Europe | The other Russian soldiers

The foreigners fighting and dying for Vladimir Putin

Many were tricked into the war in Ukraine

Captured Russian soldiers walk in line at a prisoner of war detention center in Ukraine.
Photograph: AP
|Lviv province

A NEPALI, a Slovak and a Brazilian sit in a room in a prisoner-of-war camp and explain that they had never signed up to fight in the Russian army but that were tricked into doing so. The Ukrainian authorities do not give any official figures for the number of foreign fighters they have captured, but say that these men are a burden they would like to be rid of. In the past year, since they have begun to be captured, not one has been exchanged or gone home.

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