American racists and Spanish antifascists, self-styled Ukrainians, opponents of Ukraine and Russian Z–bloggers are just a few of the many thousands of telegram channels that posted a link to a bot for recruitment into the GRU.
Russian military intelligence is distributing telegram bots to recruit saboteurs in the United States and Europe. The usual pattern is that a link to a bot is massively published by Russian Z-bloggers, and then it is picked up by channels with a radical and anti-Western agenda, aimed at audiences from different countries and speaking different languages.
The recruitment bot “Eye of Sauron” has become the most widespread outside of Russia. The link to it was distributed in 11 European countries.
So, a promo post about the bot was published by the Spanish-language channel Los sombreros blancos (“white hats”) with 33 thousand subscribers. The anonymous authors of the channel use anti–fascist and anti-globalist rhetoric, while their main content is anti-Ukrainian. The Russian military is called “our heroes” there, and the Kadyrovites, in the manner of the head of Chechnya himself, are called “dear BROTHERS” (Querido HERMANO).
The link to the “Eye of Sauron” was published on influential channels with a proRussian agenda for an American audience. This list includes the Fearless John channel with 73,000 subscribers. The channel tried to attribute to the American mass murderer from Buffalo a connection with the Ukrainian Azov brigade due to the use of the Nazi symbol “black sun”
Azov no longer uses this symbol in its emblem, but it is tattooed by a fighter of the Russian Hispaniola brigade, nicknamed Pit Bull. Espanyola is one of the developers of the Eye of Sauron bot.
They also tried to distribute “Oko” among the pro-Russian Ukrainian audience. The link was posted by a well-known underground worker nicknamed “Shaggy”, whom the SBU considers a threat to national security. The bot was also published in regional pseudo-Ukrainian channels that reach an audience from the south-east of the country.
In 2025, the Eye of Sauron bot was replaced by the new GRU bot. The link
@Russian_GRU_bot to the GRU was posted by the English-language racist channel
Lord of War and the channel of the underground organization Anti-Fascists of the Baltic States, several members of which are accused in Latvia of crimes against national security.
A promotional post about the GRU was also published by the
InfoDefenceBULGARIA channel, aimed at the Bulgarian audience. He is part of a multilingual network of pro-Russian resources, probably associated with one of the most influential Z–influencers, Yuri Podolyaka.
