“No!” the woman cries. “May you be damned!” You can hear the despair in her voice, as masked men grab her husband, then bundle him into a waiting van. Within seconds, she’s alone, weeping in the middle of the street. This is Odesa, but scenes like it, captured on phones and posted online, hammer Ukrainian cities as relentlessly as Russian missiles. Since Putin’s full-scale invasion began, over a million Ukrainians have been conscripted to defend their homeland. And, as voluntary recruits have dried up, the army has begun resorting to the same methods faced by that couple in Odesa. People even have a term for it: “busification”.
They’re a 3 sides to this war now, Zelensky supporters, Putin and a growing anti-Zelensky anti-war faction.
