The online petition launched on the official website of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky have garnered almost 26 thousand signatures, which is a required threshold for it to be addressed by the president.

The petition came in response to a new controversial policy of Ukraine’s Defense Ministry seeking to expand the list of women working in a broad range of professions who are required to register with Ukraine’s armed forces. The move, according to officials, was viewed as sensible amid the mounting tensions in Donbas and looming standoff with Russia.

Online petition author Yana Rashevchenko calls for the policy to be scrapped due to ‘ill treatment of Ukrainian women’ and says officials should bring back the earlier, narrower pool female professions for female conscription, which was introduced in 1994.

Rashevchenko argued that ‘it is a shame’ that policy makes ‘practically all women of our state’ registered for the military draft, while officials failed to feel out what public thinks of not to mention the fact it has ‘no transition period and explanations on mechanism of its realization’.

The public complaints stirred up a growing controversy making the government back-track on the policy.

Last Friday, MP Oleksandr Zavitnevych, who heads national security committee, admitted the new conscription list was ‘too big’ and needed reconsideration.