DESPERATE Vladimir Putin is ramping up shady recruitment of foreign fighters as his battered forces continue to take heavy losses in Ukraine.

The Kremlin is using fake job offers to lure unsuspecting migrants to Russia – before forcing them at gunpoint to sign army contracts and fight in the meatgrinder war.

Foreign recruits are being duped into becoming Putin’s latest frontline cannon fodder in his bloody invasion, sources told The Sun.

There are believed to be nearly 30,000 foreign fighters in Putin’s army from some 130 different countries, according to Kyiv.

But in April, bombshell Ukrainian intelligence suggested the Russian despot is planning to recruit an additional 18,500 foreigners into his army by the end of this year.

The boost would mark a sharp increase in the yearly intake of migrants for the Russian military – and the clearest sign yet that Moscow is seeking to patch its devastating battlefield losses.

Political scientist Dr Jedrzej Czerep told The Sun Russia targets low-skilled workers from abroad to fuel their mass assaults of “human waves” for the meatgrinder frontline.

Meanwhile, Russia expert Emily Ferris agreed that Putin was desperate to “plug gaps” in his increasingly exhausted army.

Marcelo Tataje, a lawyer representing Peruvian families whose loved ones were allegedly tricked into Putin’s army, said many were lured to Russia by fake adverts for taxi drivers, chefs and other ordinary jobs.

Some were even threatened with death and forced to sign up, he claimed.

Describing one of his client’s experience with Russian military officers, he told The Sun: “They just pointed a gun to his head and said: ‘If you don’t sign, you’re dead.’

“That’s what most of the victims say.”

Only 18 Peruvians have been able to flee from Russia back to their homeland after making a “movie-like” escape, Tataje added.

He described how these survivors jumped out of accommodation windows in the middle of the night before dashing to the Peruvian embassy.

Over 80 per cent of families Tataje is working with have told him their loved ones were beaten up, made to sign contracts by gunpoint, or threatened with lengthy jail terms of up to 15 years.

Many of them were being contacted directly by Kremlin-controlled accounts over social media, he said.

The lawyer said: “They promise that Russia is kind of the new ‘American dream’ and that workers are gonna earn like $20,000 just for getting into Russia.”

Moscow offers salaries of about $3,000 to fight – dwarfing the average monthly wage in Peru which sits under $600.

“They are promised that when they get to Russia they will have jobs like a taxi driver or chef – but they don’t tell to them that they will be employed in the military,” he said.

“We have at least 15 cases new every day and the list of Peruvians dying there is getting longer every day.”

But the scandal stretches far beyond South America – with Putin’s recruitment net spanning the entire globe.

Czerep, who researches Moscow’s recruitment across Africa, highlighted how those who are tricked can be ordinary civilians with no experience in any army.

He said: “These people… most of them don’t have any military past.”

And Ferris told us: “These are not really well trained soldiers, these are just people most of the time – they are civilians, they don’t have military training.”

Some 3,000 Africans are believed to be fighting for Russia, according to Ukraine – with some countries more severely hit by the Kremlin’s recruitment racket.

Kenyan intelligence, for example, suggests more than 1,000 of its citizens have been tricked into Putin’s military.

The Kremlin also uses the facade of sport events, educational grants and job agencies to trick African men into travelling to Russia, according to a report from Ukraine’s Centre for Strategic Communications .

The estimated 30,000 foreign fighters does not include an estimated 15,000 troops from North Korea – who have been deployed to Ukraine under an official Pyongyang-Moscow alliance.

Czerep also said eye-watering wages, much like in South America, were one of the biggest lures in Putin’s honeytrap recruitment.

“If you compare salaries of policemen or of soldiers in countries like Kenya, the money that they are being offered in the Russian army on the front lines is something like 10 or 20 times bigger,” he said.

Explaining why Putin keeps taking soldiers from abroad, he said: “Russia doesn’t want to go into an open mobilization.

“That would cause too much, you know, tension, and that could potentially meet resistance.”

He added: “Russia prefers to look specifically for low-skilled foreign soldiers to be sent to the most deadly aspects of the fighting.

“Mass assaults, human waves that are being thrown into the combat.”

Meanwhile, Ferris told The Sun: “What they [Russia] really need at the front at the moment is manpower.

“They’re trying to avoid an internal mobilisation campaign because of how unpopular it was in 2022.”

Czerep said Putin prefers this method as the deaths of outsiders do “not cause any unrest inside of Russia”.

The analyst also noted that racist attitude towards foreign fighters is “very visible”.

Last year, Kenyan national Francis Ndung’u Ndarua was tricked into fighting for Russia after being offered an electrical engineering job, his mother Anne Ndarua claims.

Just a week later, Francis was seen in horrifying footage which went viral on social media with a landmine strapped to his chest.

As he cowered in fear, a Russian troop behind the camera could be heard racially abusing him and taunting that he would be used as a “can-opener” for Ukrainian frontline positions.

Czerep said this case was not an isolated example.

“If you watch those videos filmed by Russian soldiers showing African or other non-European soldiers fighting alongside them, you see racist slurs all over,” he said.

“They really don’t care if those guys survive or not… [and] we just see the tip of the iceberg.”

Czerep also said there was likely to be “an element of violence or force” behind many of the life and death decisions.

The scandal has even reached top level politics in some countries.

Last year, the former South African president’s daughter was accused of duping citizens into fighting on the frontlines.

Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla resigned as an MP after allegedly tricking 17 South Africans and two Botswanan men in July 2025.

She falsely claimed they would be sent to Russia to be “lawfully” trained as bodyguards, according to several lawsuits.

Despite the Kremlin duping overseas fighters into the bloody war in Ukraine, it is important to note that many foreigners join Putin’s army knowing exactly what they are signing up for, Czerep said.

Many Russian recruiters openly offer jobs in the army to fight, while others are much more deceptive and include fake job offers.

Ferris said Putin’s recruitment tactics highlighted how Russia is still reliant on the meatgrinder strategy, as it has been for centuries.

She said: “This is designed to fight an attritional war where you just need people to plug gaps along the front line and just hold the fort down.

“As the Ukrainians seem to be developing a lot more unmanned systems and trying to reduce the kill chain – the Russians are still relying predominantly on physical manpower.”

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