"The Sky Crashed Down on Me": Two Bangladeshi Men Describe Being Tricked Into Fighting Russia's War in Ukraine

A Channel 4 News investigation has documented the stories of two Bangladeshi men recruited into the Russian Armed Forces under false pretenses - one who survived and made it home, and one who did not.

Mohan's story

Mohan was working as an electrician in Russia when he began communicating with a military recruiter online. He was assured he would not have to take part in any fighting. He signed up. The assurance was a lie.
"When I told the commander that we'd been brought here for a specific kind of work, that we'd agreed it with the recruiter, he said: 'No, she deceived you.' And it felt like the sky had crashed down on me. He said: 'You'll have to fight on the front line.' We became completely despondent. Our spirits, everything was shattered."

On the front line, Mohan experienced what he describes as a complete absence of humanity. "Thousands of corpses are lying in Ukraine. Vehicles and tanks just roll over them and keep going. No humanity whatsoever."
During one engagement, a suicide drone struck his group of four. "I saw my friend run, then we were hit. Our bodies were completely covered in blood, even through our bulletproof vests. We ran even in that condition. But another drone came." They took shelter in a bunker, and were hit again.

Eventually Mohan managed to reach Moscow on leave, contacted the Bangladeshi embassy, and was helped to return home. He is back in rural Bangladesh, still haunted by what he saw.

Riyad Rashid's story

Riyad Rashid's family borrowed money to pay for his travel to Russia, where he worked in construction. The wages were never enough. One day he told his family he had joined the army - that he would only be performing guard duties, that soon all their debts would be cleared. Then he went silent.

His brother describes how he found out he was dead: "I spoke to a friend of his in Russia. He said: 'What can I tell you? Your brother is no more. It's all over.' I couldn't stop crying. Then I called another friend and said: 'I already know my brother is gone. Can you talk to me for two minutes and tell me how my brother died?' He sent me a message saying: 'There were six people with him. Three came back alive and the rest were killed in a drone strike.'"

When heasked whether there was any way to bring the body home, the answer was no. "There are thousands of Russian bodies lying there too. After that, he stopped replying."
The pattern

Channel 4 also documented a Bangladeshi man who appears to have enlisted willingly - but in another video, the same man describes the unbearable pressure of unemployment at home. The line between a willing recruit and a desperate one is thin when the alternative is poverty.

Russia's losses have been catastrophic - nearly 500,000 soldiers killed according to GCHQ. Unable to sustain recruitment from its own population without a politically toxic general mobilization, the Kremlin has turned to the developing world. Men from Bangladesh, Kenya, Nigeria, Cameroon, and dozens of other countries are now fighting and dying in a war they had no context for and no easy way out of.

StopRussianRecruiters.org reminds all foreign nationals serving in the Russian Armed Forces that there is as an option that guarantees survival. Surrender is possible, it is safe, and it has been chosen by foreign nationals from 48 countries now held as prisoners of war in Ukraine. Every one of them was supposed to die in place of a Russian soldier. They made a different decision. Click here to find out the details. 

Source: Channel 4 News