Russia has abandoned its Bangladeshi mercenaries to their fate
The Russian military command has reportedly abandoned a group of Bangladeshi mercenaries who were recruited to fight against Ukraine. The incident serves as yet another example of the Kremlin’s attitude toward foreigners recruited to participate in the war.
The Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense (GUR MO) has released another intercepted conversation between the occupiers, which serves as irrefutable proof that the Kremlin is recruiting citizens of Asian countries for human wave attacks.
This time, deep in the thickets of the Kharkiv region, Russian troops managed to “lose” the foreign fighters, leaving them to certain death without communication or directions.
The recording reveals that two Bangladeshi citizens, who had been sent to fight in the Kharkiv sector, were abandoned to fend for themselves; they were unable to locate their units for several days and wandered through the wilderness for at least three days. The mercenaries were completely disoriented and had no idea where they were or where to go.
One of the occupiers emotionally describes the condition of the Asians they found, who knew neither the language nor basic military information:
“They don’t know anything. They don’t know their call signs, they don’t know their call signs. From Bangladesh, from Bangladesh, two of them. Some guy named Ruby and Moisel—they’re showing me a chevron, a chevron with a tiger, and it says ‘6th Assault Brigade,’ ” the occupier says in the conversation.
This case vividly illustrates that, for Russian generals, foreigners are nothing more than disposable “cannon fodder” who are immediately written off once sent to the front lines.
According to military intelligence, the Kremlin’s appetite is growing year by year. Moscow currently plans to recruit nearly 20,000 foreigners into the Russian Armed Forces. The geographical scope of this recruitment is striking—Ukrainian captors have already identified representatives of at least 48 different nationalities among the prisoners of war.
In particular, in June, a citizen of Tajikistan—who had worked in Russia for a long time before ending up in the trenches—joined the ranks of prisoners of war for the first time. However, a wise decision helped him survive a foreign war—he surrendered to the Ukrainian Armed Forces through the Ukrainian government’s “I Want to Live” initiative.
It is worth noting that the subsequent fate of those who survived and fell into the hands of the Ukrainian Armed Forces turns out to be no better than that of those abandoned in the forests of the Kharkiv region. According to the Ukrainian Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, hundreds of foreign fighters currently find themselves in a legally uncertain situation. The reason is simple and predictable: Russia has absolutely no interest in including citizens of other countries on prisoner exchange lists—for Moscow, they cease to exist the moment they are wounded or taken prisoner.
Given that Russia does not hesitate to send both its own citizens and deceived foreigners to their deaths, the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine once again reminds everyone of the only effective way to save lives. Every foreign mercenary whom the Kremlin has forced or deceived into fighting against Ukraine has the opportunity to voluntarily lay down their arms, surrender to the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and ensure their own safety, rather than face the prospect of being killed by a Ukrainian drone or freezing to death in the thickets of the Kharkiv region on the orders of Russian commanders.
As a reminder, Russian forces struck Odesa—there are casualties, and infrastructure has been damaged.
The strike on Odesa was carried out with a missile equipped with a cluster warhead.
