An explosion occurred at the Local Military Recruitment Center in the Ukrainian city of Kamianets-Podilski on Wednesday. The blast happened shortly after a civilian entered the building, resulting in the death of the individual and injuring four others, including two doctors who were evaluating the health status of potential recruits.
This incident is the third explosion of its kind in the past week. Previously, a person was killed and eight others were injured in a military recruitment center in Rivne on Saturday. On Sunday, an explosion wounded a soldier at a center in Pavlograd, located in the Dnipropetrovsk region.
According to Ivan Vyhivski, the head of the National Police of Ukraine, these events are part of a coordinated campaign by Russian special services aiming to “destabilize Ukrainian society.” The National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine reports that Russian special services are targeting adolescents and young, unemployed individuals online, offering them “easy money” for their services. Often, these individuals are not provided with details about their tasks.
In some cases, they are asked to collect packages and deliver them to specific locations, as seen in the incidents in Rivne and Kamianets-Podilski, where the explosives were activated while the individuals were still carrying them. For example, in Rivne, a 21-year-old man arrived at the local recruitment center with an explosive device hidden in his backpack. The device was equipped with a mobile phone, and the man was also holding another device in his hands.
The Russian special services, using the camera on the phone, monitored the individual’s entry into the building and activated the explosives remotely through a phone call, killing him instantly. This tactic allows them to avoid paying their agents and eliminate potential witnesses, as emphasized by Andri Kovalenko, an officer with the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine.
Another method was used in Pavlograd, where three suspects, now arrested by the Ukrainian security service, manufactured explosives themselves, adding nails to increase damage, and placed them near the entrance of the recruitment center. Russia has been recruiting agents online for some time to carry out activities such as burning soldiers’ cars throughout Ukraine. To date, almost 500 people have been arrested for these crimes and attempts to harm soldiers or police, according to the Ukrainian Security Service.
Typically, agents receive explosives from another group of Russian agents, place them in a building, and then make a false call to the police, intending to activate the explosives when the police arrive, thus killing them. Usually, these agents are arrested before they can receive the explosives, said Deputy Chief Sergiy Andrushchenko. He noted that “Russian special services use these people for their own purposes, as disposable material, without caring what happens to them after they have fulfilled their mission.” Most of these individuals face sentences of up to 12 or 15 years in prison.
The Russians are exploiting the sensitive issues in Ukraine, taking advantage of the population’s current moral state, writes Maksim Zhorin, a commander of the third assault brigade of Ukraine. According to him, these explosions aim to deepen the social crisis and undermine the mobilization process further. The Ukrainian army relies on volunteers, but they are not enough to meet the needs for new soldiers to counter Russian aggression, leading to a mandatory mobilization campaign. All men are required to register at recruitment centers, and those without a valid exemption can be mobilized immediately.
This situation sometimes leads to confrontations between civilians and recruiters, who patrol the streets to check men’s documents, with videos of these incidents quickly spreading on social media. Many recruiters are veterans themselves, often bearing wounds from combat. On Friday, a recruiter was shot and killed by a friend of a man being escorted to a training camp, and the two individuals involved have been arrested.
The head of the Ukrainian army, Oleksandr Sirski, has called for firm action against those responsible for the attacks and assured Ukrainians that the army is doing everything possible to prevent the mobilization process from leading to human rights violations.