Summary
In Russia, META has been designated an extremist organisation, and the networks it owns have been blocked since 2022. These sanctions, however, have not stopped the Kremlin from flooding META’s platforms with manipulation and disinformation, including content promoted through ads paid to the American company. Most recently, the Russian army has been using paid ads on Facebook and Instagram to recruit mercenaries from around the world for its aggression against Ukraine.
We have documented the details of these operations, which reveal both Russian tactics and the gaps in META’s prevention system, in the investigation below. According to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), Russia’s losses exceed its recruitment by thousands of people a month, while the Kremlin avoids a new open mobilisation because of its political cost. One of the solutions is recruitment abroad. The Main Intelligence Directorate of Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence (HUR) stated that since 2022, almost 29,000 foreigners have signed contracts with the Russian army, and that for 2026 Moscow aims to recruit at least 18,500 more mercenaries. The agency says that after 39 countries secured the suspension of the recruitment of their citizens, Russian structures shifted their focus to South America, Central Asia and Africa. In September 2026, three Facebook pages with no apparent connection to the military distributed a Romanian-language poster in the Republic of Moldova: “Contract service: service for real men”. The poster promised 482,000 lei, a monthly salary of up to 47,489 lei and Russian citizenship. Behind it was an offer to enlist in the Russian army.
Starting from this case, the “WatchDog.MD” Community analysed how Russia uses Facebook and Instagram ads to recruit foreigners, including Moldovans, for the war against Ukraine. The monitoring covered the period 29 June – 29 September 2026 and was based on the public META Ad Library archive. Four ads targeting Moldova, published by three pages, and 86 ads aimed at other countries were identified. To see what happens after the click, the websites the ads link to, the sign-up forms and the recruiters’ Telegram accounts were analysed, including the domain registration data and the location of the servers.
The study shows that the ad is only the first step of the recruitment. The route has four stages: the ad promises money, citizenship or a job (or all of them together); the candidate lands on a website, on a Facebook form or directly on Telegram or WhatsApp; the recruiter discusses the terms and the departure; the contract is signed only once the person is in Russia. We would like to point out that these ads run without a disclaimer, which makes it harder to collect public information about who paid for the ads and how much money was spent on them. We find that META should review its advertising policies, regardless of whether an ad is political or commercial, so that civil society and state authorities can counter such recruitment activities. The Uzbek pages “Kasb o’rganing” show how the mechanism works. The ad offers work assembling drones and about $50,000, without mentioning the army. The websites promise “official recruitment into Russia’s drone forces”, but claim that “participation in combat is excluded”. The data collected by these websites ends up on a server located in Düsseldorf, Germany.
The fact that the infrastructure of an EU member state, which is increasingly targeted by the Russian Federation’s hybrid attacks, is used for such activities points to a serious security breach. In this case, Germany, as well as other EU states together with digital companies, should launch a series of investigations into how Russia uses Western servers for mercenary recruitment and for other hybrid activities.