Russia has reportedly begun press-ganging people from across the world to fight its battles in
Ukraine and Africa. Ukrainians in the occupied territories have been forced into carrying out the Wagner private mercenary group’s
MILITARY operations in African countries such as the Central African Republic, Niger and Mali, the Ukrainian National Resistance Centre (UNRC) says. Conscripts aged 22 to 50 are offered a salary of 240,000 rubles (approximately £2,050) to fight on Wagner’s orders and perform mining operations in Sahel countries, the UNRC reported. The Wagner operations are mired in accusations that the group foments violence in Northern Africa in order to create demand for its security services, as well as plundering valuable mineral resources and propping up unsavoury regimes. UNRC notes that by recruiting from illegally held territory,
Russia is in flagrant breach of international humanitarian law. The claims follow myriad reports that Russia is recruiting reluctant soldiers from across the world to fight its illegal war in Ukraine, as well as exploit mineral-rich Africa countries. Last week, Sky News reports that several Indian men claimed they had been forced into fighting for the
Russian military in Ukraine. In their village of Mator in Haryana, in
India, their families showed the broadcaster the Russian Ministry of Defence contracts stipulating the men had to perform military duty to defend the Russian Federation. The men and their families claim they were coerced into signing the contracts after arriving in Russia in search of jobs on tourist visas. They were arrested by Russian authorities for violating visa laws and told to either serve for a year in the Russian military or face 10 years in
prison. Read Next Fighting a just cause The families say that after less than 15 days of training, they were thrust on to the frontline. Last month, Britain’s Ministry of Defence said that Russia was seeking to recruit foreigners and migrant workers in a bid to avoid another mobilisation drive before the rigged presidential
election in which
Vladimir Putin was elected with a supposed 87 per cent of the vote. Ukraine’s Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War (KSHPPV), a government agency, says Russia has increasingly turned to foreign mercenaries from countries with a “difficult economic situation” to provide cannon fodder for its invasion. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has warned that a major Russian offensive effort may start in late May or June. Noting this, the Institute for the Study of War said on Saturday that the Russian military was “successfully mitigating likely increased manpower and material losses” as it throws thousands of poorly trained troops into the front line, to break down Ukrainian defences. Russia is thought to have already recruited from Nepal, Somalia, Cuba , and other nations to fight in Ukraine. Russia does not bother to prepare them for combat activities, according to KSHPPV spokesman Petro Yatsenko, who presented mercenaries from Nepal, Cuba, Somalia, and Sierra Leone, captured by Ukrainian forces, at the press conference on 15 March. Christopher Tuck, a reader in Strategic Studies at King’s College
London, said: “There is a logic behind the practice of enrolling foreigners: Russia needs manpower, but it has also sought to shift the burden of providing that manpower away from Russian metropolitan areas. “Many foreign recruits have complained about a lack of training and poor equipment and of being duped into frontline deployments. However, Russia’s current method of warfare requires mass more than it requires skill, so the limited capabilities and poor motivation of these troops hardly matters.” In January, Nepal reportedly halted issuing foreign work permits for its citizens to work in Russia until further notice after growing numbers of Nepalese mercenaries were allegedly killed fighting for Russia in Ukraine. “Russia’s government misleads these people, promises them a well-paid
Job in Russia and once they come, it forces them to go to Ukraine,” says Vera Ageeva, a Russian political scientist at the Sciences Po University in
Paris. Ukraine’s General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces reported in October 2023 that around 400 foreign mercenaries had arrived in occupied Crimea and were preparing to join Russian troops on the front line. In November 2022, it emerged that Afghan special forces soldiers who fought alongside US troops and then fled to
Iran after America’s chaotic withdrawal from
Afghanistan were being recruited by Russia military to fight in Ukraine, the Associated Press reported. Orysia Lutsevych, head of the Ukraine Forum at London’s Chatham House think-tank, said Russia’s brazen use of troops from abroad and from occupied territories should serve as a warning to Eastern European countries as to what might happen if Russia is victorious in its invasion. Some defence experts have warned that if Ukraine falls to Russia, and Trump wins the
White House again, a crisis of confidence in
NATO could see Putin unleash new aggression against the little Baltic states. Pro-Kremlin voices have repeatedly disparaged Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia for their “Nazification ”. This is one of the absurd excuses the Russian dictator used to mount his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Ms Lutsevych said the “worst outcome” would be that: “Russians take big territory in Ukraine. And then they recruit Ukrainians to fight Europeans… they’re already mobilising people from the occupied territories to fight in the units in Ukraine. Why wouldn’t he [ Putin ] do the same, and use them rather than Russians?” Ms Ageeva agrees that Russia might try to recruit Ukrainians to fight against Nato countries. But says it could be “risky for Russia to arm yesterday’s enemy”, referring to the resentment and hatred Russia’s invasion has created in Ukraine. Ukrainian military intelligence said that 60,000 Ukrainians have been forced into the Russian army since it invaded Ukraine in February 2022, in defiance of international law, according to the UNRC. “Sixty thousand is a realistic number,” Alyona Lunova, advocacy manager at the ZMINA
Human Rights Centre in Kyiv, told local media. “The organisation has documented cases of men being dragged off the street.”