From Gujarat to Kyiv Camp: Indian Forced to Fight for Russia Appeals to PM Modi For Help

Kyiv: Just days before Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to India, a young man from Gujarat, forced to fight for Russia and currently held by Ukrainian forces, has appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi for help.

The chance to speak to the prisoner came when this writer travelled to Ukraine to be a panelist on a session on foreign fighters at a conference in Kyiv this November. In the course of the discussions, I was asked by Ukrainian army officials as to whether I was interested in interviewing an Indian-origin ‘prisoner of war’. I agreed. 

While the term ‘prisoner of war’ is loosely used for captured men – including Indians – who have been conscripted to join Russia’s war against Ukraine, according to international law, it does not apply for prisoners who occupy an ambiguous category of people who have been forced or coerced, along with mercenaries and volunteers.

The interview took place on November 19, 2025, inside a Kyiv detention centre that houses prisoners of war. Ukrainian authorities allowed the writer to ask any question in English regarding the detainee’s path into the Russian military and his subsequent surrender to Ukrainian forces. Questions relating to his captivity in Ukraine, however, were not allowed.

Majoti Sahil Mohamed Hussein, recounted in detail how he ended up in Ukraine’s capital. His hour-long testimony offers a first-hand account of how young Indians are being drawn, sometimes unwittingly, into one of the most brutal wars of this century. 

“I am in a big problem, and I request my Prime Minister, Narendra Bhai Damodardas Modi, to help me…,” said Hussein, a 23-year-old from Morbi in Kutch, speaking in Kutchi-inflected Hindi.

Dressed in an olive-green combat uniform, Hussein said that he had completed a diploma at an engineering college in his hometown, where his mother had hoped he would one day join the Army. 

Raised by his divorced mother, he first took up work in a ceramic company, earning Rs 25,000 a month. This was a natural choice in Morbi, known as the “ceramic city of India” and one of the country’s major industrial hubs. He later shifted to a textile firm.

Eventually, a cousin who had travelled to Russia as a construction worker in 2023 persuaded him to go there to study and work there. “In Morbi, I met a travel agent named Kuldip, who helped me prepare my visa papers. I flew to Russia via New Delhi in December 2023 and enrolled in a Russian-language course in St. Petersburg. There, I stayed for nearly one and a half months before moving to Moscow. The plan was to learn Russian and then apply to an engineering institute in a few months,” Hussein said.

He said that the “crypto platform” he relied on to receive money from India suddenly stopped working. When this writer asked him to elaborate on the workings of the platform, Hussein did not. Hussein said that he found himself short of funds and that is when he began looking for jobs.

Through a Telegram group, he was approached by a Russian delivery company to work for them. Hussein said he agreed. After a few days, he was instructed to pick up a consignment, which he did, and was then told to deliver it in a forested area close to a metro station in Moscow.

“Just as I was about to make the delivery, the police intercepted me on April 8, 2024. As I was being frisked, narcotics were found with me in that consignment,” he said.

A case was subsequently registered against him under Article 228 of the Russian Criminal Code, which deals with the illegal acquisition, possession, transportation, manufacture, or processing of narcotic drugs or psychotropic substances without intent to sell, he said.

This is one of the most commonly used narcotics-related charges in Russia and carries severe penalties. Depending on the quantity involved, sentences can range from fines and probation to several years in prison with large quantities attracting mandatory long-term imprisonment. Hussein received a seven-year sentence. He was kept in Volgograd, a prison notorious for housing hardened criminals. He says he was tortured during his incarceration and forced to recite the Russian national anthem. He finally managed to file an appeal on March 7, 2025. 

After moving several jails, on June 26, 2025, while his appeal was still pending, he was approached in prison with an offer to join the Russian Army as a drone operator to avoid the drug charges. On September 11, 2025, he was taken to a military headquarters in an occupied territory, where he was kept for 16 days and given rudimentary training, including in lobbing grenades, he says. On September 30, 2025, he was moved again and taken to a trench located close to the Donetsk Oblast of Ukraine.

“There, I had an argument with my commander and was overwhelmed by fear. I suffered a panic attack and ran from the area. Finally, after wandering for a while, I saw a trench that had Ukrainian soldiers and surrendered,” he said. Because he was carrying a weapon at the time of his capture, Hussein is being treated as a prisoner of war.

Foreign fighters

Hussein’s story has a wider context. The number of foreigners, as per Ukraine official estimates, recruited by Russia over the past three years exceeds the active-duty personnel of several European armies. For instance, Croatia has 14,325 soldiers, Albania 6,600, Moldova 8,500, Austria 16,000, and Slovakia 19,500. In contrast, Russia has fielded 18,092 foreign fighters, of whom 3,388 have been killed.

Nationals from 128 countries appear in these records. From Africa alone, 1,436 individuals are listed. Another 6,626 are from the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) countries namely Armenia (currently distancing itself politically but still formally a member), Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. CSTO countries historically supply migrant labour to Russia, creating a pool that Russian recruiters can approach directly. Many Central Asian nationals joined Russian armed forces due to economic vulnerability, residency permit offers, or coercion. Russia frames CSTO allegiance as binding mutual security, but migrant recruitment often happens outside formal CSTO mechanisms. Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan have expressed concern that Russia’s recruitment of their nationals risks radicalisation and domestic instability. 

An additional 10,009 come from other regions, and 3,080 fighters have completed their contracts but have still not been released. The numbers are rising: 7,000 foreigners signed up in 2025.

Russia’s dependence on foreign recruits is driven by necessity as the war drags. The fighters are from as far away as Cuba and South Africa. The documented data also reveals the grim fate of these recruits: the average time until death for a foreign fighter is 140-150 days, and the shortest recorded period between signing a contract and dying in combat is just seven days.

Ukraine, too, recruits foreign nationals, but officials claim that such enlistment is entirely voluntary and devoid of any attempt to exploit economic vulnerability or desperation and doesn’t bear the signs of human trafficking.

The context is especially important for countries in the Global South. In India’s case, around 32,000 Indian students are currently in Russia, and this number has actually risen over the past three-years. This stands in sharp contrast to Ukraine, where the Indian student population has collapsed from roughly 22,000 to just 3,000 in the same period. The steep decline is primarily because most of Ukraine’s premier science and medical institutions are located in the eastern regions, which have borne the brunt of the fighting due to their proximity to Russian-controlled territory.

A complicated case but part of a pattern

Majoti Sahil Mohamed Hussein says he had approached the Indian Embassy for assistance. However, the fact that he was carrying a weapon when Ukrainian forces captured him complicates his case. Ukrainian sources note that, in similar situations, individuals have been exchanged with Russia as part of PoW swaps.

But Hussein does not want to be sent back to Russia. He has even expressed willingness to fight for Ukraine if it helps expedite his release and eventual return to India.

Alternatively, he hopes that the prime minister Modi, who, like him, hails from Gujarat, will personally intervene to secure his safe exit and return to India.

Some new cases have surfaced in the last one month in a pattern. A 22-year-old youth from Akhnoor, Jammu, has become the latest Indian national found serving in the Russian army, underscoring a disturbing trend of young Indians being misled with promises of civilian jobs. His family says he travelled to Russia on August 4, 2025 believing he would work in a private company, but was instead pushed into military training and sent close to the frontlines. He is not alone as several youths from Punjab and other Indian states have also appeared on lists of foreign recruits caught in the conflict. The growing number of such cases highlights the urgent need for tighter oversight of overseas recruitment and stronger labour-mobility safeguards.

This concern over Indians being drawn into the Russian Army comes just days before President Vladimir Putin’s visit to New Delhi this week. India is among the largest contributors of students and skilled workers to Russia, and its longstanding ties with Moscow can potentially help New Delhi push back against the coercive strategies that have targeted vulnerable populations from the Global South. In this context, the recent meeting between external affairs minister S. Jaishankar and Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov was significant, with India emphasising the need for safeguards in labour mobility.

According to official data, nearly 170 Indians have been recruited by the Russian military. While 96 were discharged by Russian authorities, another 16 are currently listed as missing. At least 12 Indians have been killed while fighting on the frontlines in Ukraine. As of early November 2025, the Indian government has confirmed that 44 Indian nationals remain in service with the Russian Army. 

During Putin visit to India, India and Russia are expected to finalise a bilateral mobility agreement that will establish a framework for legal migration, ensure protection of workers’ rights, and expand opportunities for skilled Indian manpower in Russia at a time when Russia is facing a sharp shortage of qualified workers. According to reports, the agreement will not only strengthen legal protections for existing Indian workers but also open pathways for thousands of professionals in sectors such as construction, textiles, engineering, and electronics. By the end of the year, more than 70,000 Indian nationals are expected to be officially employed in Russia under quotas managed by the Russian Ministry of Labour.

On the broader issue of foreign nationals in the Russian military, the Russian Embassy in New Delhi stated on August 10, 2024 that, since April 2024, the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation had stopped admitting citizens of several foreign countries, including India, into its armed forces. Echoing this position, Denis Alipov, Russia’s Ambassador to India, said in an interview in October 2025 that Russia had ceased recruiting Indians from March. He added that some Indians who remain in service have since acquired Russian citizenship. “We have from the very start stressed to the Indian government,” he noted, “that the Russian Army does not recruit Indians… if a foreigner comes to a recruiting centre and signs the contract voluntarily, nobody makes him sign that contract.”

India's case

In India’s case, the law is unambiguous in principle: Indian citizens are prohibited from taking part in foreign wars or serving in foreign armed forces without state sanction. While India does not have a single, modern “foreign enlistment law,” a combination of existing statutes makes such participation illegal. The Indian Penal Code contained provisions on offences related to waging war and on unlawful military service, which can be invoked against citizens who enlist in foreign armies engaged in active conflict. The Passports Act empowers the government to revoke or deny passports if an individual is likely to engage in activities abroad that could harm India’s sovereignty or its relations with other states; a clause that squarely covers joining a foreign military. Additionally, laws such as the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act provide further grounds to prosecute Indians who take up arms abroad in ways that threaten national security or violate international norms. Together, these legal tools make it clear that Indians fighting in external conflicts, whether misled, coerced, or recruited, are operating outside the bounds of Indian law.

The problem is even more acute in countries like Nepal and Kenya, where young citizens have been pulled into Russia’s recruitment networks. In Nepal, the scale of the crisis is stark: while the foreign ministry has released modest official figures, families across the country have reported many more young men missing, indicating an eight-fold discrepancy. Alarmed, the Nepalese government has now banned its citizens from travelling to Russia and Ukraine for work. Kenya faces a similar pattern. While the Department of Diaspora Affairs says it is in touch with 82 Kenyans who were duped into joining the war, returnees insist the real number is far higher, claiming they personally know of at least 300 coerced into Russia’s military system.

Majoti Sahil Mohamed Hussein’s plea from a Kyiv detention centre is therefore more than the cry of a stranded young man from Kutch. It is a stark reminder of how global power asymmetries, aggressive recruitment networks, and individual vulnerability intersect on the frontlines of the Ukraine-Russia war. 

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