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This is the story of a captured Tajik, whose war experience describes the truth about modern Russian army. While Moscow and Kyiv have exchanged thousands of prisoners of war, Mohammed says he would prefer to fight for Ukraine rather than return to his homeland.
This story was covered by Al Jazeera.
In 2024, Mohammed* boarded a flight to St Petersburg, Russia’s second-largest city, embarking on his first journey abroad.
With its orderly streets, grand imperial architecture, and luminous “white nights” when summer darkness barely falls, St Petersburg felt worlds apart from his hometown — Dushanbe, the dry and overcrowded capital of Tajikistan, the poorest of the former Soviet republics in Central Asia.
Like millions of other Central Asian migrants who travel to Russia seeking work, Mohammed hoped to earn a better income and send money home. Entering Russia visa-free, he paid 6,000 rubles ($74) a month for a renewable work permit and shared a run-down apartment with six other men while selling food from a stall.
But only a few months later, everything fell apart.
Mohammed told Al Jazeera that after forgetting to pay his permit fee, he was detained by police, beaten, and deprived of food. While in custody, he said, Russian military officers forced him to sign up for the army — leaving him no choice but to comply.
He was sent to fight in Ukraine alongside Russian soldiers and foreign recruits supporting Moscow.
Earlier this year, Ukrainian forces captured him, and he is now a prisoner of war (PoW).
Ukraine’s military granted Al Jazeera rare access to interview Mohammed, one of dozens of Central Asian PoWs. Though an officer was present during the prison interview near the front line, Al Jazeera saw no indication he was being coerced. His identity is being withheld for safety reasons.
Under international law, prisoners of war must be treated humanely.
However, several former PoWs released in swaps have later been sentenced in Russia for “spreading fake news.” Both Kyiv and Moscow accuse each other of abusing, torturing, or executing prisoners — and some of these accusations have been supported by disturbing videos circulating online.
During the interview, Mohammed voiced anger at Russia. He described police violence and said he had witnessed anti-Muslim discrimination during military training.
Since the war began in early 2022, Russia and Ukraine have exchanged thousands of PoWs, though neither side has disclosed exact numbers. Mohammed said he fears being sent back to Russia and would rather fight for Ukraine.
Such claims are not new in this conflict. In July, Russian lawmaker Viktor Vodolatsky claimed that some Ukrainian PoWs wanted to switch sides and fight for Moscow — a claim activists have dismissed as highly improbable.
Mohammed said that only later did he realise he had been forced to sign a one-year military contract promising a 1.6 million ruble ($19,644) bonus and a monthly salary of 210,000 rubles ($2,580). Officers, he added, had assured him he would serve merely as a “guard” far from combat and would receive a Russian passport within six months.
“They tricked me,” he said.
He underwent brief training in western Russia, which he described as minimal and poorly organised. His issued AK-47 rifle, he added, was old and constantly jammed.
“My weapon didn’t even work — I swear, really,” he said.
“The Kremlin’s Drive to Recruit Manpower”
Russia has long faced accusations of forcibly drafting Central Asian migrants, often using intimidation and coercion.
Like Mohammed, other survivors have said they were enticed with promises of high wages, “safe” non-combat positions, and fast-tracked Russian citizenship.
“Behind it all lies the Kremlin’s strategy of gathering manpower by any means possible while avoiding the unpopular step of forcibly mobilising ethnic Russians,” said Alisher Ilkhamov, head of Central Asia Due Diligence, a London-based think tank, speaking to Al Jazeera.
At the training camps, where dozens of men slept in unheated barracks, there were many other Muslims from beyond Russia’s borders — including citizens of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Azerbaijan.
While a few had joined voluntarily, most, Mohammed said, were compelled to serve.
He claimed that Muslim recruits were forbidden from praying and were subjected to daily ethnic and religious insults from drill officers. The officers allegedly ordered them to shave their beards and clean toilets both inside and outside the barracks.
According to Mohammed, few ethnic Russians were present, and those who were typically came from prisons — convicts who had volunteered to fight in exchange for presidential pardons.
Moscow denies engaging in racial or religious discrimination during recruitment. However, it has repeatedly stressed that foreign workers who hold or seek Russian citizenship have an “obligation” to serve their adopted country.
In May 2023, Russia’s chief prosecutor, Aleksandr Bastrykin, declared: “While Russians are on the front lines, migrants are attacking us from the rear… If they are citizens, let them go to the front line. If not — they should return to their homeland.”
A year later, he described forced recruitment as a “positive trend,” claiming it had encouraged migrants to begin “slowly leaving Russia.”
After completing training, Mohammed was sent to eastern Ukraine — an area witnessing intense fighting. There, he was issued an assault rifle, several magazines, and hand grenades.
He was paired with another foreign soldier who said he had volunteered to fight in exchange for a Russian passport.
“Tactic of Extra-Small Assault Groups”
Mohammed and his fellow fighter seemed to have been absorbed into Moscow’s new combat strategy — deploying tiny groups of soldiers to infiltrate Ukrainian lines, gather intelligence, and stockpile weapons and manpower before launching attacks.
“This is the tactic of extra-small storm groups,” explained Nikolay Mitrokhin of Germany’s Bremen University, who has published extensive analyses of the Russian-Ukrainian war, speaking to Al Jazeera. “It’s been used since spring — and in some areas since late last year. It helps reduce losses, especially when troops are concealed by foliage, and it increases their destructive potential roughly tenfold,” he said.
According to Mohammed, he and other soldiers were stripped of their phones, documents, and bank cards by commanding officers. In exchange, they were issued cheap smartphones equipped with a single app — Alpine Quest, a topographic tool that allowed them to navigate via coded coordinates without internet or GPS access.
They never knew the names of the villages or fields they were ordered to reach. Instructions came only via radio from an unseen commander whose identity and location remained a mystery.
Each day, they marched for hours in small groups. One man carried a backpack containing a portable jammer designed to disable Ukrainian drones. Along the way, Mohammed saw the bodies of several dead Russian soldiers. “Some had no heads, some no arms,” he recalled.
Despite hunger and thirst, the men kept moving. Their daily rations, dropped by drone, were meagre — a small bottle of water and a few chocolate bars.
At one point, Mohammed spotted a severely wounded Russian soldier bleeding on the ground. When he tried to help, his commander radioed an order forbidding it.
For Mohammed, that moment brought a grim realisation: his life held no value — he, too, could be left to die.
During a burst of heavy fighting, he and his partner were ordered to take shelter in a burned-out, abandoned Ukrainian village.
With no supply drops for several days, they scavenged through empty homes and basements, finding only a little pasta, which they ate raw.
Soon after, Ukrainian drones discovered their position.
“Mohammed Expressed a Wish to Serve for Ukraine”
Mohammed claimed that throughout his service, he never fired his weapon or threw a grenade — a statement Ukrainians tend to treat with skepticism.
“In all my years of service since Russia’s full-scale invasion, not a single Russian prisoner of war has ever admitted to killing Ukrainian soldiers or civilians,” the Ukrainian officer supervising Mohammed told Al Jazeera.
According to the officer, Mohammed “was part of a Russian assault group and was captured while storming Ukrainian positions in Donetsk.”
Mohammed said he had initially feared Ukrainian captivity, having heard rumours that Russian prisoners were tortured or mutilated. But his experience, he admitted, had been unexpectedly humane.
“I swear, they give me whatever I ask for — cigarettes anytime, food, drinks. They say, ‘Take it, little brother,’” he said.
He also managed to call his father for the first time since his capture. “My dad cried a little and said, ‘What matters is that you’re alive.’”
Still, Mohammed fears being included in a future prisoner exchange. According to human rights groups and former soldiers, Russia has violated international law by sending returned PoWs back to the front.
“They’ll send me back to fight — 100 percent — until I’m dead or maimed,” he said.
Returning to Tajikistan is not an option either. Under Tajik law, citizens who serve in foreign armies can face up to 12 years in prison.
The Ukrainian government programme Hochu Jit (“I Want to Live”), which monitors and assists PoWs, reported in April that it had verified the identities of 931 Tajik nationals aged 18 to 70 fighting for Russia. It said 196 had been killed — with an average frontline survival rate of just 140 days — and added that the true figure was likely “much higher.”
Mohammed believes his only hope for survival is to join Ukraine’s armed forces, gain Ukrainian citizenship, and eventually bring his family from Tajikistan.
“When the war ends — if it ever ends — I’ll tell my dad in Tajikistan: Sell the house, come to Ukraine, and buy one here,” he said.
According to the officer overseeing him, Mohammed’s request to enlist is under review.
Since 2022, dozens of Russian prisoners of war have volunteered to fight for Ukraine, joining two units composed entirely of Russian nationals.
“After seeing how the Ukrainians treated him — compared to the discrimination he faced in Russia — Mohammed expressed a desire to serve with the Ukrainian forces, rather than return to face racial and ethnic prejudice,” the officer said.
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