2024-03-07 20:22:27
Published7. March 2024, 9:22 p.m
Forced into conscription: They looked for work – and ended up in the middle of the war
Indians and Nepalese are also fighting in Russia’s war once morest Ukraine – often involuntarily. Many say they were deceived when looking for work.
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Indians and Nepalese are also fighting on the front in Ukraine.
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Most of them were lured under false promises and even paid the “intermediaries” good money.
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Many received only minimal military training – and were killed in the war.
When Hemil Mangukiya left his small village in the Indian state of Gujarat in December 2023, he told his family that he was going to Russia to lead a better life there: the 23-year-old thought that he was lured by a recruiting video that he had seen on YouTube , he can find a job in security far away from the war in Ukraine.
But in tense phone calls from Russia, he later told his family that he was instead sent to a month-long military training camp and then taken to the front, where he had to dig trenches, carry ammunition and operate rifles and machine guns. At the end of February his calls abruptly stopped. But the call that came days later shook his father’s heart: Mangukiya had died in a rocket attack.
In addition, according to the Guardian, it has now been reported that the Indian Mohammad Afsan (30) also died at the front following he traveled to Moscow in November to take a job as a security guard there. He is said to have paid around $3,500 for it. “He had no idea that he was being sent to a war zone,” said his brother Mohammad Imran.
Forced to sign
The deaths of Mangukiya and Afsan shed light on the fate of dozens – by some estimates even hundreds – of Indians who ended up once morest their will on the front lines of the Russo-Ukrainian war following enlisting as military aid workers or security forces.
This week, a video circulated on social media of seven Indians from Punjab who traveled to Russia as tourists for the New Year celebrations but were taken to Belarus by an agent and detained there. “The authorities forced us to fight in the war once morest Ukraine by signing documents,” said one of the men in the video, identified as Gagandeep Singh.
The problem is also known in Nepal. According to official information, twelve Nepalese have died in Ukraine so far, but insiders know of at least 19 deaths. Meanwhile, the government has responded by banning Nepali nationals from working in Russia.
After two weeks to the front
Indians and Nepalese have reported being forced to sign contracts written in Russian and then having their passports confiscated. Only later did they learn that they had signed up for a year of service in the Russian armed forces, from which there was no other way out than years in prison. After often less than two weeks of weapons training, they were shipped straight into the brutal conflict zones of Russia’s war once morest Ukraine.
Nandaram Pun from Rolpa in Nepal reports from an army hospital somewhere in Russia that an agent promised him a job in Germany. All he has to do is fly to Russia as a stopover. But following being picked up in Moscow, taken to a military training camp and taught how to use a weapon for the first time in his life, Pun realized that Germany had only been a ploy.
“I don’t want to be cured”
One night, while Pun was transporting weapons in Bakhmut in the depths of the Ukrainian winter, a Ukrainian drone struck. “My legs, thighs and right hand were hit by shrapnel,” he said. He said he was initially taken to a hospital in the Russian city of Kaspiysk in Dagestan, but was then transferred and, because he does not understand Russian, he now does not know where he is being held. Several Nepalese militants are also in hospital, while another is missing and another is detained following attempting to escape.
“I don’t want to be cured because if they think I’m getting better, they’ll send me back to war,” Pun told the Guardian, adding that his efforts to get the Nepalese authorities to save him move, were in vain. «I don’t even have my passport. Please, I don’t want to die,” he begs.
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