Swedish SVT journalists accidentally film forced detention of a military-age man in Kyiv

Journalists from the Swedish public broadcaster SVT captured on camera the forcible detention of a military-age man in the center of Kyiv.

The incident occurred on the evening of August 17, when the film crew was waiting to go on air live.

SVT correspondent Bengt Norborg and a cameraman were on one of the streets in the center of the Ukrainian capital when a man ran past them, pursued by military recruitment officers and police. A few meters from the Swedish crew, he was grabbed, knocked to the ground, and roughly dragged across the tiled pavement toward a vehicle. The detention scene was filmed on phones by a distressed young woman — apparently the man’s girlfriend — and a man on crutches.

“A man is being seized here to be sent to the front. This is an ordinary scene for Ukraine. Almost two million men who are evading mobilization and hiding on Ukrainian territory are constantly being hunted by military recruitment service officers and police,” a voiceover explained to Swedish viewers.

A comment accompanying the report on the SVT website also notes that one million Ukrainian men of conscription age are abroad.

The channel aired a separate report on the incident. Cases of street mobilization in Ukraine are recorded regularly, and bystanders are frequently harmed by the actions of military recruitment officers. In particular, in Kharkiv, TCC officers choked a woman for pointing out that they are legally prohibited from working in balaclavas.

People’s Deputy Yuriy Kamelchuk believes that after the war, tens of thousands of cases and claims will be filed with the European Court of Human Rights over forced mobilization.