In early September 2025, a video filmed at a railway station was circulated in Georgian- and Russian-language Facebook groups. The authors of the posts claimed that the video showed a “mass departure of Ukrainian migrants” — men under the age of 22 who were allegedly leaving Ukraine. One Georgian-language account said that parents were sending young men abroad out of fear that the war would last a long time and that mobilization might affect their children. A Russian-language post added that after 15 October young men supposedly would no longer be able to leave Ukraine. As experts from the Georgian fact-checking organization Mythdetector established, these posts and videos — which were also shared on Russian Telegram channels and on X — are manipulative.

In reality, the video allegedly depicting “Ukrainian migrants leaving the country” is fake. The teenagers seen at the railway station are members of the “Skhid” basketball team, and the video was published on the team’s Instagram and Facebook pages in July 2025. Another video posted the following day shows the teenagers at a training camp in the town of Bar, in Vinnytsia Oblast.

The fake emerged after a resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine dated 27 August 2025, which allows men aged 18 to 22 to cross the border during martial law. However, Deputy Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine Pavlo Palisa did not confirm information about a reduction in the conscription age, which further undermines the fake narrative.