Russia has recruited hundreds of Yemeni men to fight alongside its military in Ukraine with the help of a company linked to Yemen’s Houthi rebel group, The Financial Times (FT) reported on Sunday.
The FT spoke to Yemenis who said they had been lured to Russia with promises of high-paying jobs and Russian citizenship but, upon arrival, were “forcibly inducted into the Russian army and sent to the front lines in Ukraine”.
One recruit told the FT that he was one of around 200 Yemeni men sent to fight in Ukraine after arriving in Moscow in September, having been promised work in fields such as “security” and “engineering” before being made to sign enlistment contracts they could not read.
Another Yemeni described how his group were threatened into signing the contracts and given only “rudimentary military training” before being sent to Ukraine, where many of them died.
US Special Envoy for Yemen Tim Lenderking has accused the Kremlin of “actively pursuing” contacts with the Houthis and discussing potential weapons transfers to the rebel group in exchange for its recruitment efforts.
The apparent alliance between Moscow and the Houthis, while “unimaginable” before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, demonstrated “how far Russia is willing to go to extend that conflict into new theatres including the Middle East”, US officials told the FT.
The Russian military has repeatedly used promises of lucrative employment in Russia to lure young men from the Global South to the country, many of which find themselves press ganged into joining the Russian military to boost its numbers on the battlefield in Ukraine.
In October, Russia’s Defence Ministry discharged 85 Indian citizens who had been sent to fight in Ukraine against their will, just days before North Korea became the first country to officially join Russia’s war effort, with some 10,900 North Korean troops now thought to have been deployed to Russia’s southwestern Kursk region on the border with Ukraine.