Cubans are still being recruited by Russia to fight in Ukraine

Cubans are continuing to travel to Russia to join its war on Ukraine despite attempts by the government in Havana to clamp down on recruitment, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Volunteers are signing up through informal channels and the total number involved in the fighting is likely in the low hundreds, though exact details are hard to establish, the person said, asking not to be identified because the issue is sensitive.

Generous payments offered by the Russian military are luring impoverished Cubans to join the war as the Caribbean nation wrestles with energy blackouts and food shortages in an economic crisis that has triggered mass migration and street protests. Some are also drawn by the prospect of getting a Russian passport after President Vladimir Putin signed a decree in January allowing foreigners to obtain citizenship in return for service in the war.

The Russian Defense Ministry didn’t respond to a request to comment. Officials at the Cuban embassy in Washington and the Foreign Ministry in Havana didn’t respond to requests to comment.

Russia has moved to boost military enlistment at home and abroad as it seeks to replace huge numbers of troops killed or wounded in the fighting in Ukraine. Western estimates put Russian casualties at as high as 500,000 since the start of the February 2022 invasion. The U.K. Ministry of Defence said July 12 that Russia may have lost 70,000 killed or wounded just in the past two months.

The Kremlin has forced thousands of migrants as well as foreign students and workers to fight alongside Russian troops, according to assessments from European officials. India said Prime Minister Narendra Modi “strongly” raised the issue of early discharge for his country’s nationals who’d been “misled” into joining the Russian army during talks with Putin in Moscow earlier this month.

Nepal also said earlier this year that it was aware of about 400 Nepali men who’d been recruited by Russia, though many more likely signed up without the government’s knowledge.

“We were the ones that learned, and made public, that a few Cubans that were in Europe were being recruited for the war,” Cuban Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernandez de Cossio said in an interview to Bloomberg TV and Radio in April. “We took measures for those who were attempting from Cuba to also travel to the war.”

Cuba and Russia have close political ties stretching over decades, back to the Soviet Union’s support of Havana against a U.S. trade embargo following the 1959 Communist revolution led by Fidel Castro. Russia sent tankers to Cuba in March carrying crude oil to help ease the economic slump, and a group of naval vessels docked in Havana last month on a planned visit.

The numbers of recruits pale in comparison to the Cold War era, when tens of thousands of Cubans fought in Angola in the 1970s and 1980s, together with hundreds of Soviet military advisers, in a proxy war against the U.S. and its allies.

To be sure, the number of Cubans visiting Russia, mostly tourists, has fallen dramatically in recent years, from nearly 77,000 in 2021 to about 15,000 last year. Those declaring they’re on business doubled, though, from 492 in 2021 to 942 last year, according to border data from Russia’s security service.

Cuban officials have sent contradictory signals over involvement in Russia’s war in Ukraine. Hours after Cuba’s ambassador to Moscow said in September that his government didn’t object to its citizens joining the Russian army to fight, Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said Havana’s “unequivocal” position was to oppose involvement.

After 17 people were arrested in September in connection with an alleged human-trafficking ring that lured Cubans to fight for Russia, the Foreign Ministry declared in a statement that “Cuba is not part of the war in Ukraine” and would act “firmly” to stop any recruitment campaigns.

Some of those who made the journey haven’t received the reward they expected.

One pro-war Russian blogger, Anastasia Kashevarova, highlighted the case of a group of 45 Cubans to her nearly 240,000 followers on Telegram in May, saying they’d been dismissed from the army after complaining about problems with payment. Their commander, who’d asked for Russian citizenship, was instead facing deportation, she said.