Miras Taszharghanov traveled to the Russian city of Kursk on August 20 to work at a meat-processing plant, expecting to earn 90,000 rubles (about $1,000) a month.
Instead, his family says, the 25-year-old Kazakh national was taken from his workplace directly to a military recruitment center, where he was forced to sign a contract with the Russian Army.
“He told me, ‘They throw a contract at you, put a gun to your head, and tell you to sign, and that’s it. They didn’t even ask us whether we wanted to or not,’” said Tashzharghanov’s mother, Gulzhan Taszharghanova, describing a harrowing phone call with her son.
Following a brief two-week military training period, Tashzharghanov was transferred to the Voronezh region, which borders Ukraine.
Fearing her son would be deployed to the front lines as an assault trooper, Taszharghanova pleaded with authorities in Astana to intervene.
In response to his case and others like it, Kazakhstan's Foreign Ministry announced that its embassy in Moscow sent a diplomatic note to the Russian Foreign Ministry on September 18, formally asking for the return of citizens who said they had been coerced into military service.
But by early October, geolocation information Taszharghanov had sent to relatives indicated that he was near Bilolutsk in the Russian-occupied Luhansk region of Ukraine, RFE/RL’s Kazakh Service reported.
His plight illustrates the risks facing some Central Asian migrants. Millions travel to Russia in search of livelihoods -- working in construction, agriculture, retail, and manufacturing.
Uzbek migrant workers plant tomato seedlings in Astrakhan, Russia. (file photo)
Rights advocates and migrants interviewed by RFE/RL have described cases in which foreign workers have faced pressure to join the Russian military.
They say recruitment has taken place during police raids, workplace sweeps, at migration offices and in detention centers and prisons.
Other migrants have been recruited with promises of large cash bonuses and fast-tracked Russian citizenship. Some sign up voluntarily, including for financial reasons, while others have alleged deception, threats, or physical coercion.
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Thousands Of Central Asians Enlisted To Fight Russia's War In Ukraine Through 'Coercion, Enticements'In September, a 44-year-old Uzbek migrant from Samarkand recounted being detained during a police raid in Rostov-on-Don over an expired work permit. He claimed that officers beat and pressured him until he signed a contract.
After being deployed to the front line and wounded in the occupied Luhansk region, he spoke to RFE/RL’s Uzbek Service from a military hospital in St. Petersburg, begging the Uzbek government to help him return to his four children.
For others, the realization comes too late. In Tajikistan’s northern Sughd region, a family recently buried their 58-year-old father whose body was returned from Ukraine in August, just months after he voluntarily signed a six-month contract.
“He had financial issues, and going to Ukraine seemed to be a quick fix,” a source close to the family told RFE/RL on condition of anonymity.
Pressure Takes Different Forms
According to Russian migration-rights expert Valentina Chupik, recruitment tactics vary wildly: In some cases, she says, contracts are intentionally slipped into piles of routine paperwork that migrants sign at migration offices. In other cases, she alleges, coercion is explicitly violent.
“There were mass raids, real torture with electric shocks and beatings,” Chupik told RFE/RL’s Russian Service, describing the measures allegedly used to force compliance.
The reports of recruitment pressure come amid a broader, state-driven tightening of migration laws. Russian authorities have expanded workplace bans, stepped up deportations, and enforced stricter entry restrictions even as domestic industries face critical labor shortages.
“Russia is not currently a safe country for Central Asian workers, and, naturally, where possible it is better to avoid traveling there,” warned Denis Jivaga, director of the Kazakhstan Bureau for Human Rights.
SEE ALSO:
Russia’s War Dead In Ukraine Believed To Include Hundreds Of Central AsiansThe true scale of foreign recruitment remains difficult to establish independently, as Moscow does not disclose comprehensive figures regarding foreign nationals serving in its armed forces.
Ukraine's state-run I Want to Live project, which helps Russian soldiers surrender and tracks foreign nationals serving in Moscow’s military, said that as of May 2026, it had identified 12,919 citizens from Central Asian countries who had signed contracts with Russia's Defense Ministry.
These figures have not been independently verified by RFE/RL.