Desperate Putin starts recruiting Yemen mercenaries to fight in Ukraine: Hundreds ‘lured to Russia with high salaries before being sent to Ukraine frontline’

Russia has recruited hundreds of Yemeni mercenaries to strengthen its lines in Ukraine under the false promise of high-paid work and Russian citizenship, sources claim.

Recruits say they have already been sent to the front lines after being absorbed into the Russian army with the help of a Houthi-linked company.

Many of those going to Russia claim they were pressured into the military under the promise of a well-paying career away from the front lines, recruits told the military. FT.

Yemenis who expected substantial salaries and secure jobs in manufacturing positions say they were threatened upon arrival and transferred to Ukraine with little training.

Russia has tried to prevent full mobilization in recent weeks by tapping into the support of some 12,000 North Korean troops and mercenaries from India and Nepal.

Ukrainian soldiers fire a 2s5 ‘Hyacinth-s’ self-propelled howitzer at Russian troops on the front line near Khasiv Yar on November 18

The Russian army’s Solntsepyok multiple rocket launcher fires on Ukrainian positions in the border area of ​​the Kursk region, Russia, released on November 13

Vladimir Putin will hold a meeting with the leadership of the Ministry of Defense and representatives of the defense industry in Moscow on November 22

The recruitment of Yemeni soldiers “appears to have started as early as July,” the FT reports, months before Kim Jong Un sent his troops to reinforce Putin’s lines.

One recruit estimated he was part of a group of about 200 Yemenis sent to fight in Russia in September.

Some say they were tricked into joining after signing employment contracts they couldn’t read and being told they would be working in lucrative fields like engineering.

When they arrived in Russia, one recruit said a man fired a gun over their heads and ordered them to sign a contract before being bused to Ukraine.

The recruit who joined in September said he was just hoping to earn enough money to complete his studies before arriving in Ukraine dressed in a Russian uniform.

Recruits told the Financial Times that they had come under bombardment, had no rest time and that one had ended up in hospital after trying to kill himself.

Contracts seen by the FT point to a company in Oman founded by Houthi politician Abdulwali Abdo Hassan al-Jabri.

Officials have suggested for months that Yemen’s Houthi rebels are working with Russia to trade weapons and data that power their operations in the Red Sea.

Deals are reportedly overseen by Iranian agents, who are said to have helped Russia negotiate the sale of missiles and satellite data to the Houthis.

Information was passed from Russia to members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps embedded in the Houthi ranks, a source told the WSJ last month.

A report citing Western officials suggested that Russia has deliberately tried to destabilize the region by supporting the Houthis to undermine Western allies.

The Houthis have attacked more than 100 ships in solidarity with Hamas since November due to the ongoing war between Israel and Gaza, disrupting trade.

One motivation for Moscow to arm the Houthis, well-placed sources told Reuters last month, was the looming US threat to allow Ukraine to use long-range missiles to strike deep into Russian territory.

The US gave its consent last week as President Joe Biden wants to give Ukraine the upper hand before he leaves office to be replaced by Donald Trump next year.

Western and regional sources with knowledge of the matter said at the time that Russia had yet to decide whether to send Yakhont missiles to the Houthis.

Experts said the missiles would allow them to target commercial ships more accurately and increase the threat to the American and European warships defending them.

Police evacuate a family from the village of Yelyzavetivka in the Donetsk region of Ukraine, towards Kurakhove, on November 14

The oil tanker Cordelia Moon bursts into flames after being hit by a missile in the Red Sea, off Yemen’s Red Sea port of Hodeida, in this screenshot from a video released on October 1, 2024

A child gestures as protesters, mostly Houthi supporters, gather to show support for Lebanese Hezbollah and Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, in Sanaa, Yemen, November 22, 2024

Smoke rising from the Sounion after the Houthis attacks in Yemen, in the Red Sea, August 29

The Yakhont is considered one of the world’s most advanced anti-ship missiles, designed to skim the surface of the sea to avoid detection at more than twice the speed of sound, making it difficult to intercept.

Edmund Fitton-Brown, senior adviser to the Counter Extremism Project and former British ambassador to Yemen, told MailOnline that the claims are “deeply worrying if true” and appear “credible” to the extent that Iran and Russia are “locked into a dismissive attitude’. -disruptor embrace’.

“A key Russian goal is to show US weakness and thus make Trump’s re-election more likely,” he said. “That potential strategic gain takes precedence over all other considerations.”

“Any successful upgrade of Houthi capabilities would also likely trigger a kinetic Israeli response,” Mr Fitton-Brown warned, adding that such a deal could “draw clearer lines of alliance” between a Russia-Iran axis against the West.