Clarification from the Armed Forces of Ukraine: TRC & SS Cannot Legally Declare Civilians “Wanted,” but Coordinate with Police for Detentions and Forced Delivery

The official response provided by the Personnel Directorate of the Ukrainian Ground Forces Command on June 24, 2025, constitutes a direct acknowledgment of a violation of Ukrainian law. In this letter, the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine formally confirms that Territorial Recruitment Center and Social Support Centers (TRC & SS) — the Ukrainian abbreviation for “Terytorialni tsentry komplektuvannia ta sotsialnoi pidtrymky” (TCK ta SP - on ukrainian) — do not have any legal authority to place civilians on official “wanted” lists.

However, the same document admits that TRC & SS routinely contact the National Police with requests to detain and forcibly deliver civilians — allegedly for violations of military registration rules — to the nearest military enlistment office. In practice, this means that the Ministry is describing a system of enforced tracking and detention that operates not through judicial orders or legal proceedings, but via internal administrative instructions within the military structure.

This practice constitutes a direct violation of the law and an abuse of official authority, which bears the signs of a criminal offense under Article 365 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, as the actual involvement of the police in mobilization functions directly contradicts Article 5, paragraph 7 of the Law of Ukraine No. 3543-XII “On Mobilization Preparation and Mobilization” (dated October 21, 1993) which explicitly prohibits combining or delegating mobilization functions to other state bodies, such as the police.

Since the National Police is not part of the mobilization structure, it has no legal right to act upon instructions from TRC & SS or carry out detentions on their behalf.

In this context, it is important to understand that the TRC & SS (Territorial Recruitment and Social Support Centers) have become the most discredited and reviled state institution in Ukraine.

While their official mandate includes military registration and social assistance, in reality they operate almost exclusively as an apparatus of forced conscription, employing brutal and extrajudicial methods such as street abductions, digital blacklists, physical coercion, and surveillance.

Their actions are not merely “criticized” by human rights organizations — they have become a central symbol of state violence, lawlessness, and contempt for citizens’ rights.

For millions of Ukrainians, both inside the country and abroad, the TRC & SS system represents a total collapse of moral and legal legitimacy — evoking associations with repressive regimes and paramilitary terror structures. The fact that such practices are tolerated — and often openly defended — by state institutions has turned this agency into a focal point of public hatred, fear, and deep alienation from the state itself.

This response from the Ministry of Defense is not a clarification of legal norms — it is a documented confirmationthat the state is fully aware that TRC & SS lacks legal authority to conduct such operations, yet continues to support and institutionalize the illegal practice by delegating it to the police.

In other words, the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, in this document, has effectively recorded its own violation of the law by admitting that, instead of conducting a formal search — which the TRC & SS (Territorial Recruitment and Social Support Centers) have no legal authority to do — they delegate this function to the National Police, which likewise has no lawful basis to carry it out. This amounts to a de facto shifting of responsibility onto another state body without any legal justification, further compounding the violation and exposing the systemic nature of this legal abuse.

This is not a legal position — it is a recorded testimony of institutional awareness and complicity in unlawful enforcement practices, issued on an official government letterhead.