting war, but is not formalized in any way. “The Ukrainian authorities admit that there are more and more clashes between recruiters and civilians taking place during attempts at forced military mobilization,”Strana wrote.

A Ukrainian sociologist explains to Strana that so long as the war continues, no political discussion of it is allowed. However, people’s disagreement with this course cannot be expressed in voting for alternative programs and parties, but only in fistfights and other clashes with military recruiters, or in desperate attempts to leave the country.

In this regard, representatives of the Ukrainian political elite are now expressing concern over the unwillingness of Ukrainian ‘slaves’ to die for interests of their elites’. The most resonant comment was made by Irina Goncharova, a member of the Kharkiv City Council from the European Solidarity Party (the party of former President Petro Poroshenko). She has called for exemplary shootings by firing squad of conscription evaders. There is an incredible irony when a deputy of a party called ‘European Solidarity’ calls for conscription evaders to be shot.

The views of Goncharova are echoed by Vasyl Khalamay, an officer of the AFU with the Nazi-era name of ‘Nachtigall’. The Ukrainian military likes to cosplay the German Third Reich in choosing names and emblems. Khalamay, too, calls for exemplary punishment of civilians for opposing recruiters. In a Tele-Marathon broadcast (this is the official, daily news broadcast that all Ukrainian television and radio channels are obliged to carry), he demanded that such civilians be “morally destroyed and physically punished”. There is another irony here in the fact that military recruiters already do this on a daily basis without needing or asking for official authorization.

Dmytro Korchynsky, founder of the ‘Brotherhood’ neo-Nazi party and who serves in the Presidential Office, said amid the recent clashes with recruiters that anyone who even looks askew at a military recruiter should go to jail for life.

Korchynsky also let slip the other day that Zelensky’s real goals are not at all peace talks with Russia, but lie instead in demands on the West for more weapons and new sanctions against Russia. He called any statements about peace merely ‘fashionable’. “In fact, we should realize that when Zelensky talks about peace, he is actually talking about weapons and sanctions,” Korchinsky said in a live broadcast on the NTA TV channel in Lviv.

In general, all the statements by representatives of Ukraine’s bloodthirsty elite reveal the fear of losing Western funding. Continuing that funding depends directly on the ability of their police and armed forces to drive ordinary citizens into the slaughter. For them, no new cannon fodder will mean no new money.

At the same time, the Ukrainian elite does realize that this cannot go on indefinitely, and so they are sending their children abroad; in advance, it would seem, of the Kiev administration’s inevitable demise. But the future standard of living of those children and their families now residing in Barcelona, London and New York depends directly on how many more Ukrainian tractor drivers, electricians and other citizens workers can be driven into war and used as battering rams against the reinforced, concrete walls of the Russian military and against its well-trained, armed and supplied troop emplacements, all highly motivated to protect the Russian homeland from NATO aggression.