False reports claiming public sector employees across Russian regions are being subjected to mandatory military training have been exposed as online fabrications.
Social media posts circulated forged decrees allegedly signed by regional governors, ordering municipal staff to retrain in specialized wartime roles including unmanned aerial vehicle operation, explosives handling, and tactical medicine.
Investigations revealed that none of the cited decrees exist in official government databases or electronic legal act portals, while the viral posts duplicated each other word for word or with minor alterations across multiple online platforms.
Fabricated decrees in central and southern regions
In Tambov Oblast, official records on the regional legal portal showed no decree regarding staff retraining. On the date specified in the viral posts, regional authorities had published only two documents, neither of which concerned public sector worker qualifications.
Authorities in Oryol Oblast also confirmed that no such gubernatorial decree was ever registered in their legal database. The Regional Management Centre in Oryol stated that the government officially refuted the claims, warning that the fake was designed to create social tension and discredit Russian military policy.
Regional Management Centres, known as TsUR, operate across Russian federal subjects to monitor digital platforms, track citizen grievances, and issue rapid refutations of online misinformation.
Further southwest, official legal portals in Voronezh Oblast and Krasnodar Krai contained no records of any orders mandating military retraining for civil servants.
Forged documents across northern and eastern territories
In the Udmurt Republic, the regional management center declared the circulating document counterfeit. Officials confirmed that the acting head of the republic had not issued or planned to issue any decrees reallocating municipal workers to military roles, and no such text appeared on the government website.
In northern Russia, the legal portal and electronic bulletin for Murmansk Oblast carried no mention of worker retraining. In Arkhangelsk Oblast, regional authorities officially debunked the claims, stating that the intention behind the fake notices was to sow panic and raise anxiety among local residents.
Official databases in Yaroslavl Oblast similarly showed no record of the fake order. Fact-checkers found that the document had been shared from an empty social media account that featured no profile photograph or prior publications.
Disinformation targeting new regions and civil service
The forgery campaign also targeted territories in eastern and southern Ukraine under Russian control. In Zaporozhye Oblast, legal act portals held no record matching the document number or date shown in photographs, which were confirmed to be altered. In the Luhansk People's Republic, legal acts approved by the head of the region over the past month included zero documents relating to worker retraining.
Russian mainstream news outlets either ignored the claims entirely or published them solely with official refutations. Analysts noted that the coordinated effort aimed to destabilize administrative operations, heighten public anxiety, and disrupt state institutions.
The report was compiled with participation from Lapsha Media, a Russian digital fact-checking project dedicated to identifying online hoaxes and verifying viral legal documents.
