The Russian military moved the fight from the battlefield to cyberspace and launched a recruiting drive to find the world’s best hackers, a report said Thursday.

The Kremlin for three years targeted programmers, professional coders and tech-savvy college students on internet job forums and social media and even considered plumbing the depths of the Russian underworld for talented hackers, the New York Times reported.

Russia’s Defense Ministry bought advertising on Vkontakta, the country’s most popular social media site, to lure those who were more talented with a keyboard than an AK-47 rifle.

“If you graduated from college, if you are a technical specialist, if you are ready to use your knowledge, we give you an opportunity,” the ad promised, according to the Times.

The ad went on to assure recruits that they would be part of units called science squadrons based at military installations where they would live in “comfortable accommodation” and showed an apartment outfitted with a washing machine, the Times reported.

The Defense Ministry even dangled the chance to dodge Russia’s mandatory draft by allowing university students to join a science squadron instead and then questioned them about their proficiency with programming languages, the report said.

At a meeting with university officials in 2013, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu told them he was on a “head hunt in the positive meaning of the word” for coders, the Times reported.

The revelations about how the Kremlin recruited hackers comes as President Obama ordered sanctions against Russia and tossed out a number of diplomats in retaliation for Russia’s alleged meddling in the presidential election and breaking into the computers of the Democratic National Committee.

“Russia’s cyberactivities were intended to influence the election, erode faith in US democratic institutions, sow doubt about the integrity of our electoral process, and undermine confidence in the institutions of the US government. These actions are unacceptable and will not be tolerated,” a White House statement said.