The UN Mercenary Convention aims to combat the recruitment, use, financing, and training of mercenaries. According to the convention, a mercenary is someone who participates in hostilities without being a citizen of one of the countries involved in a conflict.[1] The majority of world states treat mercenary activity as a criminal offense. Combatants include all individuals involved in hostilities who are subject to the official command of one of the warring parties—regular military personnel, volunteers, and militias. Thus, there is a difference in motivation between mercenaries and combatants.[2] With the former material remuneration may take the form of money or promises of a legal status such as citizenship. Motivation may likewise stem from political and ideological beliefs or coercion and deception. In Russia, all of these factors are in play—particularly, coercion and material remuneration—and not mutually exclusively. Additionally, foreigners are involved in the military-industrial complex, which supports the Russian army’s activities of Ukraine.
Forced Migrants
The authors of this text proceed from the position that economic migration, or—as Russian-language sources more often refer to it—labor migration, is a form of forced migration.[3] People find themselves in a situation in which, in order to survive, support their families, and secure their future, they have to leave everything behind and travel to a foreign country. Geography and politics determine economic migration flows, which adhere to specific historical patterns. For example, migrants from the South Caucasus and Central Asia have traditionally traveled to neighboring Russia, which for centuries has exploited them, their land, and their resources. Soviet socialist diplomacy projects focused on countries in Southeast Asia, Africa, and Central and South America, and today recruitment of international workers occurs along these same routes.
Russia’s Military-Industrial Complex
Since 2022, Russia has recruited foreigners to work in its military-industrial enterprises. In addition to attracting workers who are already in Russia, there are large-scale recruitment campaigns, the disclosure of which requires cooperation among journalists and investigators from multiple countries.
Until 2022, the Alabuga Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in Tatarstan, provided a platform for dozens of industrial enterprises with the participation of foreign investors. At the beginning of the full-scale war, it began to receive Russian military industry orders. This is how a drone manufacturing plant appeared in Tatarstan. The factory is the result of international cooperation: the technology for building unmanned aerial vehicles is Iranian, while the Russian Geran-2 UAVs are a local version of the famous Shahed 136 drones. Despite the Russian media’s silence, there are constant attacks by Ukrainian drones. The number of people willing to work in Alabuga doesn’t meet the plant’s production needs.
The purpose of the Alabuga Start Program is to solve the labor supply problem. Aimed at women aged 18–22, who, within three weeks of application receive an employment offer and paid relocation to Tatarstan, both from other Russian regions and from abroad. In 2023–2024 alone, the Alabuga Start Program attracted 40 teenagers from Belarus, Qazaqstan, Kyrgyzstan, O'zbekiston, and Tajikistan.[4]
Attempts to recruit participants to Alabuga in other countries occur through targeted advertising. According to some data, around 1,000 women from various African countries have already signed contracts.[5] Alabuga Start Program participants stated that they learned about the program from influencers on social media. There is evidence that the SEZ management even recruited students through fake profiles on the dating apps Badoo and Tinder.[6] In South Sudan, the advertisement appeared on its Ministry of Education website.[7]
In Kyrgyzstan, an agreement with that country’s Ministry of Labor guarantees recruitment for the Alabuga Start Program, specifically with the ministry’s Center for the Employment of Citizens Abroad.[8] Bureaucratic language officially calls this “promoting the employment of Kyrgyz citizens in Russia.” In practice, this means dispatch to Alabuga to carry out military industry orders in a fully controlled defense factory environment where workers cannot defend their labor rights.
Kyrgyzstan’s Ministry of Education also signed a memorandum of cooperation with the Alabuga SEZ. As part of this agreement, Kyrgyz schoolchildren undergo training in entrepreneurship and business skills[9] and free distribution of brochures advertising opportunities to study in Russia occurs in local schools and colleges.[10] At first glance, all this seems harmless. The Alabuga Polytech Educational Center issues diplomas in secondary vocational training in 19 fields, promising its students employment and a salary from their first year of study. This form of combining education and work in production is called “dual education.” The promised employment takes place right here, at the Tatarstan drone assembly plant.
Participation in Military Mercenary Activity
The very fact of being on the Russian Federation’s territory makes economic migrants vulnerable to forced signing of contracts and dispatch to the front. In the fall of 2025, a media outlet reported that 628 Tajikistan citizens had signed contracts with the Russian Ministry of Defense since the beginning of the year.[11] According to the Ukrainian “I Want to Live” Project, there are 2,439 O'zbekiston, 1,926 Tajikistan, 1,432 Qazaqstan, 843 Kyrgyzstan, and 360 Turkmenistan citizens fighting in the Russian army.[12]
Tajikistan has a dual citizenship agreement with Russia—and only with Russia—meaning anyone with Tajikistan citizenship can obtain a Russian passport. Acquiring Russian citizenship places Tajikistan men at risk of being called up for military service in the event of war.[13]However, the means of calculating the statistics regarding recruited foreigners is not entirely clear. Most likely, those with dual or a second citizenship are counted as Russian.
In every Central Asian country, despite Kremlin influence, investigations are underway into cases of citizens participating in the Russian-Ukrainian war. Like many other residents of Kostanay Oblast, which borders Russia, Qazaqstan citizen Kirill Nasybaev traveled to Chelyabinsk looking for work.[14] At a temporary detention center for foreigners, where he ended up after a raid, Kirill was pressured into signing a contract with the Ministry of Defense and ended up in Donbas. After being informed of his death, his relatives were forbidden from bringing his body back to Qazaqstan for burial, and learned the police had opened a case of mercenary activity which would be pursued. In total, 76 criminal cases were conducted under Qazaqstan’s Mercenary Activity Article in the summer of 2025.[15]
In summer 2025, Kyrgyzstan’s Embassy in Moscow published information on its Facebook page about a citizen who had been promised a high-paying job, but when signing the documents, saw they were a contract with the Russian Ministry of Defense.[16] Realizing the risks, the man appealed to his country’s diplomatic mission and received assistance: consulate employees came to him and helped him write a written refusal.
The Belarusian authorities openly support Russia’s war against Ukraine and provide access to military infrastructure and their border with Ukraine to Russian troops located on their territory. In spring 2025, “I Want to Live” reported that 742 Belarusian citizens were serving in Russian military units.[17] This figure hardly reflects reality, since holders of dual Russian and Belarusian citizenship appear in registers as citizens of the Russian Federation. There is no dual citizenship agreement between Russia and Belarus—citizenship is determined on a case-by-case basis depending on residency at a given moment.
Most residents of the self-proclaimed republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia hold Russian passports. On this basis, they can be mobilized into the Russian armed forces. Consequently, it’s impossible to determine the exact number of participants in the war from these republics, since statistics may cite them as citizens of the Russian Federation. In addition, there are fragmentary data regarding the service of residents of these republics as volunteers. For example, in spring 2025, Abkhazia’s ambassador to Russia, Alkhas Kvitsinia, reported 66 confirmed deaths among the Abkhazian citizens.[18] South Ossetian officials confirmed the deaths of 39 of their citizens.[19]
In addition to economic migrants, the Ministry of Defense also forces to sign contracts people who have traveled to Russia to escape disasters and wars in their own countries. Reuters reported on nine citizens of Somalia serving in Russia’s army,[20]along with people originating in Syria and Afghanistan. Public data includes the names of citizens of Malaysia, China, Iraq, Zambia, Tanzania, Togo, and Ethiopia. The Sri Lankan government possesses data about 288 retired military personnel fighting in the war, at least 16 of them dead.[21]
The Nepalese government has advised its citizens not to travel to Russia and has stopped issuing exit permits after receiving information in December 2023 regarding Nepalese casualties and POWs. Nepalese Foreign Ministry representatives in Moscow have addressed the Russian government with a request to stop recruiting Nepalese citizens.[22] By summer 2025, 70 Nepalese citizens were confirmed killed and 50 were missing.
In 2024, the Indian government arrested two people on suspicion of recruiting men to fight for Russia in the country’s southern states.[23] According to the investigation, those two individuals promised to help the men to enroll in Russian universities or find employment. They found potential victims among travel agency clients applying for visas. In July 2024, Indian Prime Minister Modi personally met with Russian President Putin and asked him to release from the Russian Army Indian citizens “who had been misled when they enlisted.” By the end of 2024, 91 Indian citizens were confirmed involved, 45 of whom had been demobilized and nine of whom were declared dead.[24]
In 2023, an interview with two young Cuban citizens spread across Spanish-language social media,[25]in which they recounted being deceived with promises of construction work and then taken to a recruitment center. It soon became clear that there were dozens of similar stories[26] and several recruitment groups were operating in Cuba.[27] Since Cuba and Russia enjoy a visa-free regime, teams of enlisters gave Cubans contracts to sign in Russian without translations into Spanish and provided them with plane tickets. In response to public outrage, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs opened an investigation into the criminal network involved in international human trafficking.[28] In autumn 2025, Russia and Cuba signed a military cooperation agreement, and investigations revealed that 5,000 Cuban mercenaries were serving in the Russian army.[29]In response, Ukraine closed its diplomatic mission in Havana.[30]
In early November 2025, the president of South Africa issued a statement that the government had received a distress signal from 17 citizens deceived into joining the Russian Army in Donbass.[31] Sixteen of them were natives of KwaZulu-Natal Province. In addition to conducting diplomatic negotiations to release the South African citizens, the government launched an investigation into their involvement in mercenary activities.
Professional Soldiers
Another category of foreigners on the front lines is career military personnel. Russian Federation allies cite their allyship as motivation for supplying armed forces to the Russian side. In June 2025, Ukrainian special services learned that Russia accepted 600 military personnel from China for “anti-NATO” military training.[32] North Korea is also sending its military personnel to the Russian front, making no secret of the fact that it is thus training them, with the number of military personnel from North Korea exceeding 15,000.[33]According to South Korean data, 600 North Korean soldiers have been killed.[34] Previously, Reuters reported on Syrian military personnel[35] recruited by the Wagner PMC with the support of Putin’s ally, dictator Bashar al-Assad. In particular, reporters suggest these are former servicemen from the elite 25th Division (formerly known as Quwwat al-Nimr, or the Tiger Forces) and the Liwa al-Quds (Jerusalem Brigade), which consisted of Syrians of Palestinian origin.
There are also reports of attempts by the Kremlin to recruit Afghanistan security service personnel who evacuated to Russia once the Taliban came to power.[36]
Ideological Mercenaries
Ideological mercenaries have been travelling to the front to support Russia since 2014. These are mainly participants in recent hostilities and representatives of far-right groups. An example of the latter is the Italian Forza Nuova,[37] whose members support Putin and call him El Duce.[38] Forza Nuova recruits people through propaganda videos and social media posts and sends them to the front to “restore historical justice.”[39] For members of such groups, historical justice is linked to restoring the global political order, that, in their view, the collapse of the USSR disrupted.
A recruiter named Dejan Berič accused the Russian military command of treating Serbs without respect: “I fear for the lives of these people. The Serbs came with pure hearts. They came to fight. They are treated like cattle in this 119th regiment.”[40] According to Berič, the command of the 119th Airborne Regiment mistreated Serbian mercenaries. Before the New Year, without providing them with ammunition or equipment it sent them to fight unarmed. The Serbs refused to go into battle. The regiment’s commanders declared them deserters and war criminals, and military counterintelligence personnel broke into the camp, beat the Serbian fighters with rifle butts, and demanded they admit to being spies.
Among the mercenaries, a generational shift has occurred since the beginning of the war in Crimea and northeastern Ukraine. As a Balkan Insight investigation shows, in 2014, men with combat experience in Bosnia and Kosovo went to fight for Russia. At the time, there was a belief that if the Serbs helped Russia obtain Crimea, the Russians would help the Serbs obtain Kosovo.[41] According to one expert, the current foreign mercenaries are younger, which however does not prevent them from signing military contracts in a rush to support pro-Russian ideas. In May 2025, “I Want to Live” reported there were 101 Serbian mercenaries in Russia’s Army.
Conclusion
Russia actively employs foreigners in its war against Ukraine, both on the front lines and in military enterprises. Foreign states have various public responses to their citizens’ involvement in the war. Formally, all countries have legislation in place that treats participation in military operations on behalf of another country as mercenary activity punishable by criminal prosecution. Residents of the self-proclaimed republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia are not protected from forced mobilization, if they have Russian passports or are on Russian territory. Thus far, only officials from Nepal, India, and Sri Lanka have taken overt action to rescue their citizens from the Russian trenches, while South African authorities conduct large-scale investigations into the recruitment of their citizens to the front lines and for work in the military-industrial complex.
The war continues, and it is important to know that there are organizations such as the Conscientious Objectors Movement and Appeal to Conscience that can aid in resisting recruitment and terminating contracts.
Translated from Russian by Helen Faller.