WASHINGTON, 10 March 2022, (TON): The Pentagon said “Russia is recruiting Syrians and other foreign fighters as it ramps up its assault on Ukraine.”

Moscow entered the Syrian civil war in 2015 on the side of President Bashar Assad’s regime, and the country has been mired in a conflict marked by urban combat for more than a decade.

Now, US Department of Defense officials said “Russia’s President Vladimir Putin was on a recruiting mission seeking to bring some of those fighters into the fray in Ukraine.”

According to the Wall Street Journal “US officials said that Russia, which launched an invasion into its Eastern European neighbor on February 24, has in recent days recruited fighters from Syria, hoping they can help take the capital Kyiv and other cities.”

One official told the daily that some fighters are already in Russia readying to join the fight in Ukraine, though it was not immediately clear how many combatants have been recruited.

Details were slight: officials would not speculate on how many mercenaries have joined the fight, or on the quality of the fighters, but the Pentagon said there was no reason to doubt the accuracy of the reports.