 "Ukraine: Man shoots dead army recruiter to flee conscription")
A man armed with a hunting rifle shot dead a Ukrainian army recruitment soldier on Saturday and escaped with a conscript before both were caught, authorities said.
The recruitment official was escorting mobilised men to a training centre and had stopped at a petrol station in the central Poltava region when the incident took place.
The attacker, wearing a balaclava, shot the military official and stole his weapon before fleeing “in an unknown direction with one of the newly recruited soldiers,” the region’s recruitment administration said.
Attacks on recruiting authorities are rare, but have taken place in Ukraine and Russia as tensions run high over efforts to mobilise men for the nearly three-year war.
The relationship between the undentified gunman and the conscript was not immediately clear, but police detained both men and launched a murder inquiry.
Since Russia’s invasion in 2022, Kyiv has carried out sweeping and divisive mobilisation campaigns to fill its ranks as it struggles to hold back Moscow’s significantly larger army.
In July, police said a grenade was thrown at an enlistment office in Ukraine’s western Lviv region.
Thousands of draft-age men are believed to have fled the country to avoid military service, while many others are in hiding, evading enlistment.
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