Psychologist Agata Zakharyan learned she was on the wanted list from a district police officer. Mathematician Galyna Tsekhmistro found out from a phone call from a major. Neither are doctors, pharmacists, nor are they military-liable under any legitimate legal criteria. Yet both are in the Kharkiv TCC database marked as "draft evaders."
What happened
In March 2026, a scandal erupted in the media after Irina Haratsidi-Loginova — head of human resources at a private company — discovered herself on a wanted list through the Reserve+ application. According to Ukrainian Pravda, she found over 20 other women with the same status in the Shevchenko TCC in Kharkiv.
Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov confirmed during question time in the Verkhovna Rada: the reason was a technical error by that particular district TCC. The women were automatically entered into the database as healthcare workers and assigned military-accounting specialty 912 — a category for those working in field conditions.
"This was a technical problem on the part of the Kharkiv TCC. No woman was fined, all restrictions and wanted notices were removed."
Mykhailo Fedorov, Defense Minister, during Verkhovna Rada session
Where the system failed twice
First failure — technical: automatic entry into the registry without verification. Second failure — legal: when women came to the TCC to sort things out, they were removed from the wanted list, but not removed from the registry. According to TCC representatives, the law lacks a specific provision to "remove from registry due to military commissariat error."
The consequences for those affected were quite real:
- inability to travel abroad;
- risk of bank account blocking;
- police calls for "clarification of information."
A total of 32 cases were documented. The Defense Ministry press service assured that the "wanted" status was removed two weeks ago, and complete removal from the Reserve+ registry will be completed by the end of April. No fines were issued.
Broader context
The incident occurred against the backdrop of general uncertainty about women's military registration. As legal publications explain, only women with medical or pharmaceutical qualifications are subject to mandatory registration. However, as the Kharkiv case demonstrated, the verification mechanism itself — who exactly enters the database and on what grounds — remains opaque: the database is populated automatically, and challenging an error through administrative procedures is harder than making the error in the first place.
Some of those affected have already gone to court. According to legal publications, the Kharkiv District Administrative Court in August 2025 satisfied a woman's lawsuit and recognized the TCC's actions in registering her as unlawful.
If the Defense Ministry does not introduce an automatic verification mechanism before entering the registry by the end of April — rather than after a scandal — the next similar incident will only be a matter of time and the name of another TCC.
