Ukraine denied on September 25 that women were being called up en masse, after an online post claimed women were receiving mass summons from recruitment centres. A photograph of a Kharkiv notice appears to request a data check, but its authenticity has not been independently verified.

French commentator Benoit Martin claimed in a post on X on September 25 that women in Ukraine "have begun receiving mass summons from recruitment centres", adding that Ukraine had recently bought 150,000 military jackets for women. A photograph circulating online purports to show a notice issued on September 23 by the territorial recruitment centre (TCC) for Kharkiv's Saltivskyi district to a woman born in 1993. It asks her to report on September 30 "for data verification"; the image has not been independently authenticated.

The rumours spread quickly because the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) is in the grip of a manpower crisis and Kyiv has been sounding increasingly desperate as it hunts for air-defence ammunition and fresh troops. Kyrylo Budanov, head of the Presidential Office, said on August 28 that Ukraine "cannot mobilize fewer than 30,000 people a month", which he called the minimum needed to hold the line, Kyiv Post reported.

Ukraine's Centre for Countering Disinformation (CPD), which reports to the National Security and Defence Council, said on September 25 that Russian Telegram channels were circulating forged photographs of summons sent to women in Kyiv and Kharkiv. Women already on the military register may be called to a TCC to update their details, but these are isolated procedural cases and no "mass mobilisation" is under way, the CPD said, Antikor reported. Women serve only as volunteers and conscripting them is not on the agenda, it added.

"No female mobilisation is planned," CPD head Andriy Kovalenko said on August 10, Interfax-Ukraine reported.

Under Ukrainian law, women aged 18 to 60 with a medical or pharmaceutical education must register for military service. Registration does not mean a call-up, but it obliges them to keep their details up to date with the TCC and to answer summons, on pain of fines of UAH17,000-25,500 ($378-$567), Fakty reported on September 10.

Registry errors have added to the alarm. Earlier this year at least 30 women with no medical training in Kharkiv's Shevchenkivskyi district were wrongly entered on the register and listed as draft dodgers, TSN reported on March 28. Oleksiy Shapka, deputy head of the Kharkiv regional TCC, told the channel there had been no legal grounds to put the women on the wanted list and that the mistakes were being corrected.

The jackets story traces back to a supposed Defence Ministry tender for 150,000 women's winter jackets that Russian security officials told RIA Novosti pointed to a target for mobilising women, Ukraina.ru reported on September 10. The CPD said the next day that the screenshot was fabricated and that there was no such procurement on the Prozorro public tender system, Ukrinform reported.

The other way to find more soldiers is to lower the draft age. Kyiv already cut it from 27 to 25 in 2024, and men aged 25 to 60 are now liable, but going younger would eat into a generation the war has already gutted in a country that has some of the worst demographics in a world running out of mothers. Roman Kostenko, secretary of parliament's defence committee, said on August 22 that "some things are changing in the draft age" but declined to say in which direction, Kyiv Independent reported.

The true scale of Ukraine's losses is a state secret, and the public figures conflict. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk told parliament on September 17 that Ukrainian partners had told him losses were running at 27,000 killed and wounded a month, a record for the war. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy put the number of soldiers killed at 55,000 in an interview with France 2 on February 4, Kyiv Post reported, then told Fox News on July 31 that about 50,000 had died and 400,000 had been wounded, NV reported.

In November 2022 European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed. The Commission cut the figure from her video address the same day, saying it should have referred to casualties, both killed and wounded, Ukrainska Pravda reported.

Desertion is draining the ranks further. Prosecutors opened more than 310,000 criminal cases for desertion and going absent without leave between January 2022 and October 2025, most of them in 2025, before the figures were classified. With infantry positions thinly manned, kilometre-wide holes have opened in the lines, letting small Russian units slip behind AFU positions and attack from the rear.