Gullible people from Peru go to Russia after being promised well-paying jobs there as cooks or drivers, only to be sent by Russia to the front lines, where they swiftly die in combat after being used as cannon fodder. The New York Times’ Peter Baker says that “The average life expectancy of a new Russian recruit—from arrival at a training ground to death in a combat zone—lies somewhere between 10 days and three weeks. Once sent onto the battlefield, they survive an average of 20 to 35 minutes.” A news report describes how a Peruvian woman lost her son when he was lured to Russia with the promise of a job as a cook:
The last time Norma saw her son was in late January, when she dropped him off at an airport in Peru’s capital, Lima. He told her he found a job as a cook for the Russian army advertised on social media, assuring her he’d be far from the war in Ukraine, make good money and even have a shot at obtaining Russian citizenship.
Norma was instantly suspicious. Her 31-year-old son had never left Peru before and had never even held a weapon…
“I wanted to lock him in the house, but he had made up his mind already,” Norma said. She considered even calling the police. “He told me ‘Mom, please, understand, I am just going as a cook.’”
When she dropped him off at the airport, Norma saw there were others waiting to fly to Russia, too. She tried questioning them, but they refused to speak with her.
“My son asked me not to embarrass him, that I had to believe in him, that he was just going to work as a cook,” she said.
Her instincts were right. Soon, Norma received videos from her son that showed the true nature of the job. He had joined the ranks of hundreds of Peruvian men allegedly lured into the Russian military by local recruiters and social media ads with promises of lucrative employment in Russia, only to find themselves fighting on the front lines of the war in Ukraine.
Shortly after Norma’s son joined, he sent his mother images of himself in battle gear, digging trenches and building pinewood bunkers with other foreign fighters in a Ukrainian forest. On the sporadic calls Norma had with her son and video messages he sent, she could hear drones exploding in the background – which he assured her were far away.
The videos soon trickled to a stop by early April, when Norma’s son said he was being “punished” by a commander for misbehavior.
“I told him ‘That’s a lie, you are going to fight on the front lines,’” she recalled. “He told me to calm down. And since that day I haven’t heard from him again.”..
As Russia’s war in Ukraine grinds on, the Russian military has gone to significant lengths to pad its ranks, including by recruiting foreign fighters from developing countries with promises of high salaries and bonuses.
Hundreds of men from African countries have been pressed into military service in Russia after being promised high-paying civilian jobs as drivers or security guards. A dozen men who spoke with the press said that soon after arriving in Russia, they were forced to sign Russian-language contracts, given virtually no training and then sent into combat.
An African country is violating international law by using Russian cluster bombs on its own civilians.
Several nations complained to Russia about their nationals’ being used as cannon fodder. Kenya’s foreign minister flew to Moscow three months ago to demand that Russia stop recruiting Kenyans, describing it as a human trafficking. After thousands of Nepalese citizens volunteered to fight for Russia, most of whom died, Nepal banned any travel to Russia for work.
Aid to Ukraine enabled it to weaken Russia’s ability to make war and attack our NATO allies. As columnist Noah Smith pointed out, with U.S. aid, “Ukraine destroyed much of Russia’s navy, without even having a navy of their own!” Ukraine has “killed or wounded hundreds of thousands of Russian troops, and destroyed large quantities of equipment.” This has weakened Russia, and made it less of a threat to the United States.
The U.S. has also learned critical things about Russian military weaknesses and valuable lessons about how to defeat Russia on the battlefield from the Ukraine War, lessons that it could not have learned if Ukraine had been swiftly conquered by Russia due to a lack of U.S. aid. The U.S. has derived significant, actionable lessons from the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, fundamentally reshaping its approach to future conflict, such as regarding the integration of low-cost, AI-enabled drone technology. The U.S. is learning to leverage faster, cheaper, and more innovative commercial technology (like drone acquisition).
