The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine examined recruitment of citizens from 48 states and found evidence of deception or coercion in the cases of people from 29 of them, including Belarus, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkey, India, Kenya, Nigeria, Colombia and Peru. Brazil and South Africa were also on the list.
The findings, presented to the UN General Assembly on 26 October, rest on 245 witness accounts, copies of contracts and documents from the Russian Defense Ministry. According to the commission, Russian embassies issued visas to the recruits. The contracts they were made to sign on arrival were identical regardless of country: in Russian, under the title "contract on performing military service."
The scheme repeated across countries. Recruiters sought out people in the most marginalized groups, promised civilian work in Russia and sometimes separately guaranteed they would not be sent to the war. After arrival, recruits had their passports and phones taken and signed the Defense Ministry contract in a language they did not understand. Combat training before deployment to the front was often absent.
Recruiters charged between $400 and $8,000 for arranging the paperwork. One group of 30 people was given a letter guaranteeing it "would not be sent to the conflict zone." Of that group, 17 were killed at the front and five went missing.
The commission concluded that the recruits are not mercenaries. By signing the contract they became Russian service members, and in captivity the Third Geneva Convention applies to them. The countries they came from are advised not to prosecute returnees under mercenarism laws but to recognize them as victims of human trafficking. Russia was urged to immediately discharge such people from the army.
The report also records complaints by foreign prisoners of mistreatment by Ukrainian authorities: beatings, electric shocks and mock executions. The commission found no signs of deception or coercion in the recruitment of foreigners into the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
Russia does not recognize the commission and left all its requests unanswered. In April, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and its partners classified the recruitment of foreigners into the Russian army as human trafficking and called for that assessment to be enshrined at the UN level.
Citizens of 43 countries are held in Ukrainian captivity, and Russia is not seeking to include them in exchanges, Ekho reported, citing the I Want to Live project. According to The Moscow Times' count, by the end of 2025 Moscow could have recruited people from 128 countries to fight — up to 18,000 people, one in five of whom has already been killed.