Migrants who signed the agreement were taken from the vicinity of Finland’s eastern border to a military camp near the Ukrainian border.
Roni Kuronen,
Yrjö Kokkonen
British broadcasting company BBC has received information according to which the Russian authorities are luring migrants who sought Finland with expired visas to stay in Russia, but send them to the war in Ukraine.
According to the BBC, the immigrants sign a contract in Russian, which they cannot read. The terms of the contract state that the signatory will work for Russia for one year, after which he will have the right to stay in Russia.
In practice, “work” means fighting on the Ukrainian front, says the BBC’s Russian-language editor.
The company has interviewed the Somali man who signed the contract.
He says that there were five other Somalis, five Arabs and one Cuban in the same group as him.
According to the BBC, human rights activists who are concerned about the situation have also received indications of the recruitment of immigrants to Finland into the Russian army. The story of an Iraqi who approached an activist matches the description of a Somali interviewed by the BBC.
– My visa expired and I decided to go to Finland to seek asylum, but I was arrested. After that, I was given two options: become a mercenary or return to Iraq, where a death sentence awaits me.
There is no information about the choice of the Iraqi man.
Migrants were taken to military camps on the Ukrainian border
According to the Somali man interviewed by the BBC, the Russian police arrested him in November in the town of Lahdenpohja near the Finnish border. He then spent five days in pretrial detention, where he was pressured to sign an agreement with Russia.
The migrants who signed the agreement were later taken to a military camp near the Ukrainian border. The men were told that their contracts would last for a year. In addition, they were promised a good education and salary, as well as comprehensive health care.
– However, we were not told anything about Ukraine and the war. It was all a lie, the man tells the BBC.
According to the man, the migrants arrived at the camp on November 27. The very next day, the men refused to comply with the agreements they had signed. This led to the Russians starting to blackmail the emigrants with substandard and meager food and a ten-year prison sentence.
On December 4, the Somali interviewed by the BBC was told that his contract would be terminated and that he would be returned to pretrial detention. According to the man’s account, a similar message was delivered to four other migrants who arrived at the camp with him. He has no information about the fate of the other seven migrants.
Hiring foreigners is not a new phenomenon
Hiring foreign mercenaries in Ukraine is not new for Russia. Already at the beginning of the war of aggression, Russia was criticized for recruiting Syrian mercenaries to Ukraine.
The Ukrainian authorities have also reported on men who died in the war and who were captured and fought on the side of Russia. According to the BBC Ukrainian authorities have told at least about Nepalese, Zambian, Iraqi, Estonian, Tajik and Somali.
In ‘s morning, the future of Russia’s hybrid operation was discussed, after the last border crossing on the Eastern border closed on November 29.