Such a “promotion campaign” does not exist. Verified Ukrainian Armed Forces Facebook and Instagram accounts never conducted such advertising campaigns to encourage enlistment. Currently Ukraine is only mobilizing for certain specialists that the army needs.
An alleged “promotional” video from the Ukrainian Defense Ministry – “Bring a friend to the draft board and get 20,000 hryvnias” – is being actively disseminated online. Those sharing this video claim it was originally published on the Ukrainian Armed Forces @ukraine_defence official Instagram page.
“The Ukrainian Defense Ministry continues to look for ways out of their acute soldier shortage, now offering to sell friends for the front’s needs” write Russian Z-channels on Telegram.
Such a promotion campaign has never existed in the first place. This “advertisement” never appeared on the official website and social media pages of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and the Ukrainian Defense Ministry. The Defense Ministry hotline also confirmed this information to be patently false.
There are claims that this call was originally published on the Ukrainian Armed Forces official Instagram page. To prove this, they publish screenshots of the advertising campaign on the @ukraine_defence page.
This however, is also completely false. The Instagram account @ukraine_defence is not the Ukrainian Armed Forces official Instagram page. According to the page description, this is an information portal that regularly publishes information about Ukrainian military personnel. The Ukrainian Armed Forces official Instagram page is the @uaf_general_staff account. It is verified by Instagram, and is linked to the official Ukrainian Armed Forces website. Furthermore, by checking Facebook’s Ad Library, we learned that the verified Ukrainian Armed Forces Facebook and Instagram accounts have never created any advertising campaigns on social media.
The @ukraine_defence Instagram account also never posted such an advertisement. Facebook’s Ad Library reports that this page launched an advertising campaign only once, in July 2022, for the opening of a Prague exhibition featuring Russian military equipment destroyed in Ukraine. Therefore, claims that this page advertised the “Bring a friend to the draft board and get 20,000 hryvnias” campaign is also false.
The Center for Countering Disinformation at the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council also drew attention to this disinformation. They noted that such messages were disseminated by the enemy as part of special information and psychological operations aimed at discrediting the mobilization campaign in Ukraine.
Today, general mobilization is underway in Ukraine in accordance with the Ukrainian Law On Mobilization Training and Mobilization. Speaking to the Liga.net online publication, Ukrainian Ground Forces command headquarters chief Roman Horbach, said that the recruitment and enlistment centers adhere to an existing plan regarding the number of specialists to be drafted in accordance with the military’s needs. The “bring a friend campaign” therefore is completely absurd, because the Ukrainian army is drafting only those specialists that it currently needs.
Previously, StopFake debunked Russian media manipulation claims that Defense Minister Reznikov allegedly recognized Ukraine as a “Western training ground”.
