Around 30 people attacked a Ukrainian Territorial Recruitment and Social Support Centres (TCK) military recruitment team in the western city of Lutsk, injuring two servicemen and smashing their vehicle.

The clash began with a routine stop. Officers halted a car at a checkpoint near the city's car market to check the driver's documents; he refused to produce them or give his details and drove off. A police patrol followed with lights on, and at about 20:30 on August 20 the man abandoned the vehicle at a traffic light on Zakhysnykiv Ukrainy Street and ran towards a residential area.

A group of bystanders then intervened, striking the servicemen with their hands and unidentified objects, LIGA.net reported. A radio, a body camera and a set of keys were taken from the vehicle.

This is the second widely reported clash between citizens and TSK offices that descended into violence. Last month, there as a riot in Lviv when a crowd of bystanders attacked TSK officers attempting to “busify” a young man, beating the officers up and smashing their car. Several of the rioters were arrested, some of which turned out to be veterans of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU).

Social tensions are rising by the relentless drive to recruit more men. Videos of women screaming as their men are pushed into vans are routinely posted on social media fuelling the resentment. In two particularly poignant posts last week, a woman was pictured on her knees begging a TCK officer to release her husband and another video showed an autistic boy collapse on the floor in terms as the officers dragged his father way. More damaging for moral, a group of pressganged conscripts shared a video of themselves handcuffed to the seats of the bus transporting them to the frontlines to prevent any escape attempts. The number of deserters from the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) has mounted alarmingly as moral amongst Ukraine’s armed forces slowly collapses. According to official figures, the General Prosecutor has brough AWOL charges against over 300,000 men and there were reports of several hundred conscripts escaping from a German training camp only last week.

Two accounts of what happened in Lutsk diverge on intent rather than fact. The official version is a document check that a driver resisted; the version circulating online describes men being hunted in the street and a crowd that had had enough.