A Tajik Man Recruited From a Russian Prison Injured Himself Twice to Escape the Frontline. There Is a Safer Way Out.

Marufzhon Dzhuraev, 49, is a Tajik citizen who was recruited into Russia's military from prison and sent on assault operations in Ukraine alongside other migrants from Central Asia. The I Want to Live project published his video testimony as an example of how desperate the choice becomes for foreign nationals trapped at the front - and as an argument for a safer alternative.

Full video of Marufzhon's testimonial in Russian was published by the "I Want to Live" on X:

What Happened to Him

Dzhuraev was sent forward as part of an assault group. On the way, a Russian serviceman told him and the others plainly: "You're all dead. You're all convicts - you'll die there." 

He began talking with a fellow soldier - an Uzbek man he calls Khamzik - and the two decided they would not go forward. They detonated a grenade primer against their own hands. They told their commanders they had been hit by a Ukrainian FPV drone - a "300," [military code for wounded, ed.]. Dzhuraev was evacuated. Khamzik was not - he was left at the front.

Dzhuraev spent 45 days in hospital in Rostov. When he was returned to active duty and given a new combat assignment, he did the same thing again. This time his companion was a man called Frol, who had experience with chemicals and knew how to construct an improvised device from a plastic bottle. The device detonated. Both men took shrapnel to the legs, hands and lower body. Again they reported a drone attack. Again Dzhuraev was pulled back.

"I mutilated myself so I wouldn't join the assaults," he said in testimony. He added: "They treated me like a dog."

What the I Want to Live Project Says

The project acknowledges what Dzhuraev did was driven by a survival instinct that is "natural and understandable." A man sent on a mission his own unit commanders describe as a death sentence, with no legal standing to refuse and no diplomatic protection from his home country, had no good options.

But the project's message is direct: do not let it reach that point. Ukrainian captivity governed by the Geneva Convention offers conditions that the Russian front, Russian military hospitals and Russian prisons do not. The process of getting there - surrender through the I Want to Live channel - is safer than what Dzhuraev went through twice. Visit this page for instructions on how to safely surrender into captivity.

The Pattern Behind His Case

Dzhuraev's recruitment from prison is not unusual. Russia has systematically offered military contracts to foreign nationals detained for immigration or other violations - a coercion mechanism documented a number of times. Just recently, Defence Intelligence of Ukraine published a case of a Moldovan citizen placed in a migrant detention facility - having faced imminent deportation he agreed to sign a military contract and was killed after two months of service. 

For Dzhuraev, the prison was not the threat used to recruit him - it was the place from which he was recruited. The result was the same: a man with no good options, sent to the front without adequate preparation, told by his own side he was expendable - but he turned out lucky to survive as he surrendered to Ukraine.