Pro-Russian propagandists are spreading information that the Odesa territorial recruitment center is allegedly requiring schoolchildren to register at the polling stations in order to send them to the army.

However, this information has been manipulated, write experts on the VoxCheck project. According to Ukrainian legislation, young men in the year they turn 17 must be assigned to conscription stations. This postscript does not mean that they will be mobilized.

The original message on the Facebook page of the Odesa Territorial center of recruitment and social support, to which propagandists refer, actually says that at the recruiting stations in the region, registration of young men born in 2007 continues, and those of them who received draft notices for registration must appear at the Territorial center of recruitment and social support. However, this is a legal procedure for registering pre-conscripts, which existed even before the full-scale invasion. According to it, every year during January - March, pre-conscription conscripts who turn 17 in the year of registration are assigned to conscription stations. That is, the Territorial center of recruitment and social support acts in accordance with the law. In particular, registration with the Territorial center of recruitment and social support is carried out in order to determine the conscription resources available in the state.

In addition, it should be understood that a draft notice for registration and a draft notice for mobilization are of two different types and they are issued to different categories of the population. Registration to a recruiting station does not mean mobilization. Men from 18 to 25 years old can be mobilized if they are liable for military service, that is, they served in the army, served in a military department at a university, or studied at a higher military educational institution. In addition, conscripts can voluntarily join the army by concluding a contract with the Ukrainian Armed Forces. The rest of the men are subject to mobilization from the age of 25.

Previously, we refuted information about the alleged mobilization of 1000 students of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv.