Mobilisation continues in Ukraine. We need to stop the enemy, because he will not stop on his own.
However, people are afraid of going to the frontline (and this is understandable), so they provoke and sometimes accuse employees of the Territorial Centres for Recruitment and Social Support (TSC and SS) of starting the war.
Vitaliy Smilka, a cyborg defender of the Donetsk airport, a participant in the Anti-Terrorist Operation in Eastern Ukraine and a peacekeeping mission in Iraq, as well as the head of the Horodok district ATO union, is serving in one of the TSCs in Lviv region after being wounded at the front.
“There is such a painful issue. Sometimes the negativity cuts you right in the heart, and people hit you with words without thinking. Especially when you realise how many of your friends have been killed or disabled,” he said about his work at the CCC.
According to Smilka, sometimes it seems to him that it was easier on the frontline than with our people.
“There, it is clear that there is an enemy, you know where he is. And sometimes you talk to people who say to your face that you ‘jumped into’ this war back in 2014 on the Maidan. And you can’t do anything to them. What can you say to him? He provokes you, saying that you provoked this war. And more accusations. And you hold yourself back with all your might. Or they say: why, we are at war? I say: okay, let’s go to the Field of Mars in Lviv, and you can tell them on the graves of those guys that we are not at war,” he said about his impressions of working at the TCC.
Smilka has already told us that he tries not to get into arguments with people when they check the documents of men of mobilisation age while working in alert patrols. However, he has repeatedly heard from them “that I am healthy and sitting in the rear”.
“What am I supposed to do? Take off my trousers and show my legs, where meat and tendons have been torn out? Or tell them how they pumped a cyst out of my head after my shell shock? They don’t hear anything. That’s why I don’t explain anything. I try to pull myself together and do my job. Although I am boiling inside,” he said.
As a reminder, Iryna Friz, a member of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on National Security, Defence and Intelligence, said that if there is a positive trend in mobilisation over the next 3-4 months, the draft law on demobilisation measures could be considered in October.