In the summer of 2025, posts announcing the recruitment of workers for Russian icebreakers received millions of views on the Internet. Applicants, who were not even required to have special education, were offered a monthly salary of 500,000 rubles, airfare, food and a social package. As “Verified” found out, in fact, those who responded to this and other similar vacancies did not end up on board the icebreaker, but to a Telegram bot, which asked them for bank card information and offered to subscribe to dubious channels.
Apply for a vacancy
On June 25, RuNet became infected with a virus posts with approximately the following content: “They offer 500,000 rubles for a watch on an icebreaker. Conditions: schedule 30 through 30, you can get a job without work experience or education, payment for food, flights and a full social package. The funny thing is that most of those who responded in the comments were mothers on maternity leave. They ask to be taken far away and for a long time, where it is quiet and there are no people. The downside is the temperature.” Moreover, almost all such publications contain the same photo of the ship with a corresponding inscription about the vacancy, as well as three screenshots with comments. Some of the users who left them actually presented themselves as mothers on maternity leave.
According to the TGStat service, at the time of writing this text, about 300 similar posts were published on Telegram, which in total received about 5 million views. Thus, the channels “Axe. Economy"(2.5 million views including reposts to channels "Ax+" And "Ax Live"), "Dvach"(298,000), "KB. Economy"(181,000), "What's trending?" (172,000), "Barrel of black caviar"(145,000), "Ether+"(133,000), "Leprosy"(113,000), "Mousetrap"(112,000), MDK (81,000), "Bloomberg" (59,000), "We work 5x2"(52,000), etc. Such publications can also be found in public pages on VKontakte, including "The power of words"(568,000 views), "Daring Moishe" (70,000), "Everything about everything" (68,000) and "Eaglet"(45,000).
Judging by the application's interface, captured in viral screenshots, as well as the users' usernames, their comments were left on Instagram*. However, “Verified” was unable to find a corresponding publication with a viral ad on this social network. In turn, according to TGStat, the earliest post on Telegram with screenshots appeared on June 25 at 00:35 Moscow time in the channel “Passed on to colleagues"(23,000 views). The administrator of this channel did not respond to Verified’s request to share a link to the original source.
However, thanks to a search on TGStat, we found out a couple of additional details. Firstly, the watch announcement itself was a video. “35 vacancies are open for icebreakers in Russia with a salary starting from 500,000 rubles. per month with a schedule of 30 to 30 days. No education is needed - we will teach you everything. Meals and flights are at the expense of the company, and we also provide a full social package to each employee. We recruit both men and women from Russia and the CIS countries, but only Russian speakers,” said the 20-second video included in the post of the Telegram channel “Rhymes and Morgen"(53,000 views). Secondly, based on this publication, we can guess when the announcement appeared on Instagram. The channel's post "Rhymes and Morgen" came out on June 25 at 11:02 Moscow time, and there were other screenshots of comments, the earliest of which was left six days before the screenshot was taken. Thus, the video should have appeared on Instagram no later than June 19.
However, the search for the original source of the video led us to another social network - TikTok. There's an identical one video clip was published on the “Work of the Year” page (@work_manager) back on June 16 and by the time of writing this text had received over 960,000 views. Unlike the video from the “Rhymes and Morgen” channel, this recording is for 10 seconds. is longer and ends like this: “If you are interested, write the word “Watch” in the comments, and we will contact you. Or you can clarify all the conditions of the vacancy and apply immediately via the link in the profile description.” More than 4,700 comments were left under the publication - some of them, judging by the word “watch,” were left by users interested in the proposal.
"Work of the Year"
The “Work of the Year” page can with a high degree of confidence be called the primary source of the video about the watch on the icebreaker, since its authors have published many similar videos over the past few months. So, since April 5, 2025, at least 48 videos about work in Russia and Belarus, built according to the same scheme: a male voice-over announces highly paid vacancies that require Russian-speaking residents of the Russian Federation and CIS countries without work experience. At the same time, authors almost never name specific companies, limiting themselves only to rather abstract phrases like “juice production factory in Moscow", "noodle production in the Moscow region" or "Korean car plant in Yekaterinburg"(there is no information in open sources about a similar enterprise in this city). Some of these videos received hundreds of thousands and even millions of views.
As for the actual watch on Russian icebreakers, five very similar videos were published about this on the “Work of the Year” page. So, June 10 the authors were looking for 45 people to work with a monthly salary of over 400,000 rubles, on June 16 a video was released, a screenshot of which went viral on Telegram (35 vacancies, salary from 500,000 rubles per month), and July 13 They have already reported 137 similar vacancies (this time they allegedly paid from 8 million rubles for four to six months). According to the entry from August 4, again 137 workers were required, but for positions with a salary of more than 3 million rubles. for a business trip of two months. The very next day it turned out video about the search for the same 137 people for a salary of 7 million rubles. for a shift of five to six months.
All these videos demonstrate icebreakers of the Russian Atomflot, including 50 Let Pobedy, Arktika and Ural. In the section "Jobs and career“On the official website of this state-owned enterprise, applicants are only asked to send their resume - there is neither a list of available positions nor a description of working conditions. Moreover, in form applicants for seafaring vacancies are asked to provide information about higher or secondary education and working maritime documents (diploma, qualification certificates, certificates), while in the viral advertisement they allegedly invite people to work without appropriate education and experience. Atomflot indeed provides employees have the opportunity to take advanced training courses both within the company and at partner educational institutions, but the website does not specify that this could be training from scratch. On practice Only students of specialized universities and faculties can join the company.
There is no information on the level of employee salaries on the Atomflot website. On page enterprises on the hh.ru platform at the time of writing this text open 27 vacancies. Salary territory cleaner without work experience starts from RUB 54,000, ship carpenter — from 75,000 rub., ship electrician - from 105,000 rubles, and 1st class sailor — from 100,000 rub. On website The portal “Center for Suitable Work in the Arctic” also does not have vacancies with appropriate conditions and pay.
Back in June, viral messages about a shift on an icebreaker with a monthly salary of half a million rubles paid attention Russian state portal “Noodles.Media”, calling itself as a fact-checking project. The TASS agency carried out the verification for him. Its authors came to the conclusion that the viral vacancy was just a joke. “Similar techniques involving the publication of fake vacancies or advertisements written with sparkling humor are regularly used by businesses, Telegram channels and thematic online communities to promote and increase traffic,” says the news agency’s analysis.
No, excuse me
In fact, there is little funny in this news. As we already wrote above, users who watched videos with similar advertisements and wished to apply for vacancies were offered “Job of the Year” to follow a link in the profile description. When “Verified” first found this blog on TikTok, in its description there was a link to the Telegram bot “100,000 rubles a day” (@zarabotokmusicvkbot, later renamed to “Earnings without investments”), and after some time - to the Telegram channel “Alina | manager" (@manager_work). The owner of the latter calls herself “the HR manager of many large plants and factories in the CIS.” The channel was created on April 4, 2025, the day before the publication of the first “Work of the Year” video on TikTok, and a stock photo was used as a profile photo image.
More than 6,000 users are subscribed to manager Alina’s channel, but only one is published there fast. It contains an invitation link to a closed Telegram channel “Jobber | Remote freelance» (almost 62,000 subscribers), where you can supposedly find vacancies from the video. “Subscribe to the channel and I will send you the list,” Alina’s post says.
“Verified” examined publications in Jobber and did not find any mention of a watch on an icebreaker. Moreover, immediately after subscribing to this channel, we received messages from the bot @promocodyskidkiwbot (“Alexandra HR work”). They clarified that we were over 18 years old and sent us many posts with links.
When you click on the links provided, you can supposedly receive some rewards and quickly earn money right from home - they promised to pay for watching videos, writing reviews on marketplaces, or performing other simple tasks. In fact, all such messages contained disguised invitation links to other Telegram channels and bots.
“Verified” was also studied by the above-mentioned bot @zarabotokmusicvkbot, which was listed in the description of the “Work of the Year” on TikTok. The principle of its operation is similar: the user is bombarded with fake offers to make quick money, but when clicking on the links provided, it turns out that he needs to subscribe to certain Telegram channels. Often these are pages of bloggers who promise their subscribers to teach them how to make money from scratch, reveal the secrets of trading and help them invest profitably. In one of the messages from the bot, we were delighted that we had “won” 50,000 rubles, and in order to receive the money they asked us to share our bank card details.
At the beginning of the preparation of this material, the @zarabotokmusicvkbot bot was used by about 60,000 people per month. When we finished working on the text, their number reached more than 100,000, but by the time of publication, the accounts @zarabotokmusicvkbot and @promocodyskidkiwbot were frozen by the Telegram administration for violating the rules of the platform.
As mentioned above, “Verified” did not find the original source of the video about the watch on the icebreaker on Instagram (although there There is other similar), however, on this social network we came across many similar pages that, through hundreds of videos, also advertise Telegram bots for “easy money” and channels with advertisements. Some of them are less successful (total tens subscribers And hundreds views), others - more (tens of thousands subscribers, and the number of views of individual videos sometimes reaches hundreds of thousands). And on one of these pages on Instagram publish videos about working in European countries with the possibility of obtaining their citizenship, and other content until April was devoted to a completely different topic - there advertised tarot card layouts and posted videos with predictions made by an old man generated by a neural network. To respond to vacancies, users were similarly asked to follow the addresses in their profile descriptions. One of these links even led to the Telegram channel of another Alina the manager with the same stock photo on the avatar.
Finally, “Verified” tried to apply for one of the vacancies that we found on the resources described above. We chose one of the pages on Instagram, found in its description a link to a Telegram channel with advertisements and decided to apply for the position of a cleaner in Yekaterinburg. The corresponding post included a link to contact the manager. In personal messages, we were asked to indicate the phone number to which the Telegram account was linked (the author of “Verified” had this information hidden, in return he shared his username). However, since July, despite several reminders, no one has contacted us.
*Russian authorities think Meta Platforms Inc., which owns the social network Instagram, is an extremist organization; its activities and symbols are prohibited in Russia.
Cover photo: "Atomflot» / social networks
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