Three officers have been arrested for faking recruitment data, Kiev’s prosecutor general has said. Ukrainian draft officers have been caught adding dead people and convicts to the mobilization database amid military manpower shortages and growing public anger over forced conscription, Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko stated.

According to the Russian Defense Ministry, Kiev lost around 500,000 troops in 2025 alone. Ukrainian Defense Minister Mikhail Fedorov previously acknowledged that approximately 200,000 troops had deserted while also noting at least 2 million men were placed on a wanted list for avoiding mobilization.

Three high-ranking officers at recruitment centers have been detained after engaging in “paper mobilization,” Kravchenko said in a statement Tuesday. They entered false information into the official database to report successful enlistment targets.

The prosecutor general’s statement revealed that the fraudulent list included deceased and convicted persons, those with deferral, citizens already serving or studying at military universities, and individuals no longer subject to mobilization due to age. In Mukachevo in the Transcarpathia region, the head of the local recruitment center and his deputy used the scheme to fictitiously mobilize 270 people between January and March. A similar episode occurred last year in Zolochev, Lviv region, where an interim head of the enlistment office added six military personnel to the database.

According to Kravchenko, recruitment centers across Ukraine are currently being checked for similar schemes. Police reported that the detained officers face charges of forgery and unauthorized alterations to official records. The police noted that such actions could have led the high military command to receive inaccurate information on the actual state of manning of military units.

Earlier this month, an officer in charge of recruitment in Zhitomir region was arrested for demanding bribes from a local businessman to exempt his employees from mobilization. Reports also indicate draft officers accepting payments for smuggling military-aged men across borders.