Russia has likely been recruiting Cuban citizens to fight in its army in Ukraine, BBC research has shown.
In September and October 2023, passport data belonging to more than 200 Cubans who allegedly joined the Russian army were released online by a pro-Ukrainian platform called InformNapalm.
The passport details were obtained, according to the website, by hacking the emails of a Russian military recruitment officer in Tula, south of Moscow.
A Facebook search showed that 31 of the names mentioned in the Ukrainian leak correspond to accounts whose owners appear to be in Russia or linked to the Russian military.
Some, for example, posted photos of themselves wearing Russian military uniforms or in places with Russian street signs or number plates. Others list Russia as their current place of residence.
Many of these Facebook users began posting Russia-related content in August 2023, indicating when they could have arrived in the country.
Since launching the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia has suffered heavy losses on the battlefield. A BBC investigation has confirmed the names of more than 50,000 Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine – but the real number is likely to be much higher. Ukraine’s own estimate puts the number of Russian soldiers killed or injured in the war at 500,000.
Recruiting foreigners to replace some of the losses also helps the Kremlin avoid the risks posed by trying to mobilize Russians by force. When Russia declared a partial mobilization in 2022, hundreds of thousands of men left the country.
Bringing Cubans to Russia is relatively simple. The two countries have been allies since the Cold War, Cubans do not need a visa to travel to Russia and direct flights to Moscow make travel easier.
Meanwhile, lucrative military contracts offered by Russia attract Cuban men desperate to escape the worsening economic crisis on the US-sanctioned island.
Documents leaked online and media reports suggest that Cuban men receive monthly payments in the region of US$2,000 (£1,600) per month – a huge sum for Cuba, where the average monthly salary is less than US$35 (£28).
The promise of Russian citizenship could also attract some Cubans.
Since the start of the war against Ukraine, Moscow has taken steps to make it significantly easier for foreigners to obtain Russian citizenship after spending time in the army, and the BBC has seen social media posts suggesting that some Cuban fighters have received Russian passports in of months. to sign up.
A Russian passport allows visa-free travel to 117 destinations, while Cuban passport holders are limited to 61.
A local media outlet in the city of Ryazan, near Moscow, appeared to corroborate this theory last year when it published photos of new Cuban recruits signing contracts with the Russian army.
The Cubans wanted to “help our country achieve the objectives of the special military operation”, he reported, adding that “some of them would like to become Russian citizens in the future”.
But it is difficult to find a reliable estimate of the number of Cubans who joined the Russian ranks.
Ukraine’s diplomatic envoy for Latin America and the Caribbean, Ruslan Spirin, put the number at 400 in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.
A Cuban official in Russia, Lázaro Gonzalez, told an exiled anti-government radio station that 90 Cubans served under his command.
According to him, they are likely to be sent to already occupied parts of eastern Ukraine, rather than frontline positions.
“While the Russian army occupies areas in Ukraine, what we Cubans do is support the army in these cities and in the areas that are occupied, that’s all,” Gonzalez told the Miami-based radio station.
Numerous reports suggest that Cubans often joined the Russian army after coming into contact with recruiters on social media, but not everyone seemed aware of the true nature of the work on offer.
A popular Cuban content creator on YouTube last year told the story of two 19-year-old Cuban men who claimed they were offered construction jobs in Russia but were instead sent to the front lines in Ukraine.
Their case reflects the experiences of other foreigners who told the BBC they were lured to Russia by the promise of higher wages – only to end up on the battlefield.
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For their part, Cuban authorities have issued contradictory statements about the involvement of their citizens in the war in Ukraine.
Following a flurry of reports in September 2023 about Cubans fighting in Ukraine, authorities in Havana said they had detained 17 people involved in their recruitment.
However, shortly afterwards, Cuba’s ambassador to Russia, Julio Antonio Garmendía Peña, said that his government had nothing against the Cubans who wanted to “simply sign a contract and legally participate in this operation alongside the Russian army”.
Hours later, Foreign Affairs Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla said that Havana was against “the participation of Cuban citizens in conflicts of any kind.”
Meanwhile, Ukrainian authorities said they have observed an increase in the number of foreign fighters joining Russian forces in recent months, as well as foreigners among the soldiers the Ukrainian army has captured on the battlefield.
Petro Yatsenko, a spokesman for the Ukrainian prisoner of war agency, told the BBC that many of them came from low-income countries such as Cuba, India and Nepal, as well as countries in Africa and Central Asia.
“Every week we capture up to five people from foreign countries on the front line as prisoners of war,” he said.
Their fighting skills were low, he added, which meant their life expectancy on the battlefield was not days but hours.
