Yandex Users Flooded With Russian Army Recruitment Ads in 2024

Russia’s top search engine Yandex displayed more than 1 billion military recruitment ads in 2024, the investigative news outlet Vyorstka reported Thursday.

The record 1.1 billion display ads for Russian army contracts far exceeded the 208.4 million seen in 2023, the outlet said, citing Yandex’s latest social ads transparency report.

Yandex serves these government-sponsored ads under a Russian law requiring at least 5% of advertisements to be “social ads.”

Experts estimate the online ads may have generated between 1 million and 5 million clicks out of the 1 billion views.

Vyorstka’s analysis found that Russia’s Ministry of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media was the top promoter of military recruitment ads, followed by the governments of the Moscow and Tyumen regions.

Recruitment ads nearly tripled in 2024 after Ukrainian forces launched a surprise incursion into Russia’s southwestern Kursk region in August, the report said.

The ads also reached audiences outside Russia. A campaign funded by the Moscow region was displayed 12.6 million times in neighboring Belarus and Kazakhstan, as well as in Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.

The recruitment push has continued into 2025, with ads from the Communications Ministry receiving a record 263 million views in January alone — matching the ministry’s total ad views from January to mid-July 2024.

Vyorstka noted that ads funded by regional governments emphasized financial incentives for signing a military contract, while those from the Communications Ministry focused on patriotism and social status.