Ukraine: The war behind the war

0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. This is not the future we were promised. Like, how about that for a tagline for the show? From the BBC, this is The Interface, the show that explores how tech is rewiring your week and your world. This isn't about quarterly earnings or about tech reviews. It's about what technology is actually doing to your work and your politics, your everyday life. and all the bizarre ways people are using the internet. Listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

0:44I don't want to be a populist. I want to be a realist, said the new defense minister of Ukraine, Mikhail Fedorov, in his inaugural speech to parliament in January. He said that not only was the ministry in debt, but two million Ukrainians were evading the draft, and 200 ,000 servicemen were absent without leave. His message was blunt. If Ukraine is to move forward, it must face the reality that many men of fighting age are not joining up. This is the documentary from the BBC World Service. I'm Richard Pendry, and I've been meeting people living inside Ukraine's recruitment crisis. It's the war behind the war.

1:41Major Serhii Lazyuk stands at the entrance to a grey apartment block in Lviv in western Ukraine. a slight figure in a khaki uniform. No one inside knows why he's coming.

2:12Alina Igorovna, can you open the door, please? He says. I waited outside while he went into Helena's apartment block alone.

2:26Sergi may have one of the toughest jobs in the Ukrainian army. He goes from house to house bringing families news of their loved ones missing or dead at the front. He works for the Territorial Recruitment Centre. I've been in touch with Sergi for months now. We first met in May 2025 when he let me record him during a normal day's work in Lviv. We don't often hear from people like Serhi. Today he has to tell Helena her husband has been killed.

3:07She had no idea that he had been confirmed dead.

3:13Major Serhiy Laziuk:She was in shock. She didn't believe it, to tell you the truth. She thought it must be some kind of mistake. Like the whole thing doesn't make sense. The first reaction is always denial. That's what we are taught in training. And that's exactly what's happening with her right now. I told her the body would be brought back to Lviv in a few days. Then we will be able to identify him properly. It was pretty tough. She honestly had no idea. She just turned pale. Some people scream, but she kept it together. She asked whether she should tell their daughter now or wait for the body to arrive. She didn't let me in.

4:10Major Serhiy Laziuk:She just met me at the door to her flat, in the corridor. We had the whole conversation there.

4:21Major Serhiy Laziuk:I asked if she needed any medical help or anything else. She said no. She just wanted to be alone.

4:34What can you say about the circumstances of how he died?

4:44Major Serhiy Laziuk:All we've got is this brief statement from the military unit. He died on the 5th of April, 2025, due to an unknown explosive device dropped in Zaporizhia region. He served honorably, upheld his oath to the Ukrainian people, bravely fulfilling his duty in the fight for Ukraine's freedom and independence. Killed in a drone strike, it seems. Blast injuries, yeah. That's right.

5:19Serhii's phone never stops. He sometimes delivers three or four notices a day.

5:35Major Serhiy Laziuk:I don't know if you would call it the hardest job out there, but mentally and emotionally, yeah, it's tough. We went into the military office several times and I didn't see a single Ukrainian volunteer there joining up, only men queuing for exemptions. Things have changed a lot since the war began. In those days, Serhi worked as a lawyer in a bank. When the war started, people were queuing up at military offices. Loads of people volunteered. I waited for a call-up. I didn't get a letter. But then I got a phone call. They told me I had to come in.

6:24Major Serhiy Laziuk:The commander said they needed someone to do this, notifying people of death. He didn't sugarcoat it. I understood someone had to do it. I said pretty much word for word. If that's what the motherland needs, of course I'll do it. That's when the first death notifications had just started coming in. In my first weeks, I found that the calls were really difficult emotionally. When I knew I had to do one, my heart would start pounding and my hands would begin to shake. When Serhi phones the families to tell them he's coming, he just says he has a sealed letter that he must deliver by hand. All contact after that is face to face.

7:16He says it's better that way and that's how he was trained. Later, he goes with the families to the mortuary and then the funeral.

7:28He's been to many, many hundreds of funerals. He often stays in touch with the families for weeks. He might get them financial support if the soldier is missing. And tens of thousands of men are missing. Some of them have been killed in no man's land in places so dangerous that their bodies can't be recovered. Others have been taken prisoner. Yet more are in the territories of eastern Ukraine occupied by Russia. Their family's greatest fear is that an officer like Sohi may come knocking.

8:18We're on the road again, looking for another apartment.

8:25Major Serhiy Laziuk:The next notification will be about a missing soldier.

8:41Major Serhiy Laziuk:Maybe I will have a bit of a pause before I go in. I'm preparing myself to get the words right.

8:54PHONE RINGS

9:22This is not the future we were promised. Like, how about that for a tagline for the show? From the BBC, this is The Interface, the show that explores how tech is rewiring your week and your world. This isn't about quarterly earnings or about tech reviews. It's about what technology is actually doing to your work and your politics, your everyday life. And all the bizarre ways people are using the internet. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

10:18with its red-roofed medieval buildings and cobblestone streets, you would hardly think there was a war on. People sit out at cafe tables. The shops are open. That's a little boy that you can hear busking for pennies. There's a woman in a high-vis jacket dancing along. But this normality is skin deep. Some statues are sandbagged in case of air raids. And you don't see many men of military age. You might imagine they're all away in the army. But perhaps not everyone is. Good afternoon. We're checking military records. Sergei isn't the only soldier from the recruitment office driving Land Lviv. His colleagues, in an unmarked car, patrol day and night.

11:14Andriy Noste learned his people skills working in luxury hotels before the war. Nowadays, he carries a gun and looks for draft dodgers on the streets. I'm recording on my body camera. Can I see your military record? Is everything in order? Did you refresh your data? Do you have the Reserve Plus app?

11:45This is a British journalist who's come to see how we carry out mobilisation.

11:54We look for guys aged 25 to 60. If we spot someone, we stop, get out and talk to them, check their documents.

12:08Sometimes they may look a certain age, but the papers tell us something else. but in the documents, it's completely different. These patrols are known on social media for being rough, sometimes violent with the men they pick up. People post videos of them grabbing men and forcing them into buses. Then it's straight on to basic training. There's even a new word for it – busification. But my trip was arranged with the Ukrainian army, and I didn't see anything like that.

12:44I mean, sure, on social media, YouTube, whatever.

12:52There's loads of stuff out there. Some of it is completely made up. Fake, staged, edited. Fake, staged and edited, often by Russia, according to the recruitment office. Still, the videos have their impacts locally. In January, somebody even fired shots at a patrol from a passing car at a muddy crossroads on the outskirts of Lviv.

13:21This kind of thing seeps into society and makes it really hard for us to do our job. Even something simple like checking documents can escalate into rouse. body cameras are there to protect you things can get tense people can get aggressive the camera is your defense another thing some people want to offer us money illegally to resolve the situation we inform the person about the law on our body cameras this also protects us It shows that our actions are in accordance with the Ukrainian law.

14:14When the patrol does get a recruit to cooperate, that's not the end of the story. According to the Security, Defence and Intelligence Committee in Parliament, four out of every five men who are drafted run away during basic training. Four out of every five. The runaways disappear back into their hometowns and villages.

14:46What it's for? Well, so I can see their faces.

14:53If someone turns up, I can see who it is when they arrive. The fence you see isn't high, so you can see over the top. So you can spot a car if one is outside. There are many reasons to fear a knock at the door here. Mikola lives in the kind of house you see a lot, with a garden of vegetables and flowers surrounded by a solid metal fence with a door. He's cut an opening, a little window in the top, so he can check who's coming. He's hardly been outside for a year and a half for fear of the draft. Mikola's in his 50s and used to be an odd job man, travelling around the city fixing things for people.

15:39Now he wiles away his days, pottering around the house and garden. I don't go out on the balcony unless I need a smoke, and I don't smoke first thing, only after breakfast. Smoke, do a bit of this and that, then smoke again, do something else. Mikola wants Ukraine to win the war. He just doesn't want to fight it. Lots of his friends, he says, feel the same way. Some take a chance by working as taxi drivers, but most keep off the streets.

16:24A lot of people have friends or acquaintances who got caught and taken into the army. And, well, let's just say, they didn't come back. And the reason they didn't come back is, how shall I put it?

16:46The command, the high ups above the sergeants and above the lieutenants, across all units, everywhere that people are fighting. It's not, let's say, up to the job.

17:02And that's what people are most afraid of, I think.

17:14I think so.

17:36They both miss their son terribly.

17:43The photos, wait, I need to find them. That was the 26th of July, 2022. The war had begun. The two of us celebrated his 18th birthday in Italy. My son. He celebrated his 18th without anything. You might say, without friends, without parents, without a home.

18:17He's still away in Italy, making pizzas in a restaurant. Although he's too young to serve in the army under current rules, who knows when that might change? Yulia and Mikola aren't willing to take the chance and bring him back.