 Putin's party is creating its own private army. The Russian ruling party, United Russia, is recruiting members for its own private army, the mercenary company Hispaniola, Ukraine's military intelligence agency said. This adds the group to the list of several mercenary formations that have fought in Russian ranks against Ukraine, the most notable being the Wagner company. Hispaniola was previously part of the Russian militant group Vostok Battalion as a volunteer unit of Russian football hooligans. Since 2023, Hispaniola has been under the control of United Russia as a private military company according to military intelligence, the ruling party. Formerly chaired by ex-president Dmitry Medvedev, but effectively one of the pillars of Russian leader Vladimir Putin's rule has reportedly been pouring money into the group and began to actively seek new members. The unit is made up of football ultras, radicals and neo-Nazi sympathizers, but also recruits citizens from poorer Russian regions and occupied territories of Ukraine. The latter are reportedly used primarily as canon fodder, military intelligence noted. At Hispaniola's recruiting centers in occupied Ukraine, volunteers are offered 220,000 rubles or $2,400 per month for direct participation in hostilities for at least half a year. Recruits are also promised 1-3 million rubles or 10,920 to 32,760 as insurance for injuries and 500 million rubles or $54,600 in case of death, military intelligence said. In practice, such compensations are often omitted as dead and seriously wounded are regularly left behind on the battlefield and registered as missing so as not to pay out the insurance. Hispaniola was reportedly formed in 2022 by militant Stanislav Olov and Vostok Battalion's leader Alexander Kodakovsky. The unit claims it had participated in the siege of Azovstal in Mariupol.