KYIV: Foreign soldiers captured by Ukraine said they traveled to escape poverty from homes in Asia, the Caribbean and Africa but were tricked into fighting for Russia on the front lines.
Speaking at a recent press event organized by Ukrainian officials, eight prisoners of war from Cuba, Nepal, Sierra Leone and Somalia said they were lured with promises of high wages, non-frontline roles or simply tricked.
Organizers defined the men as “mercenaries” from the “global South” and said they were treating them the same as Russian POWs.
While the men said they spoke of their own free will, they were escorted by masked guards who listened as they spoke to journalists.
The Geneva Convention says POWs should be protected from “public curiosity.”
AFP did not question the men separately and chose not to name them, although organizers did.
A 35-year-old Cuban man with dreadlocks said he had responded to a Facebook post offering construction work in Russia.
“I didn’t think I was coming to the war,” he said.
A man from Sierra Leone wiped away tears, saying he had paid a recruiter and flown to Russia for a “good job” to support his large family but had not wanted to join the military.
The security guard said he only realized after signing Russian-language paperwork that he had joined the army.
Petro Yatsenko, spokesman for a Ukrainian office responsible for prisoners of war, said Russia was seeking to recruit from very low-income countries.
“When the Russians offer such people $2,000 a month and say that they will actually be used as bodyguards or on the third line from the front, they are very tempted,” he told AFP.
Russia has turned to foreign fighters after running low on mercenaries from the Wagner group and ex-prisoners, Yatsenko said.
“The percentage of mercenaries is growing” as “Russia’s mobilization resource is declining,” he said.
Some of the prisoners in Kyiv said they willingly joined the army but did not expect to be sent to the front.
Some said they were told they would be “helpers” for first aid and logistics.
A young Somalian man with cropped hair said he had joined up to give his family a “good future.”
But “I didn’t know that I would be in the first line,” he said.
“I was just dropped there without... knowing the language.”
A 32-year-old man from Nepal said he had watched TikTok videos about Nepalis joining the army, saying his motivation was “of course about the money.”
One man said he was paid 250,000 rubles ($2,720) a month, while another said his promised salary was $2,000.
AFP reporters in India and Nepal have investigated such recruitment, finding it is often done through informal intermediaries and promotional videos posted on social media.
Applicants lacking military experience are initially told they will receive non-combatant roles and the option of permanent residence.
But in reality they receive basic weapons training and are deployed to the front line.
Nepal has said five of its citizens are prisoners of war in Ukraine and at least 12 have been killed. It has banned citizens from working in Russia or Ukraine and asked Russia to return recruits.
The only prisoner in Kyiv to speak basic Russian was a 24-year-old Nepali with hands so scarred by war-inflicted burns that he struggled to hold a pen.
He said he was studying and working in Russia when he spotted recruitment posters, expecting to become a “security guard or something like that.”
“I don’t know what to do, how to shoot,” he said.
Yatsenko urged countries to act to stop such people being “duped by recruiters who promise them mountains of gold.”
Ukraine is currently holding foreigners in the same detention centers and treating them the same as Russian POWs.
“They were captured on the front line... in military uniform, with weapons. And whether they are mercenaries will be decided by the court,” Yatsenko told AFP.
“We are interested to pass them to their homelands,” he added, however.
Foreign POWs say tricked into fighting for Russia
https://arab.news/pd4t3
Foreign POWs say tricked into fighting for Russia
- Organizers defined the men as “mercenaries” from the “global South” and said they were treating them the same as Russian POWs
- The Geneva Convention says POWs should be protected from “public curiosity”
ASEAN will want inclusive Myanmar election, Thai foreign minister says
- Thai minister: ‘If there is an election, ASEAN would want an inclusive process that included all stakeholders’
“If there is an election, ASEAN would want an inclusive process that included all stakeholders,” Foreign Minister Maris Sangiampongsa said in a group interview.
China warns Germany against ‘manipulation and smearing’ in spying cases
- German media reported that a Chinese man was detained by security guards before he was arrested by police after taking photographs at the Kiel-Wik naval base on Dec. 9
BEIJING: Beijing on Friday warned Berlin against “manipulation and smearing” China in spying cases, after German police opened an espionage probe into a Chinese national.
“We hope that the German side will... stop using so-called espionage cases to engage in manipulation and smearing, and earnestly safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese citizens in Germany,” foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian said.
German media reported that a Chinese man was detained by security guards before he was arrested by police after taking photographs at the Kiel-Wik naval base on December 9.
The northern port is home to German naval installations and shipyards of the defense giant Thyssenkrupp, which builds submarines there.
Beijing on Friday said it was “not aware” of the specific case.
But Lin said China “has always required its citizens overseas to comply with local laws and regulations.”
Germany in early October said it had arrested a Chinese woman accused of spying on the country’s defense industry while working in a logistics company, including at Leipzig airport in eastern Germany.
Named only as Yaqi X., she allegedly reported to another suspected Beijing agent now under arrest, Jian G., who was working in the office of a German far-right member of the European Parliament, Maximilian Krah.
News magazine Der Spiegel, citing unnamed security sources, said that 38-year-old Yaqi X. had especially targeted the arms giant Rheinmetall, which is involved in making Leopard tanks and uses Leipzig airport for cargo flights.
Malaysia to resume search for wreckage of missing MH370 flight
- Flight MH370 vanished en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014
- Malaysia engaged Ocean Infinity in 2018 to search in the southern Indian Ocean
KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia has agreed in principle to resume the search for the wreckage of missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, its transport minister said on Friday, more than 10 years after it disappeared in one of the world’s greatest aviation mysteries.
Flight MH370, a Boeing 777 carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew, vanished en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014.
Transport Minister Anthony Loke said the proposal to search a new area in the southern Indian Ocean came from exploration firm Ocean Infinity, which had also conducted the last search for the plane that ended in 2018.
The firm will receive $70 million if wreckage found is substantive, Loke told a press conference.
“Our responsibility and obligation and commitment is to the next of kin,” he said.
“We hope this time will be positive, that the wreckage will be found and give closure to the families.”
Malaysian investigators initially did not rule out the possibility that the aircraft had been deliberately taken off course.
Debris, some confirmed and some believed to be from the aircraft, has washed up along the coast of Africa and on islands in the Indian Ocean.
More than 150 Chinese passengers were on the flight, with relatives demanding compensation from Malaysia Airlines, Boeing, aircraft engine maker Rolls-Royce and the Allianz insurance group among others.
Malaysia engaged Ocean Infinity in 2018 to search in the southern Indian Ocean, offering to pay up to $70 million if it found the plane, but it failed on two attempts.
That followed an underwater search by Malaysia, Australia and China in a 120,000-square-kilometer area of the southern Indian Ocean, based on data of automatic connections between an Inmarsat satellite and the plane.
France’s Macron to visit Mayotte shantytowns wrecked by Cyclone Chido
- Officials in France’s poorest overseas territory have only been able to confirm 31 fatalities more than six days after the cyclone
- Some of the islands’ worst-affected neighborhoods, hillside shantytowns are largely inhabited by undocumented migrants
MAMOUDZOU: French President Emmanuel Macron was due on Friday to visit shantytowns in Mayotte ravaged by Cyclone Chido on the second day of a visit where he has faced calls to speed up relief to the Indian Ocean archipelago.
Officials in France’s poorest overseas territory have only been able to confirm 31 fatalities more than six days after the cyclone, the strongest to hit Mayotte in 90 years, but some have said they fear thousands could have been killed.
Some of the islands’ worst-affected neighborhoods, hillside shantytowns comprised of flimsy huts largely inhabited by undocumented migrants, have not yet been accessed by rescue workers.
Macron decided to extend his stay and spend the night in Mayotte after residents pleaded with him to do so.
“I think it’s a sign of respect and consideration that is important to me and which allows me to see a little more of what the population is going through,” he told reporters late on Thursday.
During the first day of his visit, Macron faced criticism and boos from some Mayotte residents for what they called his government’s sluggish response to the cyclone.
Macron said authorities were quickly scaling up support and called for unity. In a heated exchange with a jeering crowd in the evening, he defended the government against charges it neglects Mayotte.
“You are happy to be in France. If it wasn’t for France, you would be 10,000 times worse off,” he said, using an expletive.
Aboubacar Ahamada Mlachahi was one of many people struggling to secure basic needs.
“What matters first is water, for the children. Before fixing the houses, before fixing anything, the daily life... We need water,” he told Reuters.
The 34-year-old construction worker, who is originally from Comoros, said his house was destroyed by the cyclone and he is now squatting on a hillside at Longoni, Mayotte’s freight port.
“Everything is gone,” he said.
Undocumented migrants
Authorities have warned it will be difficult to establish a precise death toll in a territory that is home to large numbers of undocumented migrants from Comoros, Madagascar and other countries. Official statistics put Mayotte’s population at 321,000, but many say it is much higher.
Some victims were buried immediately, in accordance with Muslim tradition, before their deaths could be counted.
Three out of four people live below the national poverty line in Mayotte, which remains heavily dependent on support from metropolitan France.
Chido also killed at least 73 people in Mozambique and 13 in Malawi after reaching continental Africa, according to officials in those countries.
Malaysia to resume search for missing Flight MH370
- Flight MH370 vanished en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014
- Malaysia engaged Ocean Infinity in 2018 to search in the southern Indian Ocean
KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia has agreed in principle to resume the search for the wreckage of missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, its transport minister said on Friday, more than 10 years after it disappeared in one of the world’s greatest aviation mysteries.
Flight MH370, a Boeing 777 carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew, vanished en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014.
Transport Minister Anthony Loke said the proposal to search a new area in the southern Indian Ocean came from exploration firm Ocean Infinity, which had also conducted the last search for the plane that ended in 2018.
The firm will receive $70 million if wreckage found is substantive, Loke told a press conference.
“Our responsibility and obligation and commitment is to the next of kin,” he said.
“We hope this time will be positive, that the wreckage will be found and give closure to the families.”
Malaysian investigators initially did not rule out the possibility that the aircraft had been deliberately taken off course.
Debris, some confirmed and some believed to be from the aircraft, has washed up along the coast of Africa and on islands in the Indian Ocean.
More than 150 Chinese passengers were on the flight, with relatives demanding compensation from Malaysia Airlines, Boeing, aircraft engine maker Rolls-Royce and the Allianz insurance group among others.
Malaysia engaged Ocean Infinity in 2018 to search in the southern Indian Ocean, offering to pay up to $70 million if it found the plane, but it failed on two attempts.
That followed an underwater search by Malaysia, Australia and China in a 120,000-square-kilometer area of the southern Indian Ocean, based on data of automatic connections between an Inmarsat satellite and the plane.
