Uzbek Court Sentences Man Who Fought for Russia - The Country That Confiscated His Passport, Stole His Wages, and Left Him Wounded for Three Days Without Medical Care

A court in Termez, Uzbekistan has sentenced a 30-year-old local man to four and a half years of restricted freedom on charges of mercenary activity and foreign military service. The case, reported by Gazeta.uz and Radio Free Europe's Current Time, documents in precise detail how Russia's prison-to-frontline recruitment pipeline operates - from a fabricated drug charge to a frontline deployment with no pay, no passport, and no way home.

From bakery to prison cell

The man traveled to Russia in 2022 and found work at a bakery in the Lyubertsy district of Moscow Oblast. In July 2023, at the invitation of an acquaintance, he agreed to travel to Voronezh in a rented car. During the journey, the acquaintance stopped at a shop and stepped out. Plainclothes police officers immediately approached and searched them and the vehicle - finding narcotics on the acquaintance. Both men were detained. The Uzbek national was subsequently sentenced to nine years in prison and transferred to a correctional facility in Lipetsk.

Coercion behind bars

According to the defendant's testimony, prison staff subjected him to sustained psychological and physical pressure to sign a military contract with the Russian Ministry of Defense. He signed in August 2025.
He was transferred to Nizhny Novgorod along with approximately 30 other prisoners for one month of military training - covering trench movement, rifle handling, drone evasion, and motorcycle unit tactics. Upon completion he was issued an AK-74 assault rifle, military uniform, and body armor, and deployed to the combat zone.

On the front line

The man's assigned role was delivering food supplies to frontline positions - collecting provisions from a warehouse and transporting them on foot or by motorcycle approximately 2-3 km to Russian positions.
In November 2025, during one such delivery run, he and another serviceman came under drone attack. He sustained injuries to his left hand, left shoulder, and both legs. A tourniquet was applied to stop the bleeding - after which he remained in that condition for approximately three days. His fellow serviceman died. He was eventually taken to a hospital in Luhansk where he was treated for 10-15 days. Due to personnel shortages he was then sent back to a training ground, where his condition deteriorated again.

In January 2026, during transport to a hospital in Belgorod, he escaped during a stop and made his way to Moscow. The Uzbek embassy provided consular assistance and helped him return home.

The promises that were never kept

At the time of signing, the man had been promised RUB 192,000 per month and Russian citizenship. Neither was delivered. His Uzbek passport was confiscated upon signing. The bank card issued after he signed his contract was subsequently taken by his commanders - ostensibly for verification - and he was later told it had been blocked with no funds remaining.

The Termez court took into account as mitigating circumstances the defendant's physical injuries, need for ongoing treatment, lack of prior convictions, and his status as his family's sole breadwinner. He was sentenced to four years and six months of restricted freedom to be served at his place of residence, with permission to leave home only for work and medical treatment, and a prohibition on leaving Surkhandarya region.

The broader picture

The case is consistent with a pattern documented extensively by the "I Want to Live" project and investigative journalists: Russian police fabricate drug charges against Central Asian migrants, use the resulting prison sentences as leverage to coerce military contracts, strip recruits of documents and pay, and deploy them to the front line with minimal training and no genuine path home.

A subsequent report by independent journalist Grygoriy Pyrlyk's Ukraine-Central Asia project, citing Ukrainian sources, put the figure at 4,853 as of April 2026. Uzbekistan has opened 338 criminal cases under its mercenary statute since 2022, according to the State Security Service.

Sources: Gazeta.uz, Curent Time