Names marked with an asterisk* have been changed to protect identities.Kyiv, Ukraine – Artem* is determined to never join Ukraine’s armed forces.“If I ever fight, I won’t fight for Ukraine,” the 29-year-old from the westernmost Zakarpattia region told Al Jazeera.A “conscription patrol” of three police and two military officers rounded him up in late June as he was leaving the Sunday mass at a cathedral in Uzhhorod, the regional capital.Artem had paperwork proving that he was the only caretaker of his disabled, ailing 66-year-old mother and therefore could not be drafted.But the patrol detained and brought him to a conscription office, where two officers took Artem to a separate room. He claimed they beat him and tried to force him to “volunteer” for military service.When he refused, he said they tied and blindfolded him and four more reluctant detainees and took them to a forest outside Uzhhorod.One of the officers ordered them at gunpoint to run to what turned out to be a fence on the Slovakian border, Artem claimed.Another officer videotaped the men’s “attempt to illegally cross the border”, which is punishable by up to four years in jail, and said they could “negotiate their release fee”, Artem claimed.He said that his family paid $2,000 for his release and another $15,000 for a fake permit to leave Ukraine as men of fighting age, 25 to 60, are not allowed to travel abroad.Artem, who spoke via a …
