May 25, 2026
Ukraine's Coordination Headquarters and Ministry of Foreign Affairs Officially Launch StopRussianRecruiters.org
Today, StopRussianRecruiters.org goes live.
Hundreds of foreign nationals from 48 countries - labor migrants, students, job seekers - are currently held as prisoners of war in Ukraine after being recruited into the Russian Armed Forces through deception, coercion, and false promises. The "I Want to Live" project has identified over 28,000 foreign nationals who signed contracts with the Russian military. At least 5,149 of them are confirmed dead. Thousands more are missing. Russia's recruitment targets for 2026 stand at 18,500 new foreign nationals.
On the video by "I Want to Live": foreigners recruited by Russia who were captured and are being held in captivity in Ukraine.
We built this site because these numbers have names behind them. And because the people being funneled into Russia's war machine deserve to have someone document what is being done to them - and who is doing it. Russia cannot sustain its war in Ukraine through voluntary domestic recruitment alone. So it has turned to the world's most vulnerable populations: labor migrants from Central Asia, unemployed young men from Latin America, impoverished communities across Africa. Russian recruiters reach them through fake job ads, fraudulent student programs, and local recruiters paid by the head. They take their documents, ignore their contracts, and sends them to die in assault units with a week of training.
This is not a side effect of the war. It is a policy.
StopRussianRecruiters.org exists to expose that policy — its geography, its scale, its mechanics, and the individual recruiters who profit from it. We publish verified information on recruitment schemes operating across dozens of countries, profiles of those recruited and captured, and resources for families who have lost contact with relatives in Russia.
We will not allow Russia's exploitation of vulnerable people to go undocumented. We will not allow recruiters to operate in the shadows. And we will not stop until every government whose citizens are being funneled into this war treats it with the urgency it deserves.
No one should die in Ukraine because they answered a job advertisement. We publish information so that Russian recruiters can't hide.