{"id":70927,"date":"2025-04-10T21:40:39","date_gmt":"2025-04-10T12:40:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/apr\/10\/russia-social-media-ads-videos-recruiting-china-mercenaries"},"modified":"2025-04-10T23:07:37","modified_gmt":"2025-04-10T14:07:37","slug":"do-you-want-to-show-strength-here-russias-ads-recruiting-chinese-mercenaries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=70927","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Do you want to show strength here?\u2019: Russia\u2019s ads recruiting Chinese mercenaries"},"content":{"rendered":"

More than 150 Chinese nationals are fighting for Russia in Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said, recruited via videos on social media<\/p>\n

The videos are across Chinese social media. Some are slickly produced Russian propaganda about being \u201ctough\u201d men; some sound more like influencer advertisements for a working holiday. Others are cobbled-together screenshots by regular citizens about to leave China. But they all have one thing in common: selling the benefits of becoming a Chinese mercenary for Russia.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, announced that two Chinese nationals had been captured<\/a> in the eastern Donetsk region and accused Moscow of trying to involve China \u201cdirectly or indirectly\u201d in the conflict. A day later, he said the men were among at least 155 other Chinese members<\/a> of Russia\u2019s armed forces. Then again, on Thursday, he accused Russia of conducting \u201csystemic work\u201d in China to recruit fighters.<\/p>\n

Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

More than 150 Chinese nationals are fighting for Russia in Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said, recruited via videos on social mediaThe videos are across Chinese social media. Some are slickly produced Russian propaganda about being \u201ctough\u201d men; some…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4685,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,50,236,221,419,235,930,3168,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-china","category-digital-media","category-europe","category-russia","category-social-media","category-ukraine","category-volodymyr-zelenskyy","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4685"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=70927"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70927\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":70938,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70927\/revisions\/70938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=70927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=70927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=70927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}