Report: Russia Still Using Cubans as Cannon Fodder in Ukraine Despite ‘Crackdown’ on Recruiters

Russia continues to enlist Cuban citizens to fight in the ongoing invasion of Ukraine despite the communist regime’s claims of “cracking down” on Russian recruiters, Bloomberg reported Friday.

Since 2023, several reports have surfaced of trafficking networks recruiting Cuban citizens and sending them to Russia, often under false pretenses, and forcing them into the nation’s armed forces to fight in Ukraine. In addition to monetary stipends, the enlisted Cubans and their families are also reportedly offered an expedited path to Russian citizenship after one year of military service thanks to a decree signed by Russian strongman Vladimir Putin that allows foreign nationals to obtain Russian citizenship after serving in its military.

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Cuban citizens have denounced having been deceived by the trafficking networks, which allegedly offered them jobs in construction and other fields but instead forced them onto the battlefield.

In March, a video of a man who identified himself as Cuban national Frank Darío Jarrosay Manfugás began surfacing on Ukrainian Telegram channels. In the video, the man, apparently in Ukrainian captivity, claimed that he and other Cuban men were falsely misled with a masonry job offer in Russia in exchange for citizenship and that “at no time did we know that we were going to go to war.”

The Castro regime — one of Russia’s oldest allies in the region and a vocal supporter of the Ukraine invasion — claimed in September that it had started to “neutralize and dismantle” the trafficking networks, claiming them to be independent of the Russian and Cuban regimes. Cuban officials said in September that they had arrested three individuals linked to the trafficking network and 14 Cuban nationals who had expressed their willingness to join Russia’s military in exchange for citizenship and monetary rewards.

Bloomberg’s latest report stressed that, according to information provided by an anonymous source with knowledge of the matter, Cubans are nevertheless continuing to be recruited by Russia to fight against Ukraine. The source stated that hundreds of Cuban conscripts are still signing up through informal channels.

The Cuban citizens are offered “generous payments” as a way to lure them into the Russian military at a time when Cuba faces a severe economic and humanitarian crisis, the product of six years of communist mismanagement. Some reports estimate that as many as 90 percent of Cubans are now living in extreme poverty conditions. 

Both the inhumane living conditions and the brutal repression of the communist regime has prompted what is now widely considered the worst migrant crisis in Cuba’s history.

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In April, Cuban Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernández de Cossio claimed to Bloomberg that the regime “learned, and made public, that a few Cubans who were in Europe were being recruited for the war,” and insisted that the ruling communists had taken “measures for those who were attempting from Cuba to also travel to the war.”

While the Castro regime has claimed in the past that it is “not part of the war in Ukraine,” the Communist Party has a long history of sending Cubans to fight in foreign conflicts that have no overt relation to Cuba throughout its six decades in power. Most notably, the Castro regime sent men to fight in the communist intervention of Angola, a conflict with did not in any way affect Cuban national interests, during the 1970s resulting in the death of thousands of Cuban citizens.

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Bloomberg noted that, although Cuba’s Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla has claimed that the regime’s “unequivocal position” was to oppose involvement in the Ukraine war, Cuban Ambassador to Moscow Julio Garmendía has stated that Cuba is not opposed to the “legal participation” of its citizens in the ongoing conflict.

Bloomberg also stated in its report that a pro-Russia blogger identified as Anastasia Kashevarova highlighted the case of a group of 45 Cubans who had allegedly been dismissed from the Russian army after they complained about problems with their payment. Kashevarova also claimed that the group’s commander, who had asked for Russian citizenship, was “instead facing deportation.”

In September, a group of alleged Ukrainian hackers claimed to have breached the personal email address of Russian Major Antón Valentinovich Perevozchikov, one of the men allegedly in charge of recruiting Cubans for the Russian military, and had obtained the data of nearly 200 Cuban citizens who had been conscripted to fight for Russia in Ukraine.

Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.