In a military recruitment center in Moscow, 1,500 foreign citizens were enlisted.
Leaked medical documents in Moscow reveal that at just one recruitment center in the Russian capital, over 1,500 foreign citizens from 48 countries were enlisted by the Russian military to fight in Ukraine.
This information was obtained by the exiled investigative platform iStories through hackers infiltrating the electronic system Emias, which manages public health records in Moscow. The data pertains to the period from April 2023 to May 2024.
In these documents, a single address on Yablochkov Street 5 in northern Moscow is listed as the registration site for all foreign recruits, including nearly 300 individuals who were oddly registered in room 302 of the same building, a location journalists have identified as the medical examination room.
After passing health checks, these recruits receive a Russian bank account and are transferred to military training centers. The deployment process usually takes place within two weeks.
More than 600 of these foreign recruits were citizens of Nepal. In October 2023 alone, over 370 individuals from Nepal were registered at this same center.
Reports indicate that high financial promises and the possibility of obtaining Russian citizenship were the main motivations for these recruits to join the war.
With increased media pressure and official reaction from the Nepalese government, recruitment from this country has decreased since November of last year, but Nepalese still hold the largest share among foreign recruits.
It is said that many of them were sent to the front lines with minimal training, and some have never returned.