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Whatever the truth of such matters turns out to be, we should not be surprised that every time a foreign-looking face shows up somewhere in Russia, Western legacy media are running with it (see, e.g., North Koreans) to help their puppet masters reinforce the narrative that "Russia is running out of soldiers," "casualties are high," etc., and to justify escalations such as releasing Ukraine to use missiles to target

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to blacken Russia and Putin any lies told

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A couple of months ago, in a conversation with the Ambassador of an “insert African Country here”. I was informed of a similar happening. Citizens from said country were been enticed with lucrative work abroad offers, and upon entry into Russia, were informed that they would be trained to work as security men to serve in the various train stations etc. They were then subsequently made to sign a contract without the services of a competent interpreter or legal person, only to later discover that they have been recruited into the Army.

Perhaps as you said, they may be some shadowy independent organisation working to do this. Perhaps not! What matters is that Russian authorities get behind it and resolve this

I

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2 hrs ago·edited 2 hrs ago

I have a hard time believing any recruitment of merc from any external sources has occurred in the regular Russian military. The simple reason is friendly fire kills. One great way to cause your own men to lose their spirit for getting stuck into a fire fight is to have to do it while dealing with men who have not been properly trained. (Number one killer of British Troops in Gulf War was USA troops. So much for NATO inter-operability).

As a solid example look at what is known of Yevgeny Prigozhin's men, and what happened recently in Mali to Wagner Group, or much earlier where 300 Wagner men were killed in Syria (the MSM reports them as 300 russians dead, but I hear most were not) due to failure to deploy properly.

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As always, consider the source.

In this case British MSM, so I consider this story as made entirely of whole cloth. As for Britain itself, an Arab expression seems appropriate. 'Dogs bark, but the caravan moves on.'

Fun fact: Since 2015 The Financial Times is owned by Nikkei Inc. of Japan.

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"The point being made by bringing this all up is that Russia doesn’t have some secret deal with the Houthis to recruit fighters against Ukraine."

Yeah, great — I wouldn't have thought many sensible people harboured much doubt or question about this, in the first place.

How about some investigative journalism to expose how (many) mercenaries openly fighting against Russia in the Ukraine are employed? It might not be as eye-catching as the FT but it might be interesting, even to those who don't spend a lot of time and energy worrying about what and how people who read the FT think and feel.

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