When his wife gave birth to a boy in December 2023, Aazad Yousuf Kumar promised himself that he would find a good job, better than that of his father, a poor laborer from Kashmir. Keen to work in India, the 31-year-old contacted Baba Vlogs, a Dubai-based employment consultancy, at the end of the year. Aazad left his home in Poshwan in Pulwama district for Dubai on December 14, 2023, just days after his wife gave birth.
This science graduate had seen a Baba Vlogs promotional video on YouTube offering jobs in Dubai to candidates like him. Sajad Ahmad Kumar, his elder brother, contacted by Le Monde, assures that Aazad was offered a job as an assistant in a hotel. “We lost touch with him for a while. When he finally called after about 20 days, he said he had been cheated and taken to an undisclosed location in Russia where he received 15 days of weapons training along with “a dozen other Indians,” said Sajad Ahmad Kumar.
During his training, Aazad Yousuf Kumar injured his foot and had to be hospitalized for around twenty days. “After his wound healed,” says his brother, “he was deployed near the front lines of the Russian army. I spoke to him on December 26th. He cried constantly. He told me he wanted to come home. »
“My son doesn’t understand Russian”
The young 30-year-old's mother, Raja Bano, a housewife, assures that her son was happy to have found a job in Dubai. “I learned that he was in a hostile situation on the border between Russia and Ukraine. He told me he was stuck and couldn't come home,” she explains, sobbing. Her son was reportedly locked in a room by Russians for several days after he refused to join the army.
According to his father, Mohammad Yousuf Kumar, the Russians confiscated his cellphone and those of a dozen Indians who accompanied him when they landed in Moscow in January. “They were asked to sign documents written in Russian. The Russians threatened to kill them if they didn't sign. My son doesn't understand Russian. How could he know what was on the paper? », he gets carried away.
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Aazad Yousuf Kumar is part of a group of Indians who were sent against their will to fight alongside the Russian army against Ukraine. The information was published by The Hindu daily on February 20 and confirmed by the Ministry of External Affairs after several days of silence. Around twenty Indians, farmers, workers, students, unemployed people from Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Kashmir, lured by well-paid jobs, have been stranded since November 2023 in the Kharkiv, Mariupol, Rostov and Donetsk regions along the border between Russia and Ukraine . A 23-year-old Gujarati Indian was reportedly killed in a rocket attack.
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