Men who attended the Kyiv concert of a popular rock band had their papers checked on the way out. Some were detained. Tickets to subsequent shows suddenly became available.
Okean Elzy is one of the top bands in Ukraine. It has a kitschy, stadium rock style, and songs with patriotic themes that for decades have provided the soundtrack to anti-Russia protests.
Tickets to its concerts are highly prized. But they suddenly became available after the first of three sold-out concerts in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, on Friday night. The reason? Draft officers and the police had waited outside the concert hall, looking for men trying to dodge military service in the country’s war with Russia. They asked men to see their draft papers and detained those who had not registered.
“People, help me please!” shouted a young man being dragged away from the concert hall by officers, a video shared on social media showed.
In another video shown on Ukrainian media, an officer wearing the dark blue uniform of the national police, pointed at another young man leaving the show. “Wait, are we taking this one?” he asked.
The videos spread quickly, prompting a backlash among some Ukrainians who felt that corralling men at entertainment events was a step too far in the effort to add desperately needed recruits to the war effort.
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