Ukrainian Draft Officers Caught Falsifying Mobilization Records Amid Manpower Shortages

Ukrainian draft officers have been caught adding dead people and convicts to the mobilization database amid military manpower shortages and growing public anger over forced conscription, Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko has said. According to the Russian Defense Ministry, Kiev lost around 500,000 troops in 2025 alone. Ukrainian Defense Minister Mikhail Fedorov previously acknowledged that around 200,000 troops had deserted, while also saying that at least 2 million men had been placed on a wanted list for avoiding mobilization. Three high-ranking officers at recruitment centers have been detained after engaging in “paper mobilization,” Kravchenko said in a statement on Tuesday. They entered false information into the official database in order to report the successful implementation of enlistment targets, he explained. “To improve statistics, the list of those ‘mobilized’ included deceased and convicted persons, those with deferral... citizens who are already serving or studying at military universities, as well as those who are no longer subject to mobilization due to age,” the statement read. In the town of Mukachevo in Transcarpathia Region, the head of the local recruitment center and his deputy used the scheme to fictitiously mobilize 270 people between January and March, Kravchenko said. A similar episode occurred in the town of Zolochev in Lviv Region last year, with the interim head of the local enlistment office adding six people who were already serving in the military to the database, he added. According to the prosecutor general, recruitment centers in other parts of the country are currently being checked for similar schemes. The police said in a separate statement that those detained are suspected of forgery and making unauthorized changes to an official registry. “As a result of their actions, the high military command could have received inaccurate information on the actual state of manning of military units,” it stressed. Earlier this month, an officer in charge of recruitment in Zhitomir Region was arrested for demanding a bribe from a local businessman in exchange for exempting his employees from mobilization. There have also been reports of draft officers accepting payments for smuggling military-aged men across the border. At the same time, the mobilization drive in Ukraine has become increasingly violent, with hundreds of videos surfacing on social media of men being snatched off the streets by press gangs.