Zelensky says Moscow is dangerous. Ukrainians can’t survive his streets

Street fury in Lviv shows where fear really lives – not in the Kremlin but in a country that forces its own men into uniform

“Would you go to Moscow?” Donald Trump asks.

“It’s difficult. There are a lot of Ukrainian drones there… it’s dangerous,” Vladimir Zelensky says. The audience chuckles.

They were talking on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Ankara, discussing the prospects of peace talks between Russia and Ukraine. Zelensky was referring to the massive waves of drones Kiev has been launching at the Russian capital to assure his Western sponsors that their money wasn’t going to waste.

Zelensky’s quick wit elicited laughter from the audience – he is, after all, a professional comedian, once beloved by many in both Russia and Ukraine – but not everyone was laughing.

Certainly not the Ukrainians in Lviv who, a few hours after Zelensky’s comment, were rioting in the streets against the forced conscription of a local man.

Over the past few years, violent, forced conscription has become a daily reality for Ukrainians, and a new word for it has emerged: ‘Busification’, from the Ukrainian word ‘busyk’, in reference to the vans and minibuses that the Territorial Recruitment Center (TRC) officers use – the vehicles into which numerous Ukrainian men have disappeared, never to be seen alive by their friends and families again.

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In this specific case, timed so ironically to Zelensky joking about how he is making it dangerous to be in Moscow, police and draft officers stopped a young man for a routine ID check. They discovered he was “in violation of enlistment regulations” and promptly packed him into a car – but not before beating him up for good measure, according to local reports.

People surrounded the car, chanting ‘shame!’ and hurling insults at the TRC, trashed the vehicle, and beat up an officer. Videos of the scene show rioters of all ages – other potential TRC victims, their fathers, mothers, sisters, and wives. At one point, a man in a wheelchair pitches in by throwing something at the overturned TRC car. You would think that a disabled person would be safe from forced conscription but a) you would be wrong and b) he could be a previous victim – either back from the front lines or the draft offices themselves.

Because not all ‘recruits’ make it to the front lines. The TRC press gangs are nothing if not zealous in their grim work. The typical busification starts with a beating, and more than once, the victims have ended up dead somewhere between the moment they are shoved into the ‘busyk’ and the moment they were supposed to be shipped to the front.

The TRC issues statements in response to popular outrage and riots like those seen in Lviv, and comments on the deaths in custody – and of course, the statements amount to how the officers were acting within the law, or when excess brutality is impossible to ignore, how they will investigate themselves.

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No wonder so many of the Ukrainian refugees flooding into the Western countries that pledged support to Kiev and Zelensky are not those whose homes were destroyed in the fighting or their livelihoods otherwise ruined by the war, but able-bodied, fighting-age men who are more afraid of Ukrainian conscription press gangs than they are of Russian troops. There are so many, in fact, that the EU is considering excluding potential recruits from the protection afforded to refugees, lest Kiev run out of warm bodies to throw into the grinder before Russia has been sufficiently made to ‘pay the price’, or whatever the current catchphrase is.

And wonder that riots like the one in Lviv are becoming commonplace, with mothers pulling sons from the TRC bullies’ clutches or crowds blocking the officers off from reaching their intended victims. Looking at Ukrainian social media and Telegram channels, you can find hundreds of videos of busification, as well as busification riots and rescues.

As for Zelensky’s ‘witty’ comment, he is wrong. Russian air defenses have been handling his drone raids on Moscow admirably.

Stepping out into the streets of one of his own cities – that’s quite another matter.