The Russian military has begun calling on migrants to join them in the fight against “Ukrainian Nazis” to “go down in history on the side of good” and help honor the historic ties between Russia and the former Soviet states that gained independence after the collapse of the USSR. .

He reported on the situation on his page Twitter independent researcher Chris Owen after it was reported by Russian news channel SOTA, which works mainly on Telegram.

SOTA journalists note that Russian army recruiters were seen handing out leaflets to migrants at the Vykhino train station in eastern Moscow and at metro stations in the Russian capital.

The distributed leaflets state that migrants who want to join the Russian army as volunteers for the war in Ukraine must be between the ages of 18 and 40, speak Russian and meet certain criteria regarding physical condition and level of education.

How the Russian army is trying to convince migrants to fight in Ukraine

The leaflets also list the “advantages of serving in the Russian army”:

• joint opposition to the Nazis in Ukraine within the framework of the CSTO (Collective Security Treaty Organization – a military alliance led by Russia, which also includes Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan);

• the opportunity to gain invaluable military experience during a military special operation;

• the opportunity to become a Hero of Russia and enter history on the side of good, with the opportunity to revive and perpetuate ties between the fraternal peoples of Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan;

• to take a direct part in the revival of Great Russia and the peoples of the friendly republics.

But the Russian army does not need volunteers who:

• do not support Russia’s special operation in Ukraine;

• support the Nazi regime in Ukraine;

• shoots or distributes videos discrediting the military of the Russian Federation.

Russia is inviting its allies to war with words

As SOTA journalists also remind, the OSTC is not participating in the war of aggression launched by Putin on February 24, despite the clear statement in the leaflets that the invasion was launched “within” the alliance.

The only exception in this regard is the case of Belarus, which allowed Moscow’s troops to attack Ukraine from its territory, but without directly involving its own troops in the conflict.

President Vladimir Putin made a rare visit to Belarus earlier this week, with some analysts saying he came to Minsk to put further pressure on dictator Alexander Lukashenko to join the war.

It is also interesting that leaflets distributed by the Russian military do not mention Armenia in the category of “sister nations” after Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan was thrown out during the CSTO meeting last month.

Forced mobilization of immigrants from Russia

However, Armenians do not seem to be subject to “discrimination” when it comes to volunteers sought by the Russian armed forces, with SOTA journalists quoting an Armenian citizen living in Moscow as saying that police in the Russian capital have begun searching for non-citizen migrants of Russia

According to the cited source, migrants are forced to register at the military commissariats in the Russian capital and offer themselves as “volunteers” for the war, and the police threaten them with trouble at work if they do not do so.

Chris Owen points out that this is not a new tactic, as migrants from Russia have been forcibly mobilized for months.

“Since there were 5.5 million migrants in Russia in November 2021, the authorities probably see them as a cheap recruitment pool,” he concludes.

But Russian investigative journalists have also shown that Wagner’s mercenaries began looking for volunteers, including outside Russia, since July, placing advertisements about it in newspapers in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.

At the end of October, the magazine Foreign Policy revealed in a long article that the patrons of the Wagner group, led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, began recruiting even in Afghanistan, looking for commandos trained by the American army.

Follow the latest events of the 301st day of the war in Ukraine LIVETEXT on HOTNEWS.RO.