Are Romanian reservists receiving orders by mail meant to mobilize them for war? No, that's not true: the claim is from a 2022 news report and this kind of notice is part of Romania's military standard routines, as every year reservists are called for updates on their military status.
The claim originated in a video (archived here) published on TikTok on August 2, 2023, with the following caption as a graphic overlay (translated from Romanian to English by the Lead Stories staff):
Order received for mobilization to war. Let me hear you with Slava Ukraine!!!
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Wed Aug 16 08:18:18 2023 UTC)
In this news report from July 2022 on TV channel Antena 3 CNN, the moderator first said that Romanian reservists were receiving "orders for mobilization or war," then she introduced a lawyer by phone. The man said he'd received such an order, a piece of paper with the quoted title was shown on the screen, and then he mentioned the war in Ukraine, adding "it's clear that something is being planned."
But Romania's Ministry of National Defense (MApN) was not sending orders of mobilization for war, as its spokesperson, Constantin Spînu, explained to Romanian fact-checker Factual.ro, who debunked the claim in this specific news report. What reservists received by mail were regular notices as part of a routine action of status update, stipulated in Law 446/2006 on preparing the population for defense.
The regional military centers are obliged to constantly update their databases on the Romanian army's reserves, according to Spînu, and around 34,000 people are called each year for this update. Earlier that year, MApN had also explained that the mobilization order is applicable only in case a state of mobilization, siege or war is declared. This has not happened in Romania, as MApN's official communication channels have announced nothing similar as of this writing.
Recurrent claims about reservists being drafted or mobilized for war, including some based on fake notices spread in the media, have been frequently debunked by MApN, before and after the war in Ukraine started in February 2022.
