By Olha Chepil | 2024-06-26

KYIV -- The Kremlin has been threatening migrants and foreign students with deportation if they do not agree to go fight in Ukraine, officials and observers say.

Thousands of students and workers from Africa find themselves in a bind in Russia as the authorities suddenly have stopped issuing student visas or extending work visas.

Without these documents, remaining in Russia is not an option.

Instead, they are being recruited to fight Ukraine and forced to sign contracts with the Russian Defense Ministry, according to an article the Ukrainian National Resistance Center posted on its website June 11.

"These are threats and outright recruitment," Alexander Kovalenko, a military and political correspondent with InfoResist in Odesa, told Kontur.

"You can join the Russian army, sign a contract and actually get Russian citizenship and an apartment in the future. And bring your family later [to Russia]. Or... you can get out!"

'No one will ever find them!'

To boost Russia's manpower for its offensive in Kharkiv province, Moscow is sending young Africans to the front in Ukraine, threatening to deport them if they refuse, Bloomberg reported June 9.

The tactic was first used by the mercenary Wagner Group, the report said.

Additionally, some Africans on work visas in Russia have been detained and forced to choose between deportation and combat, Bloomberg reported, citing an unnamed European official.

"[Men] from African countries find themselves in the combat zone in Ukraine under all sorts of scenarios," said Kovalenko. "Some were forced, some were tricked, and some went deliberately for money and Russian citizenship."

Russia may be deceiving Africans by promising to place them in rear detachments, but upon their arrival, it sends them to assault units, he said.

Foreign troops have suffered especially high losses in Ukraine, since they are increasingly involved in risky offensive maneuvers to protect better trained units, said Kovalenko.

"If someone from Africa is torn to pieces somewhere near Kharkiv, then nobody is going to drag his remains out of there," he said. "And there won't be any payments. And his family won't make noise, because he hadn't brought them from Africa yet."

"It's even more beneficial for the Russians to stuff them into assault units. They die there. There's no need to make payments to anyone. They are listed as missing in action, and no one will ever find them!"

Lies and propaganda

Foreign fighters from Russia account for an increasing share of the prisoners of war Ukraine has captured on the battlefield, according to analysts. Africans and Nepalese are especially common among them.

Russian pro-war Telegram channels often publish videos of foreigners fighting in the Russian army, with comments that Russia's war enjoys the support of residents of many countries.

"I'm sure that [Russia] is cooking up fantasies to tell these men," said Ivan Stupak, a former Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) officer and analyst with the Ukrainian Institute of the Future.

"Ukraine has caught prisoners who didn't know how they ended up in the war," he told Kontur.

About 35,000 students from Africa are in Russia, Bloomberg reported, citing Yevgeny Primakov, director of Rossotrudnichestvo, the Kremlin's cultural exchange agency.

How many of them have been recruited is unknown.

If the African student draftees are lucky, observers say, they end up at armament factories, like those in Yelabuga and Nizhnekamsk, both locations of drone assembly.

But this kind of work typically goes to women, since such factories need smaller hands to work with delicate parts and electronics.

"Russia is recruiting African women, and possibly even children, to work at factories in Yelabuga," Stupak said.

"For the Russians, this, too, is protection," he said. "If some Ukrainian drone hits a building, then women and children will be carried out while the cameras roll. This would be ideal for Russia's image in the media."

'Covert draft'

The Kremlin entices many Africans -- particularly in Rwanda, Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda -- by promising lucrative salaries, said Stupak.

Those salaries are "a lot of money for Africans, and they are happy to go," Stupak said.

"But what they don't know is that it's a lie. Indeed, Russian middlemen and officials are making most of the money," he said.

Russia has launched an active mercenary recruiting campaign in at least 21 countries, says Ukrainian intelligence.

The recruitment targets citizens of Syria, Nepal, African countries and Central Asian countries.

"It's not just African college students. It's residents of Central Asia, Nepal, Uganda and Mali," Stupak said.

"For example, [in some cases] citizens of Central Asian countries had only just received a Russian passport and were immediately handed summonses in the same building," he said.

The Kremlin is duping and coercing foreigners into the war to hide battlefield losses and avoid the painful aspects of drafting Russian men, said Yuri Atanov, a lieutenant of the Ukrainian 40th Tactical Aviation Brigade, which is nicknamed the "Ghosts of Kyiv."

"Russia does not have an official draft [for the invasion of Ukraine]," he told Kontur. "A hybrid or covert draft is in progress. ... By using African countries, it's very easy to hide losses."

According to the Geneva Conventions, to which both Ukraine and Russia are parties, mercenaries who fight in a war are criminals and may be punished for war crimes.