Imagine waking up one morning to headlines that tell you your country is about to force women into the army. Your mother, your sister, your daughter, your best friend — all of them could be called up against their will. Panic spreads through group chats, rumors fly across social media, and before long, people are arguing at dinner tables about something that was never real. That is exactly what is happening right now in Ukraine, except the headlines aren’t coming from honest journalists. They are coming from the Russian intelligence services, working overtime to plant another poisonous seed of disinformation. The latest fake claims that the European Union is demanding Ukraine begin the forced mobilization of women, and that the EU’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, called this a “step in the right direction.” It sounds specific, it sounds plausible, and it sounds alarming. But every part of it is false. No such demand has been made. No such statement was ever uttered. And no forced mobilization of women is happening, or being planned, anywhere in Ukraine.
Let’s take a closer look at this fabrication, because understanding how it works is the best defense against it. The story was pushed by Russia’s foreign intelligence service, known as the SVR. The SVR is not a news agency, and it has no credibility when it comes to reporting facts. It is a spy agency whose job is to weaken Russia’s enemies. The fake went something like this: Europe, worried about the war’s toll on Ukraine’s army, is supposedly pressuring Kyiv to draft women. Kaja Kallas, the EU foreign policy chief, is quoted as endorsing this supposedly European demand. If you read that in a Telegram channel or a Russian state media article, you might feel a jolt of fear or anger. But if you stop and search for the original source, you find nothing. No European official has said anything like this. No official EU document proposes it. There is no quote from Kallas beyond the one invented by propagandists. And in Ukraine, there is no bill, no decree, no decision, not even a serious public proposal to mobilize women by force. The entire story is an invention, designed to look like news but built entirely on air.
Now, let’s talk about the reality that the propagandists are trying to hide. Women in Ukraine are already a vital part of the defense effort, and they serve proudly in the Armed Forces of Ukraine — but they do so voluntarily. Tens of thousands of women have joined the military since the start of the full-scale war, many as medics, drone operators, logistics specialists, snipers, and infantry soldiers. Women are not waiting to be told by some bureaucrat in Brussels or Kyiv that they must pick up a weapon. They are choosing to defend their homes, their families, and their country. That is not a secret; it is a fact visible to anyone who follows the war honestly. Ukrainian women have earned awards, died in battle, and held the line alongside men. The idea that Europe has to push Ukraine into forcing women to fight is not only insulting to Ukraine, it is insulting to the women already serving. It turns their courage into a piece of propaganda. In reality, Ukrainian law and policy remain clear: women serve voluntarily. They can enlist, they can train, they can take on combat roles, but no one is dragging them out of their homes and putting them onto training grounds against their will.
This is not the first time Russia has pushed this story, and it will not be the last. If you look back over the years of war, you will find a pattern. When Russia cannot win on the battlefield, it tries to win in the minds of Ukrainians. It invents stories about mobilization, about corruption, about Western betrayal, about fractures between Kyiv and its allies. Sometimes the fakes are about men trying to escape the draft. Sometimes they are about elite officials fleeing the country. Sometimes they are about NATO secretly abandoning Ukraine. The mobilization of women is a particularly favorite theme because it targets the family, the most emotional and personal part of society. The SVR’s role is to give these fakes an official-looking source: a mysterious intelligence agency saying, “We have insider information.” The agency has a long history of spreading such “insider information,” and every single time, it has turned out to be false. But that does not matter to the people behind it. They do not need to be believed by everyone. They just need to be believed by enough people to plant doubt, to make people argue, to make parents fear for their daughters, to make international partners question Ukraine’s stability. In the fog of war, a single fake story can do real damage, even if it is later debunked. The goal is not to win an argument. The goal is to poison the water.
Why do they do this? The deeper goal is to divide Ukrainian society. The war has already put enormous pressure on every family. Husbands and fathers have been fighting, cities have been bombed, millions have been forced to flee. People are tired. People are anxious. In that kind of atmosphere, a story about forced female mobilization can act like a firecracker thrown into a crowded room. It makes men feel protective, women feel targeted, and everyone feel betrayed by their own government. It suggests that Ukraine’s leaders are so desperate that they would sacrifice every woman to an endless war. It suggests that Europe is using Ukraine as cannon fodder, pushing for more and more people to be sent to die. It makes people ask: Is our leadership working for us or for the West? Are our allies our friends or our masters? That is exactly what Moscow wants. It wants Ukrainians to stop trust their own institutions. It wants them to doubt international support. It wants to create the impression that Ukraine is nothing more than a pawn, being told what to do by foreign powers who do not care about Ukrainian lives. And the timing matters. When the West occasionally discusses military aid packages or strategic decisions, Russian propagandists rush to twist those discussions into stories of domination and coercion. They take a real debate and fabricate a fake ultimatum. This latest fake about women is just another chapter in that ongoing psychological war.
But perhaps the most human cost of this disinformation is the fear it spreads among real women and their loved ones. Imagine being a mother of a young daughter in Kyiv, already sheltering from night raids, already worrying about the front line. You see a headline that says your daughter could be mobilized. Your heart sinks. You feel a cold knot in your stomach. You might start making frantic phone calls, checking for news, trying to figure out whether it’s true. Even if you later learn it’s a lie, the fear stays with you. The anxiety does not disappear just because a fact check is posted. And that is the real tragedy of Russian disinformation: it steals people’s peace of mind. It forces ordinary people to spend emotional energy on lies, when they could be spending it on surviving, on helping their communities, on supporting each other. It also undermines the trust between women who serve and the society they defend. Women in uniform should be celebrated as volunteers and heroes. Instead, thanks to these fakes, they sometimes face questions from their own friends: “Is it true they’re going to start drafting us?” They have to reassure people, correct lies, and prove that their service is a choice. That is exhausting. No soldier — male or female — should have to fight propaganda at home while also fighting the enemy at the front. Yet that is exactly what these fakes demand of them.
So what can we do? First, remember the source. If a story comes from the Russian foreign intelligence service, it is not news; it is a weapon. Treat it with the same suspicion as you would a poison pill. Second, check official channels. When it comes to Ukraine’s mobilization policies, the only reliable sources are the Ukrainian government, the Ministry of Defense, and the General Staff. If they have not said it, it is not true. Third, look for the original quote. If Kaja Kallas supposedly said something, find the video, find the press release, find the transcript. If it does not exist, the quote was invented. Fourth, understand the pattern. Russia repeats these hoaxes because they have worked in the past. The more we recognize the pattern, the less power it has. Finally, support the real women of Ukraine’s armed forces. They are not helpless victims waiting to be forced into a war. They are proud, capable soldiers who joined because they love their country. Every story that paints them as passive victims is a disservice to their sacrifice. By honoring their choice and refusing to spread lies, we can take away the enemy’s favorite weapon. In the end, propaganda is only as strong as the people who repeat it. We can choose to be better than that. We can choose to listen to truth, to verify facts, and to stand in solidarity with Ukrainian women — not as subjects of a fake crisis, but as the strong, brave, and free people they truly are.