Iranian Prisoner of War Speaks Out: Regime Change in Tehran His Only Path Home

Arash Darbandi, 34, fled Iran to escape persecution by the ayatollah regime. The Iranian national says he participated in protests against the government dating back to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's presidency. Now he sits in Ukrainian captivity, watching developments in his homeland and rooting for protesters - after Russia's military recruitment machine swept him into a war he never chose.

Darbandi arrived to Russia a year ago searching for a better life. He spent two months in St. Petersburg before encountering the Russian repressive-mobilization system and its treatment of "non-Russians." Police approached him on the street, mocking and insulting him based on his ethnicity. They took him to the station and accused him of resisting arrest. What followed is grimly predictable: authorities threatened the Iranian with prison and deportation, then offered an alternative - sign a contract and deploy to fight in Ukraine.

The choice Darbandi made is obvious. He now follows news from Iran in Ukrainian detention, hoping protesters succeed. Returning home before regime change is out of the question. He understands that authoritarian regimes view people as expendable resources.

"The Iranian government kills people very easily. Just as soldiers kill each other in war, in Iran they kill ordinary people," Darbandi said in an interview.

Trading one totalitarianism for another proved disastrous for Darbandi. Russia is emphatically not the place to seek freedom for yourself or your people. Leaders like Putin or Khomeini will kill thousands for their delusional goals, comprehensible only to themselves. If he returns to Russia, only one thing awaits him - redeployment to the slaughter. And that's assuming Moscow retrieves him in an exchange. But as evidence shows, Russia doesn't take back prisoners like him. Not at all.

This story should warn anyone considering "friendship" with Russia. With one hand Moscow takes drones, missiles and shells from Tehran. With the other, it sends Iranian citizens to certain death - this is how Russia treats those it calls allies.

To avoid ending up like Arash, or worse, perishing in someone else's war, all foreigners should stay far away from Russia and anyone offering jobs there. The Russian state has industrialized the pipeline of foreign "cannon fodder" for its war against Ukraine. Now any trip to Russia becomes a deadly lottery for "non-Russians."

The "I Want to Live" project offers Russians and foreigners fighting for the Russian army a way out - surrender and survival rather than death in Putin's war of aggression.