Naval al-Maghafi,BBC Njuz
Sheida Kiran, BBC Investigation
Flames lick the edges of Omar's passport.
"It's burning beautifully," says a woman who is not visible in the video in Russian.
Omar, a 26-year-old Syrian construction worker, had been on the front lines of Russia's war in Ukraine for about nine months when the footage arrived on his phone.
He immediately recognized the woman's voice.
It was Polina Alexandrovna Azarnik, who he says helped him sign up to fight for Russia, promising him lucrative jobs and Russian citizenship.
But now she was furious.
In a series of voicemails from Ukraine, Omar, who speaks under a pseudonym for his own safety, describes how he ended up trapped and terrified in a war zone.
He says Azarnik promised him that if he paid her $3.000, she would arrange for him not to fight.
But, he says, he was sent into combat with only 10 days of training behind him, so he refused to pay and she eventually responded by burning his passport.
He says he tried to refuse to take part in the mission, but his commanders threatened to kill or imprison him.
"We were deceived... that woman is a fraud and a liar," Omar says.
A BBC Eye investigation tracked how Azarnik, a 40-year-old former teacher, used a Telegram channel to lure young people, often from poor countries, to enlist in the Russian army.
Footage of a smiling former teacher and cheerful posts offer "one-year contracts" for "military service."
The BBC World Service has identified almost 500 cases in which she provided documents called invitation letters, which allow the recipient to enter Russia to enlist in the army.
Those invitations were for men, mostly from Syria, Egypt and Yemen, who allegedly sent her passport details to apply.
But recruits and their relatives tell the BBC that she deceived people into believing they would avoid fighting, failed to warn them that they could not leave after a year and threatened those who opposed her.
When contacted by the BBC, she denied all these allegations.
Twelve families told us about young men they say she recruited, who are now dead or missing.
Russia has expanded conscription, recruited prisoners, and offered increasingly generous bonuses for enlisting in the military to maintain its own operation in Ukraine, despite significant losses of personnel.
More than one million of their soldiers have been killed or wounded since the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022, with 25.000 killed in the month of December 2025 alone, according to NATO data.
A BBC News Russian investigation, based on death certificates and other publicly available death records, suggests that Russian troop losses in Ukraine rose faster last year than ever before.
It is difficult to determine how many foreigners have enlisted in the Russian army.
An analysis by the BBC in Russian, which also looked at the figures for foreign deaths and injuries, shows that at least 20.000 of them have reported themselves, from countries such as Cuba, Nepal and North Korea.
Ukraine has suffered significant troop losses as well, and is itself accepting foreign fighters into its ranks.
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'Bodies were everywhere'
Omar's first contact with Polina Azarnik was when he was stranded at a Moscow airport with almost no money in March 2024, along with 14 other Syrians.
Jobs in Syria were scarce and poorly paid.
Omar says a recruiter there offered the people what they perceived as a civilian job guarding oil facilities in Russia.
They flew to Moscow, only to realize they had been tricked.
While searching online options, Omar says, a colleague from the group discovered Polina Azarnik's channel and sent her a message.
She met them at the airport within hours and took them by train to a recruitment center in Bryansk, in western Russia, he says.
There, he says, she offered them one-year contracts with the Russian military, with a monthly salary of around $2.500, and a sign-on payment of $5.000.
They could only dream of that money in Syria.
Omar says the contracts were written in Russian, which none of the men understood, and she took their passports, promising to arrange Russian citizenship for them.
She also promised they could avoid fighting if they each paid her $3.000 from their military enlistment pay, he says.
But, he adds, within about a month, he was at the front, with only 10 days of training behind him and no military experience.
"We are one hundred percent going to die here," he says in a voicemail sent to the BBC's investigative team.
"A lot of injuries, a lot of explosions, a lot of shelling. If you don't die in the explosion, you'll die from the buildings collapsing on you," he says in May 2024.
"Dead bodies were everywhere... I was walking on dead bodies, God forgive me," he told us the following month.
"If someone dies, I've seen it with my own eyes, they throw them in a garbage bag and leave them next to a tree," he adds.
After almost a year, he learned what Azarnik had not explained to them - according to a Russian regulation from 2022, the military can practically extend soldiers' contracts automatically until the war is over.
"If they renew my contract, I'm screwed, oh, God," he says.
His contract was extended.
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'Recruited from the university'
Polina Azarnik's Telegram channel has 21.000 subscribers.
Her posts often tell readers who want to enlist in the Russian army to send her a scan of their passport.
She then publishes the invitation letters, sometimes with a list of names of the people to whom they are intended.
The BBC has identified more than 490 such invitations sent over the past year to men from countries including Yemen, Syria, Egypt, Morocco, Iraq, Ivory Coast and Nigeria.
Her posts mention recruitment for an "elite international battalion" and make it clear that people who are in Russia illegally - including those whose visas have expired - are potential candidates.
We spoke to eight foreign fighters, including Omar, who she recruited, as well as the families of 12 men who are dead or missing.
Many believe that Azarnik deceived or took advantage of the recruits.
They told us that the men knew they were signing up for the army, but that they did not expect to serve at the front.
A few, like Omar, felt they were not trained enough or thought they would be able to leave after a year.
In Egypt, Youssef, whose name we have also changed, told the BBC that his brother Muhammad began his studies at Yekaterinburg in Russia in 2022.
But he was having trouble paying his bills, Yusuf says, and he told his family that a Russian woman named Polina had started offering him help online, including work with the Russian military that he believed would help him continue his studies.
“She promised him housing and citizenship... monthly expenses,” he says.
"Suddenly he was sent to Ukraine. He found himself in the middle of the fighting," says Yusuf.
His last call was from January 24, 2024, says Yusuf.
About a year later, Yusuf says they received a message via Telegram from a Russian number, with pictures of Muhammad's body.
The family eventually learned that he had been murdered almost a year earlier.
'Some have lost their minds'
Azarnik became “one of the most important recruiters” for the Russian military, says Habib, another Syrian who served in the Russian army.
He was willing to be recorded, but spoke under a pseudonym for fear of repercussions.
Habib says he and Azarnik "worked together for almost three years on visa invitation letters for Russia."
He did not give us any further details about this and we were unable to confirm his role in the process.
In a social media picture from 2024, he is seen standing next to her.
Azarnik, who is from the Voronezh region in southwestern Russia, ran a Facebook group that helped Arab students come to Moscow to study, before opening a Telegram channel in 2024.
Habib says most foreign recruits arrived expecting roles guarding facilities or manning checkpoints.
"The Arabs who arrive are killed immediately. Some have lost their minds - it's hard to look at human bodies," he says.
Habib claims to have met Omar and a group of Syrians at a military training ground.
“She promised them citizenship, good salaries and that they would be safe,” says Habib.
"But once you sign a contract here, there's no way you can leave."
"None of them knew how to use weapons. Even when they were shot at, they chose not to return fire... if you don't shoot, they will kill you," he says.
"Polina would hire these men knowing they would die."
He says he "gets $300 from the military for every person he recruits."
The BBC could not confirm this, although other recruits also told us they believed she was paid.
'Nothing is free'
Polina Azarnik's posts from mid-2024 began to note that recruits would "participate in hostilities" and to mention foreign fighters who had died in combat.
“You all understood perfectly well that you were going to war,” she says in a recording from October 2024.
"You thought you could get a Russian passport, do nothing, and live in a five-star hotel?... Nothing is free."
In another case, in 2024, the BBC heard a voice message from Polina Azarnik to a mother whose son was serving in the army.
Azarnik says the woman "published something terrible about the Russian military."
Using curse words, she threatens her son's life and warns the woman: "I will find you and all your children."
The BBC has repeatedly tried to contact Azarnik.
At first she said she would do an interview with us if we traveled to Russia, but the BBC refused for security reasons.
Later, when asked in a phone conversation about claims that recruits were promised non-combat roles, she hung up on us.
In a voicemail afterwards, she said our work was “not professional” and warned of a potential defamation lawsuit.
"Our esteemed Arabs can shove their accusations up their asses," she said.
The BBC contacted the Russian Foreign Ministry and the Ministry of Defense for comment, but received no response.
Previously, in March 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin supported the recruitment of men from the Middle East, claiming that they were ideologically, rather than financially, motivated.
"There are people who want to come voluntarily, explicitly not for money, and provide assistance to the people," he said.
'Cash incentives'
Journalists and researchers who have followed the case say that individuals like Azarnik are part of a network of unofficial recruiters.
The BBC discovered two other Telegram accounts in Arabic that were making similar offers to enlist in the Russian army.
One features advertisements showing invitation letters and listing names, while another advertises large payouts for joining an “elite battalion.”
In September, Kenyan police said they had broken up a suspected “trafficking syndicate” that they said was luring Kenyans with job offers but sending them to fight in Ukraine.
Katerina Stepanenko, a research fellow at the Institute for the Study of War, told the BBC that some municipal and regional authorities in Russia were offering financial incentives of up to $4.000 to individuals such as HR professionals and locals who recruit Russians or foreigners into military service.
She says the Kremlin initially used larger entities such as the Wagner private military group and the prison system for recruitment, but from 2024 it began “using locals and small companies.”
This “tells me that those earlier versions of recruitment were no longer generating the same number of recruits,” she adds.
Meanwhile, Habib has now returned to Syria after, he says, bribing several commanders to cancel his contract.
Omar eventually received Russian citizenship and also managed to return to Syria.
Two Syrians he served with are dead, according to their families.
Azarnik “sees us as numbers or money – she doesn’t see us as people,” he says.
"We will not forgive her for what she did to us."
Additional reporting by Olga Ivshina, Gehad Abbas, Ali Ibrahim, Victoria Arakelyan, and Ryan Maruf
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