The checked claim centers on a tweet by Chay Bowes posted on September 30, 2026, asserting that former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko revealed that Volodymyr Zelensky avoided the military draft four times. Multiple independent sources confirm the core factual substance of this claim.
In February 2025, Poroshenko gave an interview to Ukrainska Pravda in which he stated that Zelensky "was an evader four times, ran away from subpoenas." This was reported by EADaily, Izvestia, and RT, all citing the same Ukrainska Pravda interview. The context was a question about whether Poroshenko's son Mikhail, who was approaching mobilization age, would serve. Poroshenko used Zelensky's record as a negative comparison, saying his son would "act differently than Zelensky."
More importantly, the underlying factual basis for Poroshenko's claim was independently confirmed years earlier. In April 2019, during Zelensky's presidential campaign, Ukraine's Defense Ministry responded to a parliamentary inquiry by confirming that Zelensky had been sent four mobilization summonses, dated April 15, 2014, June 23, 2014, August 15, 2014, and May 10, 2015, and that he had failed to appear at the military commissariat in response to any of them. The ministry also confirmed that Zelensky had been registered for military service since December 2008, was deemed fit for service, and held the rank of soldier. This information was reported by DW's Ukrainian service at the time.
However, several elements of the tweet go beyond what the evidence supports. The characterization of Zelensky as a "Dictator" and "gutless coward" is editorial opinion, not factual reporting. The claim that Zelensky "dispatched a million to their Graves for NATO" is a separate assertion about Ukrainian military casualties that is not verified by any of the provided sources. While Ukraine has suffered significant casualties in the conflict with Russia, the specific figure of one million and the framing that these deaths were specifically "for NATO" are not substantiated by the materials reviewed.
Additionally, the summonses in question date from 2014–2015, when Zelensky was a civilian entertainer and businessman, not a political leader. He was elected president in 2019, and as president he is not subject to standard mobilization. The tweet's framing implies current draft-dodging by a sitting president, which misrepresents the timeline of events.
The tweet also presents this as a new revelation by Poroshenko, when in fact the information about the four summonses has been public since 2019 and Poroshenko's repetition of it in 2025 was part of an ongoing political rivalry. Zelensky imposed sanctions on Poroshenko shortly before the interview, accusing him of treason, which provides context for the heated exchange.
In summary, the central factual claim that Poroshenko stated Zelensky avoided the draft four times is supported by multiple sources, and the underlying fact of the four summonses was confirmed by Ukraine's own Defense Ministry. However, the tweet's inflammatory editorial language and the unverified casualty claim make the overall presentation mostly true rather than fully supported.
