We advise all foreign nationals who are studying at universities in Russia leave the country immediately, due to high risk of provocation, recruitment by Russian army with further sending to war in Ukraine.
Having carefully studied the personalities of prisoners of war – third country nationals, captured by Ukrainian army, we may say that Russia’s domestic intelligence, the FSB, recruits foreign students who study at Russian universities for contract service in Russian army, and then sends them to war in Ukraine. A Nepalese national who turned out to be a student at one of Moscow universities was captured in Ukraine in December 2023. Then, police in Nepal arrested 10 people suspected of illegal recruitment of Nepali people to join Russian army. Nearly 200 Nepali nationals are believed to be serving in the Russian army as mercenaries, Nepal’s ambassador to Moscow Milan Raj Tuladhar says.
Nepal’s migration service claims that at least 1,729 Nepali nationals have gone to Russia on student and work visas since February 2022. That means Moscow also uses intelligence officers or recruited nationals who studied or worked in Russia to recruit foreign nationals. These people also recruit their own nationals who worked for the police or served in the army as potential mercenaries. Some sources in Africa suggest that employees of Russian diplomatic missions possibly recruit people who apply for visas or other papers.
A human trafficking investigation is underway in Nepal. The suspects are accused of illegally collecting nine thousand dollars from unemployed young Nepali people and sending them to Russia on tourist visas. That way, recruitment for the Russian army looks like a criminal organization associated with human trafficking.
We cannot exclude that was a scheme by corrupt military intelligence officers (military attaches, probably) and FSB officers under diplomatic cover. We can neither refute nor confirm the hypothesis of Belarusian government involved in the same kind of activity, with the case of migrants, transferred to the Polish border, and a Somali national case, who was recruited to be sent to war in Ukraine, supporting it indirectly.
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When these people came to Russia, they were recruited by the army. We believe, however, the FSB also recruits foreign students in Russia. The FSB agents in Russian universities, first of all, collect information on foreign nationals, their problems, and families. After that, intelligence officers make a recruitment proposal, based on the information collected. Money is the basis for recruitment in most cases. A Nepali national was recruited after saying his father was ill, needed emergency surgery and money for that. The Russians offered him contract military service to pay for his father’s operation.This scheme confirms our previous findings on the mechanism for recruiting Cuban nationals who studied in Russia, and were then also sent to the war in Ukraine after signing contracts. We believe the same scheme worked for the Serbs, who were also recruited by Russian army for contract service.
There is documentary evidence that six Nepalese nationals serving in Russian army have already died at the front.
We believe that recruiting mercenaries for the war in Ukraine was a deliberate policy by the Kremlin, with Vladimir Putin’s decree on simplified procedure of obtaining citizenship for foreign nationals who took part in a “special military operation.”
These facts permit us to conclude that:
• Russia has faced the challenge of mobilizing its nationals and recruiting a contract army.
• High Russian casualties limit the willingness of Russian nationals to sign contracts for military service.
• Foreign mercenaries are becoming a priority for the Russians to recruit for the war in Ukraine.
• Russians prefer recruiting people from the poorest countries, as their maintenance cost is lower, and recruitment – simpler.
• With foreign nationals recruited, Russia’s budget has less financial burden, in case a soldier is injured or killed.
