Can an app help win a war? Ukraine’s digital mobilization experiment is pushing boundaries – raising urgent questions about tech, power, and survival.

Kostiantyn Korsun reveals.

Exactly three months ago, on January 14, 2026, Mykhailo Fedorov became Ukraine’s Minister of Defense.

And already on January 30, the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, assigned the newly appointed minister a key task: resolve all issues related to mobilization and “busification.”

Fedorov immediately got to work. And here is what happened over the following two months.

February 7, Kharkiv: a man stabbed a Territorial Recruitment Center (TCC) officer.
February 15, Odesa: a crowd attacked TCC personnel.
February 16, Kharkiv: a driver ran over a policewoman working with a TCC patrol.
February 18, Kolomyia: an explosion in a district TCC building, classified as a terrorist attack.
February 25, Kryvyi Rih: a man fired multiple shots at TCC servicemen.
April 2, Vinnytsia: a customs inspector stabbed a TCC serviceman, Oleg Avdeyev, who later died in hospital.

At the beginning of April, the Kharkiv regional TCC reported an INCREASE in attacks on its personnel.

In total, 73 attacks on TCC servicemen were recorded in the first months of 2026.

But that is not all.

Without any legal grounds, women began to be unlawfully placed on military registers. A “digital” MP from the ruling party explained this as “technical failures in registry systems or abuse by certain officials.”

However, unlawfully registered women—already listed as wanted—cannot be removed from the system due to the absence of legal mechanisms. There are around 70 such cases.

Seventy “technical errors” in total.

Another absurd case occurred in Rivne, where a woman on maternity leave with an 8-month-old child was registered in the military system and assigned the specialty of “medic,” despite having no medical education. Because of a registry error in “Oberih,” she cannot be removed—there are no legal procedures for correction.

At the same time, electronic registries—Fedorov’s area of expertise—continue to generate real legal consequences for real people: fines, warrants, and enforcement actions.

Is this already “Black Mirror”—or not yet?

Shortly after receiving his mandate, Fedorov also suggested that mobilization problems could be solved by recruiting foreign mercenaries—people with no connection to Ukraine, motivated only by money.

In other words, the idea was questionable from the start.

And were we really expecting wise solutions from a 35-year-old digital technocrat?

More broadly: did the young digital minister solve the mobilization crisis in any meaningful way? And could he have done so even in theory?

Meanwhile, soldiers outside the frontline receive around 20,000 UAH per month—placing them somewhere between “poor” and “destitute.”

At the same time, the number of draft evaders has reportedly reached 2 million, while approximately 290,000 servicemen are absent without leave (AWOL/SZCh).

And in April 2026, a TCC officer in Bucha declared gold bars worth 7.7 million UAH, along with $43,000 in cash—26 times his annual salary.

Meanwhile, investigative reporting has revealed a shadow market: