In Russia, drug traffickers use the darknet to weave their web as far as South Korea

The darknet and Russia, little-known areas of drug trafficking: Russian drug traffickers, keen on technology, use the darknet to weave their web beyond Russian borders, through publicity, but also punitive expeditions that are sometimes fatal IRL (in real life), explains the journalist Max Daly, formerly of Vice. Today, in a fascinating investigation for the GuardianMax Daly takes us from the streets of Moscow to those of Seoul, via the battlefields of Ukraine. The opportunity to understand that this system, which combines technologies, cryptocurrency payments and physical marketing, could well “serve as a model for other regions of the world”.

At any given time in Russia, thousands of drug packets are buried in the ground, attached by magnets to lampposts or stuck under window sillswaiting to be picked up by customers. Finished, “purchasing drugs from hand to hand with a dealer who can take hours to arrive, with thugs who can then rob you”says an expert from the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime, who worked on the issue with the British journalist from Guardian and with Patrick Shortisspecialist in financial crime for a edifying report. And to insist: purchases are made online, on the darknet, the hidden and opaque side of the Internet. Drug traffickers offer themselves sumptuous websites, note Russian online newspaper Lenta. In a geopolitically isolated Russia, in a country with high inflation and limited economic prospects, these criminals arrive and easily recruit “an army of young kladmen”, “stashouts” sometimes only 14 years old, note THE Guardian. They are increasing the number of “dead drops”, secret places where drugs are hidden. The kladmen only unlock, in a way, access to the addresses where to collect the drugs once the online purchases have been made, specifies the Guardian. There is even a “Kladman Bible”, reveals the british dailywhere it is explained how to pack and hide drugs taking into account, for example, the Russian winter climate, how to erase one's footprints in the snow, while avoiding the police.

The “flagship product” of this trafficking is mephedronea stimulating powder known in Russia as “salt”, says the Guardian. It can be “packaged in the form of pills or tablets”. This synthetic chemical substance is considered a cheap substitute for cocaine and MDMA, specifies the British newspaper as well as the online magazine Salon. Mephedrone is manufactured from products easily available in China, in a sort of short circuit, without passing through, for example, South America for cocaine; which means, raise the Guardian, that “production can take place close to the market”, with distribution of mephedrone, in the streets of Moscow or Siberia.

Publicity in broad daylight with buses, posters and even bold videos

A cyber war is also being played out on the marketing level to dominate the market since 2022 and the closure of Hydra, the world's largest drug market on the darknet, explains Russian online newspaper Lenta. “Four new platforms Mega, Kraken, OMG! OMG!, and Blacksprut are now competing for customers,” explains the Guardian. These drug traffickers do not hesitate to advertise in broad daylight. A large black bus, broadcasting electro music, with the Kraken logo and a QR Code allowing you to buy drugs was used to block one of Moscow's busiest streets, near the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, precise Slow. A year earlier, the mythical creature Kraken, with its tentacles, had appeared on a large television advertising billboard in Moscow, as if the Kraken were in an aquarium. Advertisements were also seen in the capital's metro. And then, “Moriarty, the masked figurehead of the largest darknet market, Mega, regularly taunts the Russian authorities”writes on Guardian. This character with 3 million subscribers on YouTube appears in almost Hollywood videos, where he prides himself on getting rich from drugs, escaping the police and serving as a model for young people. This “Moriarty” appears in a black suit, black undershirt, gloved hands and face masked under a skull, resembling a Death Eater from the Harry Potter films or a new version, therefore, of Sherlock's sworn enemy Holmes, from the pen of Conan Doyle. In a video extract broadcast by the Guardianwe can hear “Professor Moriarty, owner of Mega, on the darknet”explain “how cartels and other competent entities manage to hide their employees. Imagine that you are on the wanted list of the federal authorities or that a bloodthirsty mafia is hunting you…Can you manage to save your skin ? Well, I don't need to imagine it.”boasts this masked character. Darknet sites have invested, says the Russian newspaper Slowin public relations and marketing.

The reality of drug trafficking is brutal: the fight for domination of drug trafficking is merciless, underline the Guardian et Slow. Goons attack “kladmen who have received bad reviews from buyers who have not found their drugs or those who are suspected of having stolen”, reports Max Daly for the british newspaper. These beatings, which go as far as cutting off fingers or even murder, are in turn filmed and broadcast on social networks, specifies the Guardianin the form of warning and toxic exaltation of virility.

These darknet drug traffickers manage to sell their drugs as far as Ukrainein areas occupied by Russia: “A month after the fall of Mariupol, a store called CaifCoin was looking for kladmen”stashers, says the Guardian. The phenomenon is spreading to South Korea, so much so that the government declared an “all-out war” against online drug sellers, after a 14-year-old girl was found in a public toilet, allegedly buying drugs. drugs with cryptocurrency, report Guardian but also the South Korean daily Chosun Ilbo et South Korean news agency Yonhap et public television KBS. La radio Deutsche Welle even explains how drug traffickers adapt to the local market, by exploiting the culture of results, the pressure to succeed in Korea: these criminals allegedly claimed to children that their “energy drinks” – containing methyl – would help them to study better.