Russia's Putin looks to import Syrian mercenaries to do the 'dirty tricks' against Ukraine’s population

As Russia’s war machine grinds into the third week of its brutal invasion of Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin has launched a recruiting operation in the Syrian Arab Republic in an effort to attract reinforcements for his armed forces.

Commentators believe the announcement is in part due to Russia’s poor planning of the war, which has led to many Russian soldiers being killed. Last week a U.S official told CBS News the number of Russian deaths could be between 5,000 and 6,000.

Putin and his defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, recently declared that as many as 16,000 combatants from the Middle East will enter the Ukrainian war on the side of Russia. The promised pay, according to news reports and anti-Assad organizations, is around $3,000 per month.

"It appears that Russia has opened 14 mercenary recruitment centers in Syria in territories controlled by the regime of Bashar al-Assad (Damascus, Aleppo, Hama, Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor)," Theodore Karasik, a fellow on Russian and Middle Eastern Affairs at the Jamestown Foundation in Washington, told Fox News Digital. "After a short training, the mercenaries will be transported to Russia through the Khmeimim Air Base by two Tu-134 (up to 80 passengers) and Tu-154 (up to 180 passengers) aircraft to the Chkalovsky Air Base, Moscow region."

Karasik added that "We need to be aware that there is an information war ongoing regarding the recruitment of fighters by multiple parties to this conflict. There is some evidence that these fighters will enter into the battle space in greater numbers in the coming weeks." The battle space, he continued, "is being prepared for partisan warfare and taking lessons learned from Grozny and Syria are going to be important for all actors. Recruitment drives are robust and supported by state actors."

Grozny saw intensive urban warfare conducted by Russian forces during the initial stages of the First Chechen War in 1994-95 and the Second Chechen War in 1999-2000, with some military observers claiming they are now doing the same with Ukraine.

Karasik said the recruiting effort is about applying Syrian fighters’ capacity in another theater because of the experience they acquired in the long civil war. "I think it's a mixed picture because of the multiple groups [in Syria] and how they’ve split and come back together again," he said. "So really, it’s about the quality of the recruits, and what we need to look at next is who are they really sending? Who is signing up for this? How do they guarantee the quality of the fighters?"