General Discussion

The BBC Russian Service has established that by the end of December 2023 at least 254 foreigners who served in the ranks of the Russian army had been killed (see ‘«Год мясорубок»: что нам известно о потерях России в Украине за 2023 год’). At the same time, however, it is impossible to determine even an approximate number of foreigners fighting for the Kremlin. Foreign nationals have served both in mercenary groups (mainly in the Wagner Group before its dissolution) and in regular units of the Russian Armed Forces.

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Foreigners fighting for Russia include citizens of Cuba, Nepal, Syria, Serbia, Afghanistan, Somalia and Malaysia. Their total number is probably in the thousands. Russia uses various methods for recruiting foreign soldiers. In Cuba and Nepal (Moscow has recruited several hundred individuals in both these two states), groups involved in enlisting foreigners (including by using deceit) and transporting them to Russia have been broken up. The Cuban government has adopted an ambiguous approach which suggests its tacit approval of this practice. The foreign ministry has distanced itself from involvement in these activities and condemned the enlistment of mercenaries, while the Cuban ambassador to Moscow stated that Havana did not object to the participation of Cuban nationals in the war in Ukraine as long as it is “legal”. The government of Nepal, for its part, has prohibited its citizens from seeking employment in Russia and Ukraine, and requested Moscow to send the conscripted Nepalese nationals and the bodies of those killed back to Nepal.

In Syria Russia has most likely conscripted just a few hundred new soldiers, contrary to reports suggesting that several thousand individuals volunteered for military service in the Russian army. The Ukrainian war enlistment campaign was likely carried out with the backing of the Kremlin-friendly Bashar al-Assad regime. The fighters enlisted mainly came from the government’s troops; these may include the elite 25th Special Mission Forces Division and the Liwa al-Quds brigade made up of Syrian Palestinians, whom the Russians had previously trained to fight against the internal opposition and Islamic State.

Around a hundred Serbian nationals are also fighting on Russia’s side, including at least some who have justified their involvement in ideological reasons (a group of such individuals took part in the war in Ukraine back in 2014). Despite Belgrade’s pro-Russian sentiments and its restrained stance on the invasion, President Aleksandar Vučić has announced that Serbian mercenaries will face legal consequences, and has indirectly criticised Moscow.

The Kremlin has also attempted to enlist former soldiers of Afghan security forces who left Afghanistan following the Taliban takeover.

The Somali citizens who have been forcibly enlisted into the Russian army (there are at least eight such individuals) are an element of a bigger group which was arrested for violating passport regulations (these people attempted to enter the European Union from Belarus and Russia, the countries which have been putting migration pressure on the EU borders). Moscow has also conscripted foreigners who were serving sentences in Russian prisons; this is how individual citizens of Tanzania, the Ivory Coast and Zambia were incorporated into the Wagner Group.