Pro-Kremlin media are distributing photos of propaganda leaflets that are allegedly being distributed to elderly people in Ukraine. “You have already lived your life - go to the front”, “Age is only in your head - join the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine”, they say in such “propaganda”. The authors of the messages add that employees of territorial recruitment and social support centers allegedly force people to leave their data in order to later be forcibly mobilized. And they add that a case of forced mobilization of an elderly person has allegedly already been recorded in Kyiv. It's a lie.

The fact-checkers at the Center for Countering Disinformation under the National Security and Defense Council recorded this case and explained that such propaganda was fake and could not have been distributed by representatives of the territorial recruitment and social support centers or other military command bodies. During general mobilization, all citizens of Ukraine liable for military service aged 18 to 60 years can be called up for military service, unless they have legal grounds for obtaining a deferment or exclusion from military registration.

And according to the classification of the World Health Organization, the age of 60-75 years is considered elderly, senile - 75-90 years. Those who have reached 90 years of age and older are called centenarians.

Indeed, such official campaigns do not exist; no one is going to mobilize older people. But this does not mean that anyone, including the Kremlin’s minions, cannot create such leaflets using graphic editors, and subsequently the news about their “distribution”. Experts from the Center for Countering Disinformation have not determined the authenticity of the photo itself.

By the way, in our recent study on how Russian propaganda talks about older people, we analyzed the Kremlin’s messages regarding the so-called mobilization of older people.