The Nation and Busification

Forced Mobilization in Wartime Ukraine

Note: This is the beginning of an article that I have just published with New Global Paradigm/New Global Politics. The whole article is available there.

In early January 2025, a Ukrainian news agency reported that Ukrainians had chosen a word of the year for 2024. Polled by “Myslovo,” an online dictionary of contemporary Ukrainian, they selected the “ironic neologism” (according to Wikipedia, on a Ukrainian-language page) “busification.” Or, in the two languages widely used in Ukraine–if politically not equally welcome–“бусифікація” in Ukrainian and “бусификация” in Russian (both transliterate almost identically, as, respectively “busyfikatsiia” and “busifikatsiia”). At the same time, busification also turned into one of the most popular Google search terms on the Ukrainian internet, as the publication Suspilne noted. Ukrainian historian and researcher Marta Havryshko, who follows busification systematically, has pointed out that the year of the word for 2023 had been “mobilization.” As she commented, “feel the difference.”

Busification in the most narrow sense of the term refers to a specific method of forced conscription. It features minibuses (or other vehicles big enough to accommodate recalcitrant passengers), into which teams of mobilizers from local recruitment offices–known as “terytorialniy tsentr komplektuvannia ta sotsialnoi pidtrymky” (territorial center of recruitment and social support) or, much more commonly, TTsK (pronounced “Te-tse-ka”)–push men selected on the street or in other public spaces to induct them into the military and, in effect, often into an ongoing and very bloody war against Russia.

…

Please find the rest of this article here.