Russia is recruiting mercenaries from Yemen and deploying them to the war fronts in Ukraine with the help of the Houthi rebels, the Financial Times reported yesterday on Sunday.

According to the newspaper, which cited sources familiar with the matter and some of the militants, the Russian army sent “hundreds” of Yemenis to the fronts using a “shadow operation of human trafficking”.

According to the information of the Financial Times, some of them were promised that they would be given a salary and could obtain Russian citizenship, but after arriving in Russia they were forced to go to fight without any such condition being fulfilled.

According to the publication, the recruitment in Yemen is allegedly organized by a company linked to a politician of the Houthi movement. A contract obtained by the newspaper indicates that recruitment has been underway since at least July.

The Financial Times claims that because of its losses in Ukraine, Moscow has recently been looking for soldiers abroad. According to Western sources, some 10,000 troops from North Korea were recently sent to reinforce Russian forces in the Kursk region.

This cooperation, an unnamed US official told the newspaper, is an indication of the deepening relations between the Kremlin and the Houthis. Russian envoys recently traveled to Yemen for talks.

The American official underlined that this might mean that the Houthis will acquire new weapons, with which they could hit passing ships off the coast of the country much more effectively, a possibility that he considers very worrying.

Since November 2023, the Houthis have been launching attacks off Yemen against ships they believe are linked to Israel, saying they are acting in solidarity with Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, where the war between Israeli armed forces and the Palestinian Authority continues. Islamist movement Hamas, which broke out on October 7 itself year.

The attacks caused a huge disruption to navigation in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, a sea area crucial to global trade, prompting the US to form a multinational naval coalition and then, starting in January, to begin striking positions or weapons systems of the Houthis in Yemen, in operations that are sometimes conducted jointly with Britain.