Like many in occupied Ukraine, ‘Dmytro’ stayed in his hometown for his family — his parents — and not because he wanted to live under Russian rule. Later mobilized into the Russian army, he was ordered to fight his own country. Now he works against Russia from within its own ranks.
"I don't like it, and I felt guilty about being in the Russian army that occupied my city. I can't call myself a great patriot of Ukraine, but I think what Russia is doing is extremely wrong, and I don't want me and my family to be forced into anything," Dmytro told the Kyiv Independent in a message that was passed through intermediaries.
Dmytro, whose name and exact location are being withheld for security reasons, was born in southern Ukraine and worked on his parents' farm. When Russia occupied his hometown in 2022, his parents couldn’t bring themselves to just "abandon" their home and livelihood, and Dmytro stayed with them.
But trouble followed. Dmytro says he and his father were forced to register for military service under the threat of fines and property confiscation. Soon afterward, they were both mobilized.
Driven by guilt, Dmytro joined the Atesh resistance movement, a partisan group that regularly carries out sabotage attacks on Russian territory and in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine. He says he found information about Atesh on Telegram and thought that since he was already in the Russian army, he might be able to help Ukraine in some way.
"After I got in touch with Atesh, I did different tasks… So far, they've been small ones, like fixing minor (vehicle) breakdowns that cause delays in logistics or supplies. It's not much, but I think even this can affect combat operations," Dmytro said.
"If shells, provisions, or reinforcements cannot arrive on time, it will have negative consequences," he added.
The Kyiv Independent could not independently verify "Dmytro's" story because of the risks associated with reporting in the occupied territories, but the situation he describes is not uncommon.
Forced to fight against their homeland
In occupied territories, Ukrainians are forced to take Russian passports and register for military service, which in turn allows Russia to draft them. This is despite the fact that the mobilization of civilians violates the Geneva Convention on the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War and is regarded as a war crime under international humanitarian law.
According to Ukraine’s intelligence services, since the start of the full-scale war in 2022 until summer 2024, Russia has mobilized approximately 300,000 men from the local population in occupied Ukraine, as reported by the Eastern Human Rights Group and the Institute for Strategic Studies and Security (ISRS).
As demands for more men at the front have increased, Russians have begun resorting to various methods of coercion and manipulation to intensify mobilization in the occupied territories. A July report from the Center for Countering Disinformation, a Ukrainian government body, indicated that the Russians are tracking local residents of conscription age, forcing them to register for military service, introducing mobilization quotas, and "applying repressive measures."
Forcing Ukrainian citizens in occupied territories to join Russia's armed forces is a war crime.
A spokesperson for Atesh told the Kyiv Independent that the scale of Russian mobilization varies across occupied regions. Mobilization was most intense in 2022-2023 in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, where the 1st and 2nd Army Corps were formed after the Russian war in Donbas began in 2014.
"It was truly massive, and mobilization continues there even now. We constantly receive information from young people who are trying to avoid going out on the streets in order not to be forced to join the occupation forces," the Atesh spokesperson said.
"Students are being actively mobilized, they are being expelled from educational institutions, and so are employees of enterprises," they added.
In the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts, the mobilization has different patterns, according to Atesh.
"There, they mostly force representatives of marginalized groups or people who have been sentenced to decades in prison on trumped-up charges to go to war. Some are actually offered a 'choice,' but many are forcibly sent to military registration offices and forced to sign contracts," the Atesh spokesperson said.
A report from the Yellow Ribbon resistance movement, a Ukrainian civil resistance network active in occupied areas, said that on Aug. 28 in Luhansk Oblast, Russian military commissariats had become more active over the previous month, targeting local youth, primarily men under 30.
"Representatives of the occupying structures are looking for potential conscripts at enterprises, in shops, and in service centers," the report says.
Russia doesn't just target the youth. In a January report, Yellow Ribbon noted Russia tends to focus mobilization efforts on Ukrainians in "difficult life situations," such as orphans, children of people with disabilities, and boys whose parents are in the hospital with cancer or other serious health problems.
However, mobilization efforts in occupied areas still face significant challenges. Data from the National Resistance Center shows that Russia is struggling to meet its mobilization goal for 2025 in occupied Crimea, with only 963 of 1,636 people mobilized, or 59% of the annual target.
‘They themselves do not understand what they are doing here’
Dmytro says there are several Ukrainians from the occupied territories serving with him.
"The commander sometimes says, especially when he's drunk, that they are liberating us (Ukrainians under occupation) here and fighting because of us. Once, he even threatened to send us to another unit for an assault because 'we owed our debt' to Russia."
He says that family and friends who live in the occupied territory know that he was taken to the Russian army, and "are not happy about that." But he didn't tell his friends and acquaintances who are not in the Russia-occupied territories.
Now, his work in the Russian army involves vehicle repairs and maintenance. He is forced to talk with Russian soldiers every day. "Of course, it's difficult and unpleasant (being close to Russians)," he said, "but we usually don't talk about the war during our service."
"The (Russian) empire traditionally wages war using enslaved people, and the death of Ukrainians is beneficial to it under any circumstances."
Apart from the commander, the "ordinary" soldiers are fine with Ukrainians from the occupied territory, but they "consider the Ukrainians who are fighting against them to be Bandera supporters and Nazis controlled by the West."
"Everyone in my unit is very tired of the war and is waiting for it to end. (...) I think they themselves do not understand what they are doing here and do not ask themselves such questions. Most are here for money, some, like me, because they were forced to come," Dmytro said.
"I try to keep a cool head about my work and these conditions. I'm waiting for everything to end so I can go home and do what I used to do," Dmytro said.
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