‘Better life’One of the Indians said he had fled after beginning basic training. Sheikh Mohammad Tahir, 24, from Ahmedabad in Gujarat, travelled to Moscow in December. “As soon as they made us train in arms, I realised something was amiss,” he said.”Since I had not surrendered my passport until then, I bought a flight ticket and got out,” Tahir added.Families of the recruits say they were tricked and blame Indian authorities for not doing enough to extricate them from their predicament.Mohammed Imran, a trader in Hyderabad, has not heard from his 30-year-old younger brother for nearly two months.Mohammed Asfan had last called from the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don to say that he had been deployed to the frontlines.”One of the boys who was with him and managed to escape told us my brother had been wounded by a bullet,” Imran told AFP.”He went so that he could offer a better life to his family, now we don’t know if he is even alive.”Neither Russia nor Ukraine will say how many foreigners are serving in their militaries or how many they are holding as prisoners of war.India is a longstanding ally of Russia and has shied away from explicit condemnation of the invasion of Ukraine.Analysts say Russian efforts to target recruits from India are just one facet of a global recruitment drive, alongside a vast campaign at home.Moscow is believed to have hired thousands of foreign combatants, hundreds of them from India’s poverty-stricken neighbour Nepal.”There are reports that mercenaries from the Middle East and Asia are involved in the fighting on the Russian side,” said Oleg Ignatov, an analyst at the International Crisis Group.Ignatov said Russia was also “trying to recruit mercenaries in Africa.”
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