As enlistment among Russian citizens declines, the Kremlin is increasingly recruiting men from low-income countries with promises of pay and fast-track citizenship. From Meduza.<\/p>\n
Russia\u2019s enlistment numbers have begun to fall after four years of waging all-out war against Ukraine. Meanwhile, the Kremlin\u2019s recruitment drives abroad seem to be ramping up \u2013 or at least attracting more attention. In early January, viral videos that appeared to show Russian officers mistreating African recruits prompted renewed warnings from Ukrainian officials that Vladimir Putin\u2019s military views foreign fighters as \u201cdisposable.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
However, promises of high salaries and fast-track citizenship continue to lure thousands of young men, particularly from low-income countries, into the Russian army\u2019s ranks and its grinding assault on Ukraine.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018A Huge Need for People\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n In early January, videos that appeared to show Africans fighting for Russia in its war against Ukraine went viral online.\u00a0<\/p>\n One showed<\/a> an African fighter with a landmine strapped to his chest being ordered at gunpoint to storm Ukrainian positions. Speaking in Russian, the person filming explains that the soldier is being used as a \u201ccan opener\u201d \u2013 in other words, that he\u2019s expected to blow himself up. The soldier, who identifies himself as Francis, repeatedly says \u201cNo.\u201d Another video showed<\/a> a group of African soldiers singing and dancing in a snowy forest. \u201cLook how many disposables there are,\u201d the person filming says in Russian. \u201cThey\u2019ll be singing a different tune once they\u2019re sent into the meat grinder,\u201d he adds.\u00a0<\/p>\n While the authenticity of the footage hasn\u2019t been verified, the videos have brought renewed attention to Russia\u2019s global efforts to recruit fresh troops. With the full-scale invasion of Ukraine approaching its fifth year, official figures<\/a> show that the number of Russians enlisting in the military has started to decline. Moreover, analysis from the independent outlet Mediazona, which tracks Russian military casualties, suggests that 2025 was the \u201cdeadliest year\u201d<\/a> of the war yet.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cRussia has a huge need for people to fight in this war,\u201d says Karen Philippa Larsen, a researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS) who is studying<\/a> the Russian military\u2019s recruitment of foreign nationals.<\/p>\n As Meduza reported<\/a> previously, Russia has targeted migrant workers inside the country for army recruitment and cracked down on naturalized citizens for avoiding the draft. In May 2025, the head of Russia\u2019s Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, reported<\/a> that 20,000 newly naturalized Russian citizens had been sent to fight in Ukraine.\u00a0<\/p>\n But Russia has also sought fighters further afield, particularly young men from former Soviet countries and low-income nations in South Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. While the exact number of foreign soldiers on the Russian side remains unknown, the BBC Russian service estimates that at least 20,000 third-country nationals may have joined up.\u00a0<\/p>\n In a November post on X<\/a>, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said that 1,436 individuals from 36 African countries are fighting in the ranks of the Russian military. \u201cThe number represents those identified, though the actual number could be higher,\u201d he added. Dmytro Usov, the secretary of Ukraine\u2019s Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, later reported<\/a> that Kyiv has identified at least 18,000 foreign nationals who have fought for Russia, and is currently holding POWs from 37 countries.<\/p>\n \u2018Money and Citizenship\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n Much of what we know about Russia\u2019s foreign fighters has been gleaned from interviews with those who surrendered to Ukrainian forces on the battlefield. As part of her own fieldwork<\/a>, Larsen spoke with 19 third-country nationals held in prisoner-of-war camps in Ukraine in the spring of 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n These POWs hailed from Sri Lanka, Nepal, Yemen, Togo, Morocco, Egypt, and Brazil. And contrary to how Kremlin propaganda tends to portray foreign recruits, Larsen found that they were anything but ideologically motivated to join Russia\u2019s war against Ukraine. \u201cThe biggest and most common motivation was money, and then citizenship,\u201d she says.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cMost of them describe an inability to sustain their daily lives back home and, in that sense, feel forced to migrate for work,\u201d Larsen explains. \u201cA Russian passport represents this gateway to work abroad, in Russia, and to secure future income.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n In addition to offering recruits hefty sign-on bonuses, Russia has passed a raft of legal changes designed to incentivize foreign nationals and stateless individuals<\/a> to join its military. In January 2024, President Vladimir Putin signed a decree<\/a> granting Russian citizenship to foreigners who sign one-year army contracts during the \u201cspecial military operation\u201d and their immediate family members. Russian lawmakers are also set to consider a package of bills<\/a> that would protect foreigners who serve in the military from deportation and extradition.\u00a0<\/p>\n That said, there is no shortage of media reports about foreign citizens who have been duped or coerced into joining the Russian army. On 7 January, the Ukrainian military released<\/a> an interview with a captured fighter from Uganda, 43-year-old Richard Akantoran, who claimed to have been lured to Russia by the promise of \u201cgood-paying\u201d jobs and then forced to enlist in the military at gunpoint.\u00a0<\/p>\n According to Larsen, most foreign fighters join up willingly, and only a minority are entirely unaware of the reality of their situation when signing a contract with the Russian Defense Ministry. At the same time, many either presume or are led to believe that they\u2019ll be working far behind the front line, she says.\u00a0<\/p>\n How Russia finds potential recruits abroad remains murky. The POWs Larsen interviewed said they had been recruited through word of mouth \u2013 either by friends and family members or by \u201cagents\u201d associated with the Russian Embassy in their home country. \u201cThese intermediaries are very important in both online and offline recruitment,\u201d Larsen says.\u00a0<\/p>\n A recent BBC investigation<\/a> alleged that a Russian woman named Polina Azarnykh used Telegram to attract hundreds of recruits from countries in the Middle East, falsely promising young men non-combat roles. (Azarnykh rejected the allegations). Experts following the issue told the BBC that Azarnykh appears to be part of a \u201cweb of informal recruiters\u201d for the Russian military.\u00a0<\/p>\n Russia is also stepping up its global recruitment efforts using the social network VK, according to the London-based research group OpenMinds. Based on an analysis<\/a> of 19,000 military recruitment ads aimed at foreign nationals, OpenMinds found that while the majority targeted Russian speakers, specifically those from former Soviet Union countries, 38% mentioned countries in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.\u00a0<\/p>\n OpenMinds\u2019 analysis also revealed the number of posts calling on foreigners to join the Russian army increased sevenfold between June and September 2025, accounting for a third of all recruitment ads on VK.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u2018Prisoners on the Front Line\u2019\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Although media reports sometimes refer to Russia\u2019s foreign fighters as \u201cmercenaries,\u201d many third-country recruits are not professional soldiers. \u201cMost of them don\u2019t have military training,\u201d Larsen says, explaining that the POWs she interviewed received between 10 days and three months of basic training before being sent to the front.\u00a0<\/p>\n According to the researcher, many of her interview subjects said they trained alongside other foreign recruits, specifically in groups that spoke the same language. However, these troops weren\u2019t kept together during their deployment. Instead, individual fighters were paired with a Russian soldier as their \u201cbuddy\u201d \u2013 and then struggled to communicate on the front line because they didn\u2019t speak a common language.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cFrom the interviews, it became clear that Russia doesn\u2019t really trust these people,\u201d Larsen says.\u00a0<\/p>\n Several POWs told Larsen that they had repeatedly tried to break their military contracts, both during training and after deployment, only to be met with violent threats. \u201cSome of them say that their commanders directly told them that they would be killed if they left,\u201d she recalls. \u201cThey felt like they were prisoners on the front line.\u201d<\/p>\n The POWs also spoke of weathering \u201cvery hard battles,\u201d explaining that they were often sent out ahead of other Russian troops to probe or locate Ukrainian positions. Most of them said Ukrainian forces captured them within weeks of their arrival on the front line.\u00a0<\/p>\n According to Larsen, these tactics suggest a tendency within the military to treat foreign fighters as expendable \u2013 much like the convicts<\/a> recruited out of Russian prisons. \u201cI think there is a tendency to see the foreigners and prisoners who fight for Russia as \u2018disposable soldiers,\u2019 in a sense, because they are most likely not very well trained,\u201d she explains. \u201cAnd I think the foreigners are especially vulnerable in this context because if and when a foreign soldier dies, there\u2019s no Russian family that receives a coffin.\u201d<\/p>\n Mediazona and the BBC Russian Service have identified<\/a> at least 554 foreign nationals killed fighting for Russia in Ukraine. But Kyiv\u2019s headquarters for the Treatment of POWs says Ukrainian authorities have identified 3,388.\u00a0<\/p>\n Ukrainian officials also maintain that the Russian army uses foreign fighters as cannon fodder. \u201cForeign citizens in the Russian army have a sad fate. Most of them are immediately sent to the so-called \u2018meat assaults,\u2019 where they are quickly killed,\u201d Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha wrote on X<\/a> in November. \u201cThe Russian command understands that there will be no accountability for the killed foreigner, so they are treated as second-rate, expendable human material.\u201d<\/p>\n After videos of African fighters began circulating online in early January, Ukraine\u2019s ambassador to South Africa, Olexander Scherba, told The Telegraph<\/a> that Russia is using Africans as \u201cmeat for the meat grinder.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n However, as Larsen points out, a disregard for military casualties appears to be the rule rather than the exception. \u201cThe Russian army also is not treating Russian soldiers very well,\u201d she says.\u00a0<\/p>\n All for All?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Whether they\u2019re still on the front line or being held by Ukraine, foreign fighters on the Russian side have struggled to return to their home countries. According to Larsen, third-country POWs in Ukraine find themselves in limbo, with officials in Kyiv maintaining that they can be released through prisoner swaps and Russia showing no interest in exchanging them. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of insecurity about how they will actually be able to leave the prisoners of war camps,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Since November, South Africa\u2019s government has been negotiating<\/a> with both Moscow and Kyiv to return 17 South Africans who were allegedly \u201ctricked\u201d into fighting against Ukraine. The men allege that they were lured into the Russian military by Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla, the daughter of South Africa\u2019s ex-president, under the pretext of \u201cbodyguard training.\u201d Zuma-Sambudla claims she herself was deceived.<\/p>\n Kenyan President William Ruto has also asked<\/a> President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to facilitate the release of Kenyan nationals in Ukrainian custody. More than 200 Kenyans<\/a> are believed to be fighting for Russia, including former members of the country\u2019s security forces, Kenyan Foreign Minister Musalia Mudavadi said in November.\u00a0<\/p>\n A spokesperson for Ukraine\u2019s headquarters for the treatment of POWs, Petro Yatsenko, told The Kyiv Independent<\/a> in December that Moscow has not requested to swap third-country captives because it \u201cdoesn\u2019t need them.\u201d He also suggested that Kyiv may be open to repatriating foreign POWs \u201cif there is interest\u201d from their home countries. At the same time, Yatsenko said that although Ukraine is currently holding captured foreign fighters as prisoners of war in accordance with the Third Geneva Convention<\/a>, Ukrainian courts may eventually seek to try them for mercenarism.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n In Larsen\u2019s view, Russia\u2019s apparent unwillingness to seek the return of its captured foreign fighters is yet another indication that these soldiers are viewed as \u201cdisposable.\u201d She added that an \u201call-for-all\u201d prisoner swap \u2013 which Ukraine has advocated throughout the full-scale invasion \u2013 could hypothetically bring about their release. However, this may only materialize as part of a peace agreement.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThere might be an all-for-all prisoner exchange at the end of the war, and they might be swapped under those conditions,\u201d Larsen says. \u201cBut I simply don\u2019t know what will happen if Russia refuses to accept them.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The 20-point peace plan<\/a> drafted by the United States and Ukraine in late 2025 stipulates an all-for-all prisoner swap. But as of this writing, President Donald Trump\u2019s year-long push to negotiate an end to the war appears deadlocked. \u201cWhen Russia\u2019s ready, Ukraine\u2019s not. When Ukraine\u2019s ready, Russia\u2019s not,\u201d Trump said at a White House press briefing<\/a> on 20 January.\u00a0<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Russia\u2019s recruitment drive continues to draw in more foreign fighters. Kyiv\u2019s Foreign Intelligence Service reported<\/a> in late December that Ukraine had identified more than 150 recruits from 25 countries who joined the Russian military that month.<\/p>\n