Russia is using social media and messaging apps to recruit mercenary fighters for its invasion of Ukraine, the BBC reported Saturday.
According to the BBC, Russia is using social media platforms and private messaging applications on the internet to actively recruit a “brigade” of mercenary soldiers that will fight next to the Russian army as it battles its way through Ukraine.
The news organization reported that it interviewed one such soldier from the Wagner Group, a mercenary organization believed to be financed by a Russian billionaire, who is currently deployed to Ukraine.
According to a Jerusalem Post story Friday, the secretive mercenary organization developed during fighting in Ukraine in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea, and then appeared to fight with the Russians in Syria to bolster Syrian President Bashar Assad during the civil war there.
“From a legal perspective, Wagner doesn’t exist,” Sorcha MacLeod, who heads the UN’s working group on the use of mercenaries told the Post.
The Wagner Group soldier told the BBC that the organization was contacting its members on the Telegram platform, offering a “picnic in Ukraine.”
One such translated post on the Russian VK platform was recruiting mercenary “guards,” promising that the usual restrictions are waived regarding their place of birth, except those born in Georgia, a former Soviet Union state, and those with debts, or prison records, who would not have been eligible to fight.
The Wagner mercenary interviewed by the BBC said he was paid $2,100 for a successful operation in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv during the first days of the invasion, which began Feb. 24.
"We were then paid $2,100 (£1,600) for a month's work and returned home, to Russia," he told the BBC.
In addition, the BBC reported that Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday approved using some 16,000 Middle Eastern volunteer fighters for use in his campaign.
While Russia is making the effort to recruit mercenaries to fight alongside its troops to keep regular Russian army casualties down, the Ukrainians are also wooing volunteers from other nations to come and help defend the country.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced the creation of an “International Legion” earlier this month that sought volunteers to fight for that side, saying 20,000 volunteers from 52 countries have already joined the battle, Time reported March 7.
“I have the fitness, the youth, and the training — it would be selfish of me not to use it,” Povilas Limontas, a 24-year-old bartender from Lithuania told Time. “If rockets are wasted on me instead of some children, I’ll take that deal anytime.”
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