How one woman lures foreign recruits to Russia’s front line in Ukraine

Flames lick around the edges of Omar’s passport. “It’s burning well,” an unseen woman says in Russian in the video.

Omar, a 26-year-old Syrian construction worker, had been deployed for about nine months on the front line of Russia’s war in Ukraine when the clip arrived on his phone.

He knew the woman’s voice. It was Polina Alexandrovna Azarnykh, who he says had helped him sign up to fight for Russia, promising lucrative work and Russian citizenship. But now she was angry.

In a series of voice notes from Ukraine, Omar, speaking under a pseudonym for his safety, describes how he ended up trapped and terrified in the war zone.

He says Azarnykh had promised that if he paid her $3,000 (£2,227), she would ensure he stayed in a non-combat role. But, he says, he was sent into battle with just 10 days of training, so he refused to pay and she eventually responded by burning his passport.

He says he tried refusing to take part in a mission, but his commanders threatened to kill or jail him.

“We were tricked… this woman is a con artist and a liar,” says Omar.

A BBC Eye investigation has followed how Azarnykh, a 40-year-old former teacher, uses a Telegram channel to lure young men, often from poor countries, into joining Russia’s military.

The former teacher’s smiling video messages and upbeat posts offer “one-year contracts” for “military service”.

The BBC World Service has identified nearly 500 cases where she has provided documents, referred to as invitations, which allow the recipient to enter Russia to join the military. These have been for men – mainly from Syria, Egypt and Yemen – who appear to have sent her their passport details in order to enlist.

But recruits and their relatives have told the BBC that she misled men into believing they would avoid combat, failed to make clear they could not leave after a year and threatened those who challenged her. When contacted by the BBC, she rejected the allegations.

Twelve families told us of young men they say were recruited by her who are now dead or missing.

Domestically, Russia has expanded conscription, recruited prisoners and offered increasingly generous sign-up bonuses to maintain its operation in Ukraine, despite substantial losses.

More than one million of its soldiers have been killed or wounded since the full-scale invasion in 2022, with 25,000 killed in the month of December 2025 alone, according to Nato.

Research by BBC News Russian, based on obituaries and other publicly available death records, suggests Russian troop losses in Ukraine rose faster than ever last year.

It is difficult to determine how many foreigners have joined Russia’s military. BBC Russian’s analysis – which also looked at the number of foreigners killed and injured – suggests at least 20,000 may have signed up, including from countries such as Cuba, Nepal and North Korea.

Ukraine has suffered significant troop losses too, and has also taken foreign fighters into its ranks.

Omar’s first contact with Azarnykh was when he was stranded with barely any money at a Moscow airport in March 2024, together with 14 other Syrians.

Jobs in Syria were scarce and low paid. Omar says a recruiter there had offered the men what they understood to be civilian work guarding oil facilities in Russia. They flew to Moscow, only to learn they had been scammed.

Searching online for options, Omar says, one of the group found Azarnykh’s channel and messaged her.

She met them at the airport within hours, and took them by train to a recruitment centre in Bryansk, western Russia, he says.

There, he says, she offered them one-year contracts with the Russian army, with a monthly salary equivalent to about $2,500 (£1,856), and a sign-up payment of $5,000 (£3,711) – sums they could only dream of in Syria.

Omar says the contracts were in Russian, which none of the men understood, and she took their passports, promising to arrange Russian citizenship. She also promised they could avoid combat roles if they paid her $3,000 (£2,227) each from their sign-up payments, he says.

But, he says, within about a month, he was on the front line with, he says, just 10 days’ training and no military experience.

“We’re 100% going to die here,” he says in one of his voice notes, sent to the BBC investigative team.

“A lot of injuries, a lot of explosions, a lot of shelling. If you don’t die from the explosion, you’ll die from the debris landing on you,” he says in May 2024.

“Dead bodies everywhere… I’ve stepped on dead bodies, God forgive me,” he reports the following month.

“If someone dies, I’ve seen it with my own eyes, they put him in a rubbish bag and throw him next to a tree,” he adds.

After nearly a year, he had discovered what he says Azarnykh had failed to explain – a 2022 Russian decree essentially allows the military to extend soldiers’ contracts automatically until the war ends.

“If they renew the contract, I’m screwed – oh God,” he says.

His contract was continued.

Azarnykh’s Telegram channel has 21,000 subscribers. Her posts have often told readers wanting to apply to join the Russian military to send her a scan of their passport. She has then posted invitation documents, sometimes with a list of names of the men they are for.

The BBC has identified more than 490 such invitations that she has sent over the past year to men from countries including Yemen, Syria, Egypt, Morocco, Iraq, Ivory Coast and Nigeria.

Her posts have mentioned recruitment for an “elite international battalion” and made it clear that people in Russia illegally – including those whose visas have expired – are eligible.

We have spoken to eight foreign fighters including Omar who were recruited by her, as well as the families of the 12 men who are missing or dead.

Many felt Azarnykh had misled or exploited recruits. They told us the men knew they were joining the military, but did not expect to serve on the front line. Several, like Omar, felt they had inadequate training or thought they would be able to leave after a year.

In Egypt, Yousef – whose name we have also changed – told the BBC his older brother Mohammed, began a university course in Yekaterinburg in Russia in 2022.

But he struggled to pay his fees, Yousef says, and told his family a Russian woman named Polina had begun offering him help online, including work with the Russian military that he believed would allow him to continue his studies.

“She promised him housing and citizenship… monthly expenses,” he says. “Suddenly he was sent to Ukraine. He found himself fighting,” says Yousef.

His last call was on 24 January 2024, Yousef says. About a year later, Yousef says a message arrived on Telegram from a Russian number, containing images of Mohammed’s body. The family eventually learned he had been killed almost a year earlier.

Azarnykh became “one of the most important recruiters” for Russia’s army, says Habib, another Syrian who has served in Russia’s military. He was willing to be filmed but spoke under a pseudonym for fear of repercussions.

Habib says he and Azarnykh “worked together for around three years on visa invitations to Russia”. He gave no further details and we have not been able to confirm his role in the process. An image from social media in 2024 shows him alongside her.

Azarnykh, who is from Russia’s south-western Voronezh region, ran a Facebook group helping Arab students come to Moscow to study, before starting her Telegram channel in 2024.

Habib says most foreign recruits arrived expecting roles securing facilities or standing at checkpoints. “The Arabs who are coming are dying immediately. Some people lost their minds – it’s hard to see dead bodies,” he says.

Habib says he met Omar and the group of Syrians at a military training site. “She had promised them citizenship, good salaries and that they’d be safe,” Habib says. “But once you sign a contract here, there’s no way you can leave.”

“None of them knew how to use a weapon. Even if they were shot at, they would choose not to shoot back… if you don’t shoot, you will be killed,” he says. “Polina would take the men, knowing that they were going to die.”

He says she “received $300 (£223) from the army for every person she recruited”. The BBC could not confirm this, although other recruits also told us they believed she received payment.

Azarnykh’s posts from mid-2024 begin to note that recruits will be “participating in hostilities” and mention foreign fighters who have died in combat.

“You all understood well that you were going to war,” she says in one video in October 2024. “You thought that you could get a Russian passport, do nothing and live in a five-star hotel?… Nothing happens for free.”

In another case, in 2024, the BBC has heard a voice message sent by Azarnykh to a mother whose son was serving in the military. Azarnykh says the woman has “published something horrible about the Russian army”. Using expletives, she threatens the son’s life and warns the woman: “I’ll find you and all your children.”

The BBC made multiple attempts to contact Azarnykh. Initially she said she would do an interview with us if we travelled to Russia, but the BBC declined for safety reasons. Later, when asked in a voice call about claims that recruits were promised non-combat roles, she hung up. In voice notes sent afterwards, she said our work was “not professional” and warned of potential defamation proceedings. She also said: “Our respected Arabs can stick their accusations up their arses.”

The BBC contacted the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Defence for comment, but received no response.

Previously, in March 2022 President Putin backed the recruitment of men from the Middle East, insisting they were ideologically, not financially, driven: “There are people who want to come voluntarily, especially not for money, and provide assistance to people.”

Journalists and researchers following the issue say individuals like Azarnykh are part of a web of informal recruiters.

The BBC has found two other Telegram accounts in Arabic making similar offers for joining Russia’s military. One includes posts showing invitation documents and lists of names, the other has advertised large sign-up payments for joining an “elite battalion”.

In September, Kenyan police said they had broken up a suspected “trafficking syndicate” that they said was luring Kenyans with job offers, but sending them to fight in Ukraine.

Kateryna Stepanenko, a research fellow at the Institute for the Study of War, told the BBC some municipal and regional authorities in Russia have been offering cash incentives of up to $4,000 (£2,970) to individuals such as HR professionals and local residents who recruit Russians or foreigners into military service.

She says the Kremlin initially used larger entities such as the Wagner private military group and prison system for recruitment, but since 2024 has also been “leveraging locals and smaller companies”.

This “suggests to me that those earlier versions of recruitment are no longer generating the same number of recruits”, she adds.

Meanwhile, Habib is now back in Syria after, he says, having bribed several commanders to terminate his contract. Omar eventually received Russian citizenship and has also managed to return to Syria. Two of the Syrians he served with are dead, according to their families.

Azarnykh “sees us as numbers or money – she doesn’t see us as people”, he says. “We won’t forgive her for what she did to us.”

Additional reporting by Olga Ivshina, Gehad Abbas, Ali Ibrahim, Victoria Arakelyan, and Rayan Maarouf