Wagner: “Fishing” mercenaries for Ukraine through social media

THE Russian mercenary group, Wagnerhas turned to social media to staff areas it needs on its military operations in Ukraine. In the Twitter and to Facebook her ads appear asking to hire various specialties.

Among them are drone operators, doctors, psychologists and more, according to research done by Politico.

More specifically, these ads by Wagner, which has mercenaries operating in several countries, have reached almost 120,000 views on the two social networking platforms in the last ten months, as Logically, a British research group that focuses on disinformation, has revealed.

The same source reports that 60 posts have been made in dozens of languages ​​– including French, Vietnamese and Spanish – in which, in fact, there is information on combat, IT, driving and medical positions, apparently available to Wagner.

High salary and… insurance

They even included phone numbers and Telegram accounts. In… ads to find qualified executives promise monthly salaries of up to 240,000 rubles (€2,800) with benefits including health care.

The posts bear the imprint of the militia and its supporters, although it is not clear if they are genuine.

“All we know is that this uses exactly the same language as Wagner’s previously verified accounts on places like Telegram or VK», said Kyle Walter, Logically’s head of research. It should be noted that VK is a popular Russian social media.

However, for the time being it is not clear what success these recruitment campaigns have had. However, the incitement to violence – and the promotion of Russian attacks against Ukraine – are almost certainly violations of separate terms of use on Facebook and Twitter, which are understood to prohibit such material.

Meanwhile, analysis by a Western government official, which was shared with Politico, confirmed that at least two phone numbers included in those social media posts are directly linked to either Thegroup, or with Russia’s intelligence service.