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On the evening of November 2, several dozen people gathered near one of the houses in the village of Petropavlovskaya Borshchagovka near Kiev, claiming that people were being held and tortured there. The protest escalated into clashes with the police: those gathered destroyed official vehicles and blocked a bus carrying military personnel. Even the head of the presidential office, Kirill Budanov, who personally arrived at the scene, failed to calm the crowd. At some point, gas was sprayed in his direction.
The National Guard of Ukraine said that the house was used as a temporary housing point for soldiers of the 1st Azov Corps (Azov is banned in Russia as a terrorist organization).
According to the commander of the National Guard, Alexander Pivnenko, there were mainly mobilized people who were undergoing registration before being sent for training. Four men - servicemen who left their unit without permission and needed medical attention - were taken to the hospital.
Against the background of what was happening near Kiev, numerous rumors spread on social networks, including about the beating of a 14-year-old teenager by security forces. This story was actively picked up by Russian propaganda resources.
“Yesterday’s events in Petropavlovskaya Borshchagovka are unacceptable for the state and damage the unity of Ukrainians, especially in the face of the Russian threat,” Budanov wrote on social networks on the morning of November 3.
According to the head of the presidential office, law enforcement agencies have begun checking the circumstances of the incident in order to bring those responsible to justice and prevent similar events from happening again.
On the morning of November 3, the State Bureau of Investigation announced the opening of criminal proceedings into the events in Petropavlovskaya Borshchagovka - the case was opened under the article on abuse of official powers by a military official (Part 5 of Article 426-1 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine).
Authorities did not report any arrests in connection with these events.
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How did the conflict begin?
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According to the Kyiv region police, on the evening of November 2, law enforcement officers received a call from private ambulance officers. They reported that they were being prevented from accessing a person who needed help.
The arriving police established that it was a private house where military personnel from one of the units of the National Guard of Ukraine were located. By this time, several dozen people had already gathered near the building.
Allegations were spread among those gathered that people were being illegally detained in the house, subjected to violence, and that one person had allegedly died.
“The information about the allegedly illegal detention of people and the death of a citizen is not true,” the police said.
Meanwhile, videos began to circulate in the media and telegram channels, showing a crowd of people gathered near the house, as well as an ambulance standing nearby.
In videos published on social networks, shots were also heard, clashes with police officers and damaged official vehicles were visible.
In one of the videos, a woman in a medical uniform says that she managed to get inside the building. According to her, there were about 25-30 people there, but she could not determine their status.
“It’s unclear there, because people themselves don’t know who they are, what their status is,” the woman said.
She also said that four people were handed over to doctors, one of whom was in serious condition. Another video shows a man being led out of the house to an ambulance.
Later, the media reported that the woman who introduced herself as a doctor was in fact not related to the ambulance service. In addition, according to journalists, she previously disseminated pro-Russian narratives on social networks.
Budanov's arrival
Late in the evening, the head of the presidential office arrived in Petropavlovskaya Borshchagovka. He tried to calm those gathered, called on them to disperse and promised to personally supervise the investigation.
According to Noviny.LIVE correspondents, Budanov said that the circumstances of what happened in the house would be investigated by the State Bureau of Investigation, the office of the Prosecutor General and other law enforcement agencies.
Photo copyrightNovyny.Live
He stressed that even if some military personnel left their units without permission, this does not justify possible violence against them.
Budanov also took several activists inside the house to show them what was there.
A separate episode involved a 14-year-old boy who, according to those gathered, was beaten. Video from the scene shows the teenager being taken out of the yard of the house. Other recordings from earlier showed the same teenager reportedly climbing over a fence, throwing bricks and threatening police officers.
Budanov promised to ensure that the perpetrators were punished if the fact of the beating was confirmed. He also spoke with the teenager, who said that he came to the house with “some guys.”
Despite the intervention of the head of the presidential office, the unrest continued. Later videos show protesters continuing to smash police cars, shouting insults at Budanov, and at one point spraying gas in his direction.
The bus carrying the soldiers who had been taken out of the house was blocked. Budanov personally helped move the damaged police car to make way for him.
He left Petropavlovskaya Borgashchevka at about 11 pm, saying that the events did not resemble a spontaneous protest, and hinted at their planned nature.
Those gathered finally dispersed only around midnight.
What the National Guard said
In the evening, the commander of the National Guard of Ukraine, General Pivnenko, also visited the crowd. He stated that the house near which the riots occurred was used as a temporary deployment point for the National Guard and belonged to the 1st Azov Corps.
The 1st Corps of the Azov National Guard confirmed that the building was used by one of its military units.
According to Pivnenko, the four men who required medical assistance were servicemen who were detained after leaving their unit without permission and returned to their units. Now all four are in the National Guard medical center, where they are receiving the necessary care.
The rest of the men in the house, as Pivnenko explained, were mobilized military personnel who were undergoing registration before being sent for training. According to him, after mobilization through territorial recruitment centers (TCC, the Ukrainian equivalent of military registration and enlistment offices), they undergo the necessary checks and draw up documents. They are then sent to training centers for 58 days and another two weeks for combat coordination before being sent to military units.
Pivnenko later reported that 18 servicemen remained in the house. He posted a video of a group of men in civilian clothes standing behind him and explained that they were being processed.
“They communicate normally, everything is fine with them,” the commander said.
Commenting on the conditions for the deployment of military personnel, Pivnenko explained that due to a full-scale war, many units do not have permanent deployment points. According to him, before the Russian invasion the Ukrainian army numbered about 200 thousand people, and now it is about a million, so it is impossible to provide all units with specially equipped premises.
photo copyrightOleksandr Pivnenko
Pivnenko also explained that military personnel may have their phones confiscated for security reasons to prevent leakage of information about their location.
The commander also warned that after widespread publicity, the location of the deployment point became known to the Russian military, which means that the building could become the target of a missile attack, so the military personnel must be transferred to a safer place as soon as possible.
Pivnenko announced the start of an official investigation, which he took under personal control. He promised that if violations are revealed on the part of military personnel or commanders, those responsible will be held accountable.
The Office of the Military Ombudsman of Ukraine ordered a separate inspection. “All military personnel are safe, the necessary medical care is being provided. An inspection has been appointed, during which all the circumstances will be clarified,” wrote military ombudsman Olga Reshetilova.
About the events in Petropavlovskaya Borshchagovka - BBC correspondent in Ukraine Svyatoslav Khomenko
At the moment we do not have a complete picture of what happened in Petropavlovskaya Borshchagovka. Nevertheless, we can draw several conclusions from the situation now.
Firstly, we know for sure that one of the units of the Ukrainian Defense Forces is involved in the situation - more specifically, the 1st Corps of the Azov National Guard.
In the official statement of the corps commander Denis Prokopenko, it is said that the house around which the conflict arose had the status of a temporary location for military unit 3121 - that is, the 52nd International Forge Regiment.
The extent to which the Azovites quickly took responsibility for what was happening in Petropavlovskaya Borshchagovka raises the question of the legality of using formulations like “secret prison” and similar ones in relation to this situation.
Of course, the specifics of wartime impose certain restrictions on the dissemination of information about the activities of combat units, but the very fact that “Azov” admitted that this house was theirs gives reason to assume that it will not be difficult to thoroughly understand what exactly happened in it before it became the center of attention of all of Ukraine, and what happened near it on Monday evening.
Secondly, it is indicative that the commander of the National Guard, General Alexander Pivnenko, and then the head of the presidential office, General Kirill Budanov, that is, figures of the highest military and political leadership of the country, arrived at the scene of events, in the village just outside the ring road of Kyiv.
Frankly, at the moment it is not entirely clear why exactly the situation in Petropavlovskaya Borshchagovka required intervention at such a high level. Let us remind you that in early September of this year, when a shootout took place in the Kiev residential area of Bereznyaki between servicemen of the Main Intelligence Directorate and the Security Service of Ukraine, the heads of these bodies did not go to the scene of the events (although, who knows, perhaps it was precisely those events that led to the fact that now this departure was considered appropriate).
On the one hand, their arrival at the scene showed that the situation was under control at the highest level. On the other hand, notes the famous journalist Yuri Butusov, who is currently serving in the “Charter” corps of the National Guard, “the appearance of those not involved in this situation (Pivnenko and Budanov) can only contribute to increasing the resonance, and not solving the situation.”
Thirdly, footage from the scene suggests that law enforcement agencies most likely failed to cope with their function, despite the fact that at least the Ukrainian legislation on the legal regime of martial law provided them with legal grounds for taking control of the situation.
Comments on this matter are not only about the fact that the National Police officers present at the scene did not fulfill their function.
Questions, critics say, will also arise for the Security Service of Ukraine if it turns out that the events in Petropavlovskaya Borshchagovka were planned (and the very fact that it all started with a call to the police allegedly from an ambulance doctor, who in fact did not turn out to be one, gives rise to such theories).
Fourthly, these events once again testified to the complex processes currently taking place in Ukrainian society. They confirmed how sensitive the topic of mobilization, SZCh (unauthorized abandonment of a unit) is for Ukrainians today, how a stratification is forming before our eyes between part of the “rear” society and people in military uniform. And what unpredictable consequences can the slightest spark of conflict arise in a situation that leaves room for interpretation?
You can already find parallels online between the events of the evening of November 2 and the events in Novi Sanzhary in February 2020. Several dozen Ukrainian citizens and foreigners evacuated from Chinese Wuhan at the very beginning of the coronavirus outbreak, even before the first recorded case of infection in Ukraine, were taken there. The arrival of buses with people taken from China to a provincial town in the Poltava region gave rise to many rumors and conspiracy theories, which led to mass unrest on the streets of Novi Sanzhary.
Imperfect communication on the part of the authorities, panic in society, the pernicious work of disinformation networks - as those events showed, and as the current personnel from Petropavlovskaya Borshchagovka have shown - the combination of all these factors can lead to serious consequences.
At the same time, in the situation of 2026, there is also a fundamentally new introduction - the ongoing full-scale war and the readiness of the Russian media and telegram channels to provide information coverage of these events with formulations in the spirit of “torture”, “a revolt of Ukrainians against the criminal authorities” and so on.
Fifthly, it looks like this story will continue. The idea of this is suggested by the already mentioned participation in the events of the country's top political and military leaders - and before that we still need to add the reaction of the military ombudsman and the Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, who also keep the situation under control.
“Right now we are developing all the necessary solutions with the security unit for an adequate response and prevention of provocations. I urge all Ukrainians to always be guided by the interests of the nation and state when making any decisions and resolving conflict situations,” Budanov said.
There has not yet been a reaction to the high-profile events at Petropavlovskaya Borshchagovka from President Vladimir Zelensky. On November 3, he went on a visit to Berlin.
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