In Russia, migrants are being sent to fight in the war in Ukraine in exchange for citizenship or threats of imprisonment, the UK Ministry of Defence reports.
Speaking at the St. Petersburg International Legal Forum on 27 June 2024, the head of the Russian Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, said that the Russian authorities had identified 30,000 migrants who had recently become Russian citizens and were not registered in the military. Bastrykin went on to boast that 10,000 of them had already been sent to fight in Ukraine. Bastrykin claimed that these migrants would "dig trenches" and perform other duties in the rear areas.
The British ministry notes that, according to Russian independent media, Russian law enforcement agencies are waging a campaign of legal harassment of migrants, particularly Central Asians, to encourage them to join the Russian armed forces in exchange for citizenship or to avoid arrest on trumped-up charges. This is likely, as the British Ministry of Defence has noted, another ingenious way to boost military recruitment while trying to limit the negative impact on those parts of the Russian population that have greater political power.