Russia has recruited thousands of foreign nationals to fight in the war against Ukraine, with recruitment in many documented cases involving deception, coercion and exploitation, according to an Amnesty International investigation.
The human rights organization examined the recruitment of nationals from lower-income countries as well as migrants and refugees already living in Russia.
According to Amnesty, some recruits were promised civilian employment, high salaries, legal status or Russian citizenship but later found themselves serving in the Russian armed forces and being sent to Ukraine.
Amnesty International says that in many of the cases it documented, the combination of deception, coercion and subsequent exploitation meets the elements of trafficking in persons, a human rights violation and crime.
This legal characterization is Amnesty’s conclusion based on the cases it examined. It does not mean that a court has issued a trafficking conviction in each of the episodes described. The Amnesty International report was published on September 10.