Arabs living in Russia are falling victim to misleading procedures which aim to recruit fighters into Russia’s army by forcing those wishing to naturalise their status or claim asylum to sign a declaration agreeing to serve in Russia’s armed forces.
Once bound by these contracts, Arab and other non-Russian individuals are deployed to the front lines, seemingly as expendable forces to exhaust Ukrainian ammunition.
Mohammed Ahmed, an Egyptian drafted into the Russian army, urges fellow Egyptians, and Arabs in general, not to get involved in the war, saying: “No matter how hard things are in your homeland, don’t go to Ukraine to fight”.
His story with the Russian army began a few months ago and has seen him sustain shrapnel wounds to both legs, causing him to be transferred to a medical battalion in eastern Ukraine, Â even though he hasn’t been able to walk without crutches since his injury.
After much hesitation, Ahmed (a pseudonym) decided to break his silence and tell his story.
“I’m in my early fifties, and used to work as an accountant in Egypt,” he explains to The New Arab’s Arabic-language sister edition.
“Then, due to the difficult living conditions, I became a driver for car-hailing apps like Uber and Careem instead. Later, I travelled to Russia on a tourist visa to find work, after which I planned to legalise my status, like many immigrants.”
After months of unsuccessful job searching, Ahmed met “Polina”, who offered him a job at a private company contracted by the Russian Ministry of Defence, assuring him it wouldn’t involve combat.
She promised a monthly salary of 200,000 rubles (around $2,000) and Russian citizenship. Ahmed accepted and travelled to Bryansk, expecting a civilian job. Instead, he was taken to a military training centre with four other Egyptians, two Syrians, and a Tunisian.
At the camp, he found dozens of young Arab men in the same situation. When he objected, the battalion commander told him, “If you think you’ve been misled, seek legal redress. However, your name is on the Ministry of Defence’s contractor list, and you’ll be dealt with from this perspective.”
Ahmed and his group were forced to march into Ukraine through snow-covered terrain, and he describes harrowing moments on the frontlines, where he narrowly escaped death.
“They’re pushing foreigners to the frontlines to exhaust the ammunition of the Ukrainian forces in order to ease combat operations for the professional Russian soldiers in the main phase of the [fighting],” he says.
He was injured by a drone blast which could have killed him, he says, but he was able to “move from trench to trench until reaching the emergency aid point”.
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Citizenship for conscription
After applying for Russian citizenship as the father of a Russian citizen, Syrian tailor Amin Khaled (a pseudonym) went to the immigration directorate in the town he was living in to check the status of his application.
There, he was told he had to sign a form laying out the legal guarantees for contractors with the Russian Ministry of Defence, and indicate at the bottom whether he agreed to the contract or not.
The form included a section for the applicant’s personal data, and a declaration that the signatory was aware of legal guarantees for contractors with the Russian army, including around combatant status, access to free medical treatment, and insurance at the state’s expense. The last part of the form required the signatory to answer the question: “I agree/disagree to contract for military service in the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation.”
Khaled, 41, who has lived in a Moscow suburb for ten years, refused to sign. Officials then told him his application would take three more months. Fearing conscription, he withdrew it altogether. “I left Syria ten years ago to avoid fighting. I won’t expose myself to that in Russia,” he explains. Instead, he hopes to travel to Europe or return to Syria when possible.
He says he has several acquaintances in the Arab community in Russia who have enlisted to fight with the Russian army in Ukraine.
“I personally know several people, including a young Egyptian who was working in a restaurant, who volunteered before to go and fight in Ukraine with Wagner, the private military company, and now they’re going into the Russian army.”
He says they’re all “poor, working-class men who thought they’d earn good money and receive Russian citizenship in return for fighting, but instead they’ve been left facing a harsh reality where their contracts are automatically extended and [many] won’t leave the battlefield alive”.
To emphasise this point, Khaled says recently three Arab recruits were reported killed by a Ukrainian drone strike in the Kursk region.
Trapped by Russia’s need for recruits
Russian lawyer Roman Petrov, whose legal practice defends the rights of combatants, confirmed that it is now “mandatory” for naturalised citizens to sign a form agreeing to potential service in the military.
He says he has seen one legal precedent for a military contract being cancelled, which was in the case of a Danish citizen who didn’t speak Russian, because there is a legal prohibition on contracts being ratified with foreign non-Russian speakers.
However, though this is one of the few routes out of the military, the Russian-language requirement for military service was relaxed in 2022, and Petrov stresses that since partial mobilisation was introduced in 2022, all contracts signed with the military are automatically valid, and “contractors must understand that they become military personnel from the moment of contracting”.
Konstantin Blokhin, a researcher at the Centre for Security Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, says that although the Russian authorities need more fighters, declaring a new wave of mobilisation could cause widespread anger.
 “Official figures indicate that around 700,000 people are involved in combat operations on the frontline, but in my view, this number is not enough given the vast area of ​​Ukraine, which is nearly the size of France and double that of Germany”.
He says the need for additional fighters without provoking public outrage is the reason the Russian defence ministry is “offering attractive wages to recruit Russian and foreign contractors”.
Syrian fighters in Russia’s war
Days into the war against Ukraine, in March 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin approved a proposal by then Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu to use “volunteers” from the Middle East to take part in its war with Ukraine, with Shoigu claiming that “over 16,000 applications” had been received from the region.
Though these people technically volunteered, Syrian opposition academic and Moscow resident Mahmoud Al-Hamza says they are in a “hostage-like” situation, and have been abandoned by their home countries.
He also explains that under the former Syrian regime, young men were brought from Suwaida and pro-regime areas on the coast to fight alongside Russian forces, although many believed they would be doing non-combat work.
Unable to leave Russia due to automatic contract extensions and their governments’ inaction, they remain trapped in a war they never intended to fight, he says.
This is an edited translation from our Arabic edition. To read the original article click here.
Translated by Rose Chacko Â
This article is taken from our Arabic sister publication, Al-Araby Al Jadeed and mirrors the source’s original editorial guidelines and reporting policies. Any requests for correction or comment will be forwarded to the original authors and editors.
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