CRAZED Vladimir Putin has recruited a secret army of beauty bloggers in his propaganda war against the West.
The Russian President caused a stampede to flee the country after calling up 300,000 men to fight his war in Ukraine.
4
Now the Kremlin is forcing pretty bloggers to push the line that it is a small price to pay for victory.
It comes as Putin tells residents in Russian-occupied territories to fight their own countrymen in Ukraine.
The Sun has obtained exclusive pictures which show how attractive young women are being used on new social media platforms being set up in Russia.
Using a bag of sweets to illustrate her point, blogger Katrina Isaea writes: “If I take one per cent from this packet then I still have a whole bag left.
“Nobody talks about mobilisation when it comes to statistics. Let’s look at the criteria and it’s only one per cent which is not a big amount.
“Let’s support each other in this difficult time.”
Another blogger, Anna Velozelova, makes the same point with a bag of chips.
The images come from inside new Russian social media platforms.
Putin banned Facebook and Instagram in Russia after its owner Meta stamped down on Kremlin propaganda. TikTok was also shut down.
This month it was revealed that influencer Veronika Loginova, 18, could face six years in prison for posting on Insta.
But the move left a huge hole in Russia’s war online.
An American intelligence report found the Russian propaganda machine reached 126million people on Facebook, generated 10.4million tweets and reached over 20million Instagram users.
Oleksandra Matviichuk is head of the Centre for Civil Liberties in Ukraine, which discovered the blogger’s posts.
She said: “They are being told to push a lie.
“Secret service officers will demand that these bloggers post in favour of Putin, knowing that they will reach a young audience of women and their boyfriends.
“All the bloggers carry the same narrative about how just one per cent of men are being called up when we all know Putin will sacrifice as many men as it takes. But Ukraine will not be beaten.
“Using the young shows the lack of morality.”
Putin’s conscript call caused widespread panic in Russia with thousands fleeing and queues at borders with Georgia, Kazakhstan and Mongolia.
4
Meanwhile, brave Ukranians in occupied areas are refusing to vote in Putin’s sham referendum, despite being threatened at gunpoint by soldiers.
The referendum was launched in the Kherson, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk regions which the Russians want to annex from Ukraine.
The international community has slammed the vote as a sham.
Putin is also forcing men in the regions – many of whom want to remain part of Ukraine – to join the war.
Oleksandra said: “Just when you think you can’t be shocked by Russia they do something else that surprises you.
“There are men who have been in hiding for weeks because they know as soon as they are seen they will be forced to join the Russian forces and fight against their own countrymen.
“It’s sickening.”
4
Russia is fighting a vicious online war as well as on the ground.
It uses so-called bot-farms to push an anti-Ukraine narrative, using technology to post on social media platforms, comment on newspaper accounts and generate clicks on internet traffic.
Earlier this month, Ukrainian forces destroyed two bot-farms responsible for almost 7,000 accounts pushing fake news.
In May British security services said internet trolls based in an old arms factory in St Petersburg were targeting world leaders online.
The factory is suspected to be linked to Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Russian tech expert accused of meddling in the 2016 election that saw Donald Trump sweep to victory.
