In Georgia, on its southern border, where more than 100,000 Russians have fled, there is Matanga, a local Russian-speaking darknet market offering the same “treasure hunt” buying system as back home.Įven in the occupied territories of Ukraine, Russian troops entering Mariupol were closely followed by Telegram bots offering hash, mephedrone and alpha-PVP, peddling their wares even before the ruined city had running water returned. Everything from Europe is in short supply.”īut Russians fleeing the country since the war have still been able to buy drugs on the dark web. “Alex”, a drug dealer from Moscow who did not want to give his real name for fear of being identified by police, said since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “MDMA, LSD, and ketamine are almost impossible to find. ![]() Cannabis is also a popular drug bought on the Russian darknet. These white, synthetic stimulant powders that mimic cocaine and MDMA are highly prevalent in Russia, eastern Europe and the Balkans because they’re cheap and easy to manufacture locally. Even so, opioids such as black market methadone are still being bought outside of darknet markets, predominantly either hand-to-hand or via the many human and automated drug dealers selling their wares on the encrypted messaging platform Telegram.Īs of October 2022, the largest volume of drugs purchased at two large marketplaces – BlackSprut and Mega – were for cathinones such as mephedrone and alpha-PVP. This method was seen as less risky for buyers and sellers fearful of the heavy prison sentences handed out in Russia for drug crimes. Teams of ‘droppers’ employed by the online shops are paid to secrete drug packages, rather than hand them over in person. Since the rise of online drug buying in the mid-2010s, people purchasing drugs in Russia do so via the “treasure trove” system of dead drops, where instead of meeting a dealer or receiving your order through the post, you are given the GPS coordinates of where the goods are hidden, in places such as street hedges, round the back of apartment blocks, electrical transformer boxes, near metro stations or local forests. Amid the cyber warfare between those vying to succeed Hydra, Russia’s drug trade, most of it orchestrated via darknet marketplaces continues almost in plain sight. Days later RuTor was targeted for another round of cyber attacks, this time by Killnet. The following month RuTor retaliated, hacking WayAway and posting screenshots of the breach, arguing that WayAway’s security was too weak to be trusted. Earlier this month a Kraken employee told Russian news website that the market had a dedicated PR department. TikTok influencer Nekoglai (real name Nikolai Lebedev) who was arrested, allegedly tortured and deported back to his native Moldova after posting a video last month poking fun at Russian troops in Ukraine, began streaming on Twitch while wearing a T-shirt with Mega’s logo in December. ![]() ![]() Some of these sites have turned to influencers to boost their publicity campaigns. By contrast, the English language ASAP market, the largest non-Russian darknet market, accounts for less than 10 percent of dark web sales. It said Russian-language darknet markets, which chiefly trade in Russia and countries of the former Soviet Union, accounted for 80 percent of the global market. In the month of December they made $130 million. TRM Labs calculated that in the eight months since Hydra had been shut down, the new cluster of darknet markets had amassed $820 million in crypto currency deposits.
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