(C) Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
This story was originally published by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and is unaltered.
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Central Asians in Russia Pressured to Join Moscow's Fight in Ukraine [1]
['Colleen Wood', 'Sher Khashimov', 'March']
Date: 2022-03-17
Central Asian nationals residing in Russia are being pressured to fight in Ukraine as Moscow's military incurs heavier-than-expected losses, evidence suggests and migrants' rights activists say.
Russia’s three-week war in Ukraine has had a shockingly high death toll, although Russian and Ukrainian authorities dispute the number of troops killed on both sides. The fog of war makes it difficult to discern not only how many soldiers have died, but also who those soldiers are and where they came from.
On March 1, the Ukrainska Pravda newspaper leaked what appears to be the personal data of 120,000 Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine. While coming from a reputable outlet, the independently unverified 6,616-page list of military personnel names, registration numbers and places of service contains multiple ethnically Central Asian names.
Valentina Chupik, a civil rights advocate famous for her work defending migrant’s rights in Russia, confirmed that more than a dozen Central Asians have sought her legal advice following pressure to sign up for contract service in the Russian army since Feb. 26.
In a conversation over the Telegram messaging app, she told The Moscow Times that she noticed two patterns by which migrants are being targeted.
Chupik said she received calls from 10 Tajikistan and Uzbekistan citizens who reside in Russia, saying they had received phone calls from people who claimed to represent immigration law firms and could expedite the process of receiving Russian citizenship if they signed up for contract service.
“This is a complete lie, the law does not allow this,” Chupik said. “I told these guys that [the callers] are scammers.”
Another tactic involves army tents in several Moscow metro stations, where Chupik says recruiters try to get commuters to enlist with the “Volunteer Army of the Donetsk People’s Republic.” They target migrants, Chupik said, promising that they can obtain Russian citizenship in just six months.
“I think the Russian government is using labor migrants as cannon fodder in Ukraine,” Chupik alleged in a recent interview. “These migrants are probably being signed up by the Defense Ministry and by private military companies.”
In a comment on Facebook, Chupik — who in September 2021 was stripped of her asylum status by Russian authorities for her staunch work protecting migrants — urged male Central Asians between the ages of 18 and 60 to leave Russia as soon as possible.
Social media posts and media reports appear to corroborate Chupik’s assertions that Central Asians are being pressured to fight for Russian forces in Ukraine.
A video of an Uzbek man allegedly driving a Russian military truck into Ukraine was widely shared via the Telegram messaging app. The man, who appeared to be in his 50s and was dressed in camouflage fatigues, said on camera that he was recruited because of his experience serving in Afghanistan and that he was given no choice but to sign up.
“There are many Uzbeks here who have come to take part in the war. There are people from Tajikistan too. We have a contract,” said the man.
After an RFE/RL investigation tracked him down, the man confirmed that he had been offered a three-month contract earning a monthly salary of 50,000 rubles ($475) and a promise of Russian citizenship.
The job offer came from an employment listing website called UzMigrant.
Bakhrom Ismailov, the director of the company behind UzMigrant, bragged in a Feb. 20 Uzbek-language video that “contract service in the Russian army will allow one to obtain Russian citizenship in three months.”
In a TikTok video uploaded in early March by the account @kyrgyznation, a man warns of the possibility that Kyrgyz migrants could be called up to fight.
“If you have a Russian passport and get a summons [to the military enlistment station], try to come back to Kyrgyzstan,” he says.
Before @kyrgyznation turned off comments, the post was flooded with biting criticism of Kyrgyz men with Russian citizenship who would flee the draft.
“If your passport is from the Russian Federation, then you’ll give your life to the Russian Federation,” one commenter wrote.
“Shame on those who write such comments,” Chupik told The Moscow Times. “[These naturalized Central Asians] are intimidated with possible deprivation of [Russian] citizenship and forced to sign a contract. They must refuse. It is better to lose citizenship than to die in an unjust war or become a mercenary assassin.”
[END]
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[1] Url:
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2022/03/17/central-asians-in-russia-pressured-to-join-moscows-fight-in-ukraine-a76957
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