Putin's United Russia is stepping up recruitment for its own private army - intelligence
Kyiv • UNN
The Espagnola PMC, formed by radical Russian football hooligans, recruits fighters by promising them high pay.
Putin's United Russia party has acquired its own private army - the so-called "Española" PMC, UNN reports with reference to the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine.
According to the GUR, this terrorist formation was previously part of the so-called Vostok battalion as a volunteer unit of Russian football hooligans.
Since 2023, Putin's party has had the Española at its disposal - the terrorist unit has declared the status of a so-called private military company, and active recruitment has begun and continues with money from United Russia, the intelligence service added.
The Española PMC recruits so-called football "ultras," Russian radicals of all stripes, including sympathizers of Nazi ideology, as well as ordinary civilians from impoverished "subjects" of the Russian Federation and the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine - the latter are used in "meat" assaults to create the status of a "combat unit."
According to the GUR, at recruitment centers for the "Espanyol" operating in the occupied Ukrainian territories, volunteers are promised 220 thousand rubles per month for direct participation in hostilities against Ukraine. The contract is for at least six months.
"People are also lured to die for Moscow by 'insurance payments': 1 million rubles for a light injury; 2 million rubles for a moderate injury; 3 million rubles for a serious injury; 5 million rubles for death.
However, financial motivation is only a wrapper. For most recruits, the first battle is a one-way ticket. The dead and seriously wounded among the recruited "cannon fodder" are not taken from the battlefield by the Russians, they are registered as "missing" in order not to pay relatives rubles for the breadwinner sent to death by Moscow," the intelligence summarized.
