Territorial Center of Recruitment and Social Support

The Territorial Center of Recruitment and Social Support (TCR and SS or TCR) (Ukrainian: Територіальний центр комплектування та соціальної підтримки, ТЦК та СП or ТЦК)^[1] is Ukraine's military administration body that keeps military records [uk] and mobilizes the population. Starting from 2022, the TCR and SS have completely replaced Ukraine's former system of military commissariats.^[2]^[3]^[4]

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Description

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Perspective

According to Ukrainian resolution "On the approval of the Regulation on territorial centers of recruitment and social support", local TCRs are formed, liquidated, reorganized by the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine. The direct management of the TCR and control over their activities is carried out by the relevant operational commands, and the general command of the Ukrainian Ground Forces, which coordinates the main issues of the TCR's activities with their relevant structural subdivisions of the General Staff of the Armed Forces and the Ministry of Defense. Territorial centers of recruitment and social support of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, Kyiv, Sevastopol, and Ukrainian oblasts are legal entities under public law, with each having independent balance sheets registration accounts in the Treasury authorities.^[5]

In order to ensure the fulfillment of the tasks and specified functions of each TCR, structural subdivisions (departments, branches, groups, services) are formed within them. Each TCR conducts activities in accordance to the provisions with each structural division, which is approved the head of the district territorial center of recruitment and social support. Regulations on district territorial centers of staffing and social support are approved by the heads of their respective TCR.^[5]

The TCR is tasked with managing the conscription and military service of citizens, engaging in mobilization training of employees for mobilization civilians, managing military records of conscripts and reservists on the territory of the relevant administrative-territorial unit, the selection of candidates for contract military service, with participation in the selection of citizens for military reserve service, the preparation and mobilization of human and transport resources, ensuring the organization of social and legal protection of conscripts to the Armed Forces, managing veterans of military service and pensioners from among military personnel and members of their families, and participation in military and patriotic education. The personnel of the TCR, as well as the transport and material and technical means of the said TCR are maintained under the budget of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine.^[5]

The number of TCR staff as of 2023 reached over 200, and were distributed among four operational commands: "North", "South", "West", and "East".^[6] However, some of them have separate territorial subdivisions— so-called "departments"— together with which the territorial total number of such formations approaches or exceeds 300.^[7]^[8]

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History

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On July 19, 2017, the Government of Ukraine issued an order to approve a pilot project proposed by the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine on the formation of the TCR from August 1 to December 31, 2017, on the basis of the Chernihiv Regional Military Commissariat (now the Chernihiv Regional TCR and SS).^[9]^[10] On August 2, 2017, it was announced that starting from August 1, 2017, this pilot project was implemented not only in Chernihiv, but also in Kozelets of the Chernihiv region. The Kozelka District Military Commissariat (now the Second Branch of the Chernihiv RTCR and SS) also joined.^[11] On November 1, 2017, at a briefing attended by experts from the Department of Defense Cooperation of the US Embassy in Ukraine, an Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) representative publicized information about the results of reforming military commissariats in the TCR in these two military commissariats of the Chernihiv region.^[12]^[13]^[14]

On January 12, 2018, plans were announced to implement the program in Volyn by March 2018.^[15]^[16]^[17] On March 22, 2018, plans to expand the project to four more regions were announced.^[18] On April 25, 2018, information about the minister of defense of Ukraine's approval of a plan to create a TCR on the basis of military commissariats without any territorial restrictions, thus on the entire territory of Ukraine, was revealed.^[19]^[20] As of September 17, 2018, this plan provided for the reform of 111 military commissariats in the TCR in Chernihiv, Rivne, Dnipropetrovsk, and Odesa regions by the end of 2018, after which they would be implemented in all other regions of Ukraine.^[21]

On May 28, 2020, a draft law was registered in the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine regarding, in particular, the renaming of the Military Committees of Ukraine to the TCR, but the process of its consideration was significantly delayed.^[22] On November 1, 2020, the Ministry of Defense unilaterally renamed all military commissariats of Ukraine into territorial centers, thus creating a precedent for their further functioning outside the legal field of Ukraine. They also permanently removed the term "military commissariat" from the names of structures subordinate to it throughout the territory of Ukraine.^[23] On March 30, 2021, on the basis of the above-mentioned draft law, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine adopted a corresponding law that signed by the president of Ukraine in April 2021, which was subsequently entered into legal force. Despite this, apart from cosmetic changes in the name, he did not change anything at all in the functioning of the former military commissariats, which negatively affected the image of the entire reform. Criticisms were levied against how the move left such factors as the paper record of conscripted citizens and conscripts in addition to maintaining a unified state register of conscripts, that until now for the newly named territorial centers of support and social protection was considered an additional option in functioning, and not vice versa.^[23]^[24]^[22]

On February 23, 2022, the TCR completely replaced the former system of military commissariats and replaced all paper records of persons with electronic records based on the "unified state register of conscripts, conscripts and reservists" already present at the legislative level.^[5]

Russian invasion of 2022

On August 17, 2023, President of Ukraine Volodomyr Zelenskyy approved the decision of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine to dismiss all heads of regional TCRs in the country in connection with corruption that had taken place numerous times before.^[25]^[26]

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Criticism and controversy

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Some of this section's listed sources may not be reliable. (January 2025)

Territorial recruitment and social support centers have come under considerable criticism from the Ukrainian public and human rights activists for illegal detentions, corruption, and errors in documentation.^[26]^[27]^[28]^[29]

Criticism came from the secretary of the Defense Committee of the Verkhovna Rada, Roman Kostenko, who noted multiple cases where defense enterprise employees and people with vision problems were forcefully mobilized. He emphasized that healthy and motivated people should be drafted into the army, and not those who managed to be "caught" by recruitment officers.^[28]

Commissioner for Human Rights Dmytro Lubinets condemned the actions of TCR employees who detained citizens or demanded documents from them in the middle of the street. He emphasized that the employees of military commissions do not have the right to such actions against civilians.^[29]

Criticism towards the TCR and its officers are also often related to cases of wrongdoing and errors in documentation. Lawyer Roman Kichka noted that for many years, the military commissariats had incorrectly drawn up documents and incorrectly referred to the requirements of the law, which led to illegal fines against citizens who had updated their data in the Reserve+ application and appeared at regional centers to clarify data.^[27]^[30]

Conflicts against civilians

This section may lend undue weight to certain ideas, incidents, or controversies. (January 2025)

Ukrainian social media and information spaces shared several reports of conflicts between TCR employees and citizens. For example, in Baranivka, Zhytomyr Oblast, Ukrainian civilians protested against the TCR due to their involvement in the death of Serhii Kovalchuk. Kovalchuk was hospitalized with life-threatening injuries after being forcefully detained to the TCR, and later died. The TCR claimed that the man had abused alcohol, which caused him to suffer from an epileptic seizure.^[31]

On June 11, 2023 in Odesa, TCR employees detained a citizen who refused to provide registration documents and took him to the TCR, from where he called an ambulance. A conflict arose between ambulance workers and the TCR, which is currently being investigated under the article regarding "hooliganism" in the Criminal Code of Ukraine.^[31]

News outlets reported on Nina Tronenko's statements that her 22-year-old son was detained at the train station in Uzhhorod and forced to sign documents for referral to military training, despite the fact that he was declared unfit for military service in 2019 during peacetime. The Transcarpathian TCR confirmed that the boy passed the military medical board, and was sent to the military for training.^[32]

July 4, 2023, representatives of the TCR broke into the house of a Ukrainian "liable for military service" in the Khmelnytsky region.^[33]

The commander, who had been convicted twice (for murder and bodily harm), killed a mobilized soldier, forced other soldiers to bury the body, and reported to the command that the murdered soldier had allegedly left the military unit without permission.^[34]^[35]

December 19, 2024, near Kiev, the TCR and police ‘smoked’ the driver out of the car with tear gas and set him on fire.^[36] December 22, 2024, according to the People's Deputy of Ukraine Artem Dmytruk, the father of a forcibly mobilized young man whom he tried to save was killed in the Odessa TCR.^[37] In general, suspicious deaths of those forcibly mobilized to the TCR are by no means isolated.^[38] A man hospitalized after being beaten died from a traumatic brain injury he suffered on December 29, 2024 at the Sumy TCR.^[39]

January 3, 2025, in Poltava, during forced mobilization, TCR employees broke a man's leg.^[40] January 4, 2025, in Zaporizhzhia, those who were forcibly mobilized barricaded themselves in the basement of the TCR, not wanting to be sent to the training ground, and military commissars began to gas them.^[41] On January 6, 2025, as a result of a parliamentary inquiry by Olexandr Fedienko [uk], it became known that the TCRs were ignoring the reservation of workers at critically important enterprises and were forcibly mobilizing them - while it was already becoming impossible to demobilize them.^[42] There are constant cases when TCR employees forcibly mobilize people, kidnapping them on the street, and not leaving them with the opportunity to take care of their pets. In Zaporizhzhia, a man and his dog were forcibly mobilized.^[43] In one such case, a locked cat almost died of hunger, in another, a dog being walked was left alone on the street.^[44]^[45]

Mayors of Ukrainian cities are summoned to the TCR and receive fines for disrupting plans for forced mobilization of the population.^[46] In particular, the mayors of Drohobych and Boryslav have been summoned and fined, and they intend to appeal the fines in court.^[47]^[48] According to the statement of the people's deputy of Ukraine Serhiy Yevtushok [uk], in Rivne Oblast, TCR vehicles jam communications with electronic warfare.^[49]

On February 7, 2025, in Chernivtsi, during a military medical examination at the TCR, a man lost consciousness and died; he was only 32 years old.^[50] This is far from the only case of death on the territory of the recruitment centers.^[51]

On February 8, 2025, on the Zhitomir-Kyiv highway, near the capital, they found a beaten physics teacher from Lviv University with a fractured skull base, as it turned out, kidnapped the day before by the TCR military. Despite the fact that teachers and lecturers are not subject to mobilization by law, he was held, forced to undergo a military medical examination. So far, the Lviv Regional TCR and SS have not commented on this case.^[52]^[53] On February 13, 2025, a man forcibly delivered to the Khmelnytskyi TCR committed suicide while undergoing a military medical commission.^[54]^[55] Suicides in the premises of the TCR have happened before, for example on October 22, 2024 in Poltava.^[56] On February 13, 2025, the only son, whose father is blind and deaf, and whose mother is bedridden and blind, was forcibly mobilized because he did not have a certificate of care for his disabled parents.^[57]

On February 14, 2025, three outrageous cases of forced mobilization were recorded in the Kharkiv Oblast only: in the first video, masked TCR officers caught up with a man and used a taser on him, the man fell, after which he was dragged along the ground into a minibus; in the second video, ten police officers “pack up” one civilian; in the third video, TCR officers “packed up” a man suffering from diabetes, before which they beat him, tore his jacket, and did not even allow him to take the necessary medications, and the documents with the diagnosis that they presented were said to be “fake”.^[58] On the same day in Mykolaiv, a woman approached a group of TCR employees with a bag, after which an explosion occurred, resulting in deaths and injuries.^[59] Local Telegram channels write that the woman probably took such a desperate step because of the forced mobilization of her son, who died at the front.^[60] Over five days in February 2025, attacks on the TCR occurred in the Rivne, Dnipropetrovsk and Khmelnytskyi regions.^[61]^[62]^[63]

On March 5, 2025, in Kharkiv, employees of the local army recruitment center fired a shot at a conscript running away from them, and then smashed the windows of his car.^[64] On March 24, 2025, TCC employees beat up a retired grandmother in Kyiv for her attempt to save a forcibly mobilized civilian.^[65] On March 16, 2025, in Kharkiv, TCR employees in a van deliberately hit a cyclist and then tried to forcibly mobilize him by dragging him into the van.^[66] The ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets [uk] commented on similar situations.^[67]