A Cuban woman shows a photo of her son, who she says was drafted by Russia to fight in Ukraine (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)
Dozens of people were persuaded to fight in Ukraine, often through deception, and now find themselves in a complicated situation
In recent weeks, an investigation by the Cuban judiciary and some journalistic investigations have revealed the existence of an alleged system to recruit Cuban civilians within the Russian army. An unknown number of Cuban men have reportedly been drafted to fight in Ukraine, in many cases after being lured with online job advertisements for non-military jobs such as cooking or bricklaying.
The recruitment of Cuban men into the Russian army was best known with the arrest of 17 people in Cuba in early September who were accused of crimes including human trafficking, recruitment as mercenaries and hostile acts against a foreign state. According to the prosecutor’s office, which opened the investigation, those arrested belong to a network of people active in both Cuba and Russia who are committed to recruiting young Cuban men into the Russian army in exchange for money.
The local prosecutor’s office had also launched the investigation after some witness statements were circulated, including an interview on YouTube with some 19-year-olds who said they were lured to Russia with the promise of lucrative work and then suffered a series of violent acts .
Little is known about the recruitment system: it is unclear, for example, whether the intermediaries who hire the Cubans are acting on behalf of the Russian authorities, which have a great need for men for their army in Ukraine. It is not even clear whether the Cuban government knew about this scheme and how many people were involved. However, some journalistic research has been published in recent weeks that has helped to better understand some aspects of the system and how it works.
Russia, thanks to its good relations with the Cuban government, has long been an emigration destination for many Cubans who face an extremely serious economic situation in their own country, where basic needs are lacking, inflation is enormous and wages are falling largely inadequate.
In many cases, the ads were posted on job search groups on social networks, like this one on Facebook: some ads were for non-military or risky jobs, while others explicitly expressed a request to sign a one-year contract to fight with the Russian army. The promised salaries would be around 200,000 rubles per month (about $2,000): In Cuba, the average monthly salary is less than $170.
Once the offer was accepted, the men would fly to Moscow by plane, with the agent who had recruited them paying for the flight. There are testimonies from people who only found out at their destination that they had to fight for the Russian army, and from others who were told that they would work for the Russian army, but in part-time jobs, away from the front.
As Politico reported in one of the most detailed reconstructions, many recruits entered Russia on tourist visas. After landing, they would have undergone a medical examination and then signed a contract with the Russian army: in some cases there were Spanish versions, in other cases the contents of the contract were summarized orally by those present. Once the treaty is signed, it is difficult to escape the fighting: “Once the treaty is signed, deserting is tantamount to treason,” a legal adviser to whom several Cubans reportedly turned after being recruited by Russia told Politico .
But alongside stories like this, Politico also collected some from men who claimed they wanted to come forward because they were convinced of the legitimacy of Russia’s war effort in Ukraine.
There is no official data on how many Cubans have been recruited so far: Politico writes that in Tula alone, a city south of Moscow where several recruits would have been sent, there are 140 Cubans; The Ukrainian website InformNapalm has published copies of the passports of 199 Cubans obtained by Anton Valentinovich Perevozchikov, major in the Russian army and responsible for the conscription in Tula. other estimates put 90 Cuban men in Ryazan, southeast of Moscow.
Shortly after the invasion of Ukraine began, Russia began resorting to foreign fighters, in part to offset the heavy losses it had suffered early in the invasion.
The Cubans interviewed by Politico said that they were recruited by Russia in particular from the end of 2022: in November of this year, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree that provided for accelerating the acquisition of Russian citizenship for foreigners who would join them Army. The decree stipulated that foreign persons who had signed a contract with the Russian army for at least a year and fought in the field for at least six months would have the opportunity to obtain Russian citizenship in a faster and easier procedure than usual and with them also the next of kin (parents, spouses and children).
Cuba and Russia have had intensive diplomatic relations since the days of the Soviet Union and have become particularly close, including in terms of economic agreements, since Putin took office as Russian president. Cuba is also heavily dependent on Russia economically, particularly for energy supplies. Cuba officially takes a neutral position on the war in Ukraine, although the Cuban government has made statements of support in favor of Russia in some cases.
Shortly before the start of the invasion, the Cuban Foreign Ministry accused the USA of having pushed through a progressive expansion of NATO, the military alliance to which a large number of Western countries belong, and thus threatened the security and territorial integrity of Russia. It is one of the main arguments in the Russian government’s propaganda and was used extensively by Putin to justify the invasion of Ukraine.
The reactions of the Cuban government and institutions to the revelation of the mercenary recruitment system were contradictory. The government has taken fairly tough positions: the Cuban Foreign Ministry has promised to “strongly” oppose attempts to persuade Cubans to join the Russian army and reiterated that “Cuba is not part of the conflict in Ukraine.” The reaction of the Cuban embassy in Russia was more ambivalent: after the arrest of the 17 people accused of human trafficking in early September, Ambassador Julio Antonio Garmendia Peña told the Russian news agency RIA that he was against illegal operations but had “ nothing against Cubans signing a contract and want to legally participate in the operation with the Russian army.”
In Cuba, as in other countries, it is allowed to voluntarily join the army of another country (where one almost always joins special forces, the foreign legions), but it is illegal to be recruited through third-party intermediaries, because in this case it is forbidden to voluntarily enroll in the army of another country (where you almost always join special forces, the foreign legions). If yours is a mercenary activity. The Cubans recruited to fight in Ukraine therefore find themselves in a particularly complicated situation: if they return to their country, they risk a trial and even quite heavy penalties.
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