BBC: Former Russian teacher recruited hundreds of foreigners for war against Ukraine

Polina Azarnykh, a 40-year-old former Russian teacher, sent nearly 500 invitations to foreign men allowing them to enter Russia and join the military. They and their relatives told reporters that the woman misled the men and claimed they would avoid combat.

This is stated in a BBC investigation.

Originally from the Voronezh region of Russia, the woman previously ran a Facebook group that helped Arab students come to study in Moscow. In 2024, she launched her own Telegram channel, which now has 21 000 subscribers.

In it, a woman offers foreigners one-year contracts for military service. The posts mentioned recruitment into an “elite international battalion”. They also said that people who are in Russia illegally, including those whose visas have expired, have the right to join the Russian armed forces.

Among those who accepted the invitation were men from countries such as Yemen, Syria, Egypt, Morocco, Iraq, Ivory Coast, and Nigeria.

Omar from Syria

One of the men the BBC spoke to was Syrian Omar. He says there was little work in Syria and a recruiter offered him and other men what they understood to be civilian jobs guarding oil facilities in Russia. When they flew to Russia, they discovered they had been duped.

At a recruitment center in Bryansk, a woman offered them one-year contracts with the Russian army with a monthly salary of about $2 500 and a first payment of $5 000. In Syria, they could only dream of such sums.

Omar says the contracts were written in Russian, which neither man understood, and Azarnykh took their passports, promising to grant them Russian citizenship. She also promised they could avoid the fighting if they paid her $3 000 each.

But, according to him, he found himself on the front lines in about a month — after ten days of training.

"We are 100% going to die here," he says in one of his voicemails, which was sent to the BBC.

Nearly a year later, he discovered what he said Azarnykh had explained to him: a 2022 Russian decree effectively allows the army to automatically extend soldiers’ contracts until the war ends. And his contract was extended. Eventually, he received Russian citizenship and was able to return to Syria.

Mohammed from Egypt

The BBC spoke to relatives of 12 men who went missing or died in the war against Ukraine. One of them, Yousef (name changed) from Egypt, spoke about his older brother Mohammed.

He began studying at a university in Yekaterinburg, Russia. But he was having trouble paying his tuition and told his family that a Russian woman Polina had started offering him help online, including a job in the Russian military. She offered him housing, citizenship, and monthly payments.

The last call from Mohammed was on January 24, 2024. About a year later, a message from a Russian number arrived on Telegram, containing an image of Mohammedʼs body. The family eventually learned that he had been killed almost a year earlier.

From mid-2024

In publications from mid-2024, Azarnykh begins to indicate that mercenaries "will participate in hostilities" and mentions foreign fighters who died in battle.

"You all knew full well that you were going to war. You thought you could get a Russian passport, do nothing, and live in a five-star hotel?... Nothing is free," she says in a video in October 2024.

In another case, in 2024, Azarnykh sent a voicemail to a mother whose son was serving in the military. Azarnykh says the woman “posted something horrible about the Russian army”. Using profanity, she threatens her son’s life and warns the woman: “I will find you and all your children.”

The BBC repeatedly tried to contact the recruiter. At first she said she would give us an interview if we went to Russia, but the BBC journalists refused on security grounds. Later, when asked in a voicemail whether she had promised non-combat roles to foreigners, she hung up. In later voicemails, she said the journalistsʼ work was "unprofessional" and threatened to sue for defamation. She also said: "Our respected Arabs can shove their accusations up their arses."

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