Kharkiv, Ukraine \u2013<\/strong> Hushruzjon Salohidinov, 26, was working as a courier in Saint Petersburg, Russia\u2019s second-largest city and President Vladimir Putin\u2019s hometown.<\/p>\n But last year, the Tajik man and practising Muslim says he was arrested while picking up a parcel which police claimed contained money stolen from elderly women.<\/p>\n Salohidinov says he never interacted with the alleged criminals, but nevertheless spent nine months in the Kresty-2 pre-trial detention centre about 32km (20 miles) from the city, while a judge refused to start his trial because of the \u201cweak evidence\u201d against him.<\/p>\n But instead of releasing him after that, prison wardens threatened to place him in a cell with HIV-infected inmates who, they said, would gang-rape him \u2013 unless he \u201cvolunteered\u201d to fight in Ukraine.<\/p>\n \u201cThey said, \u2018Oh, you\u2019ll put on a skirt now, you\u2019ll be raped,\u2019\u201d Salohidinov, who has raven black hair and a messy full beard, told Al Jazeera at a centre for war prisoners in northeastern Ukraine, where he is now being held, having been captured in January this year by Ukrainian forces.<\/p>\n Using a carrot-and-stick tactic, the wardens also promised him a sign-up bonus of 2 million rubles ($26,200), a monthly salary of 200,000 rubles ($2,620) and an amnesty from all convictions.<\/p>\n So, in the autumn of 2025, Salohidinov signed up as he \u201csaw no other way out\u201d.<\/p>\n Officials in Kresty-2, St Petersburg\u2019s prosecutors\u2019 office and Russia\u2019s Ministry of Defence did not respond to any of Al Jazeera\u2019s requests for comment.<\/p>\n Salohidinov is just one of tens of thousands of labour migrants from Central Asia coerced by Russia to become soldiers as part of the Kremlin\u2019s nationwide campaign, according to human rights groups, media reports and Russian officials.<\/p>\n Hochu Jit, a Ukrainian group that helps Russian soldiers surrender, has published verified lists of thousands of Central Asian soldiers like Salohidinov.<\/p>\n \u201cThey are literally sent to be killed, no one considers them soldiers that need to be saved,\u201d the group wrote in a 2025 post on Telegram. These soldiers\u2019 life expectancy on the front line is about four months. \u201cLosses among them are catastrophic,\u201d the group reported.<\/p>\n With its low birthrate and large oil wealth, Russia has for years been a magnet for millions of labour migrants from ex-Soviet Central Asia, especially Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.<\/p>\n The campaign by the Kremlin\u00a0to force Central Asians to fight in Ukraine dates back to 2023 \u2013 the year after Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine \u2013 when police began rounding up anyone who didn\u2019t look Slavic and charging them with real or imagined transgressions such as a lack of registration, expired or \u201cfake\u201d permits or blurred stamps on their documents. Sometimes, migrants are simply bused straight to conscription offices.<\/p>\n In 2025, Al Jazeera interviewed another Tajik man who said he had been detained with an expired work permit and was then tortured into \u201cvolunteering\u201d while being subjected to countless xenophobic and Islamophobic slurs from his officers.<\/p>\n Migrants say they are abused, tortured and threatened with jail or having their entire families deported.<\/p>\n \u201cThe main way of recruiting as many migrants as possible is pressure on them with threats of deportation,\u201d Alisher Ilkhamov, the Uzbekistan-born head of the London-based Central Asia Due Diligence think tank, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n Sometimes, migrants are simply duped.<\/p>\n Salohidinov said one serviceman in his squad was an Uzbek who \u201cdidn\u2019t speak a word of Russian\u201d and was fooled into \u201cvolunteering\u201d while signing papers at a migration centre.<\/p>\n In their reports about \u201ccatching\u201d migrants, officials frequently use derogatory terms about them, and also when they describe men who have obtained Russian passports but skipped registration at conscription offices. Since the Soviet era, such registration has been obligatory for all men and, since 2024, a newly naturalised Russian national can lose his citizenship if he fails to do it.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve caught 80,000 such Russian citizens, who don\u2019t just want to go to the front line, they don\u2019t even want to go to a conscription office,\u201d chief prosecutor Alexander Bastrykin said in May 2025, referring to the migrants\u2019 alleged patriotic sentiments.<\/p>\n He boasted that 20,000 Central Asians with Russian passports were herded to the front line in 2025.<\/p>\n The year before, he said 10,000 Central Asians had been sent to Ukraine.<\/p>\n Such remarks resonate with the Russian public that lives with \u201ca high level of xenophobia in the stage of fear and helplessness,\u201d Sergey Biziyukin, an exiled opposition activist from the western city of Ryazan, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n \u201cFor them, such phrases from Bastrykin are a form of sedative.\u201d<\/p>\n What makes Central Asians easy targets is that they hail from police states, which depend on Moscow politically and economically, observers say.<\/p>\n \u201cWhile the migrants are frightened into signing contracts, their motherland doesn\u2019t really pay any attention,\u201d Galiya Ibragimova, an Uzbekistan-born, Moldova-based regional expert, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n Despite hefty signup bonuses and relentless propaganda, the number of Russians who want to fight in Ukraine fell by at least one-fifth this year, and Moscow will strive to recruit more Central Asians, she said.<\/p>\n After signing the contract and leaving his debit card with his sign-up bonus with his parents, Salohidinov was sent to the western city of Voronezh for three weeks of training that did little to prepare him for the war.<\/p>\n \u201cWe just kept running back and forth with guns,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Their drill sergeants, he says, told the conscripts that the standard-issue flak jackets, helmets, boots and flashlights were of subpar quality and urged them to pitch in a million rubles ($13,100) each for \u201cbetter\u201d gear.<\/p>\n The incident corroborates reports on dozens of similar cases in Russian military units.<\/p>\n Salohidinov was ordered to work in a kitchen \u2013 and was verbally abused and beaten for the slightest transgression.<\/p>\n Of 28 men in his unit, 21 were Muslims \u2013 but their ethnic Russian officers ignored their pleas not to have pork in meals, repeating a decades-old practice of ignoring religion-related dietary restrictions\u00a0dating back to the Soviet army.<\/p>\n The commanders demonised Ukrainians, telling them \u201cthat if we surrender, we\u2019d be tortured, have our fingers broken, maimed, get [construction] foam up our a**, have our teeth yanked out one by one, have our arms broken\u201d, Salohidinov says.<\/p>\n In early January this year, the conscripts were bused to the Russia-occupied Ukrainian region of Luhansk.<\/p>\n Salohidinov says he was tired, frightened and disoriented \u2013 Ukrainian drones were \u201calways\u201d above them and a grenade explosion nearby damaged his left eardrum.<\/p>\n On the fourth day of his service, Salohidinov was ordered to run beyond Ukrainian positions as part of Russia\u2019s new tactic to send two or three servicemen to infiltrate the porous front line.<\/p>\n The mission was suicidal because the terrain was open, dotted with landmines and the bodies of dead Russian soldiers, while Ukrainians were firing machineguns and flew drones above them.<\/p>\n \u201cI ran and ran and saw we were being shot at,\u201d he said. \u201cMe and my commander decided to surrender voluntarily instead of dying for nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n They detached their assault rifles\u2019 magazines, raised their hands and yelled they were surrendering.<\/p>\n What followed was \u201ca calm feeling, beautiful\u201d, he said. \u201cThey fed us, let us have a smoke, gave us food and water and even cake.\u201d<\/p>\n Now, Salohidinov hopes to return to Tajikistan and panics at the thought of being made part of a prisoner swap \u2013 these have taken place several times each year \u2013 and returning to Russia because he would be sent back to the front line.<\/p>\n Tajikistan and other Central Asian nations have never endorsed Russia\u2019s war in Ukraine, but nor have they openly criticised it.<\/p>\n In August 2025, Tajikistan\u2019s Prosecutor General Habibullo Vohidzoda declared that no Tajik national would be charged for fighting in Ukraine.<\/p>\n So, what Salohidinov needs right now is an extradition request.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m even glad that I got captured, because I\u2019m not fighting anyone now, not risking anything,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ll even say thanks to Ukraine for taking me prisoner.\u201d<\/p>\n The Tajik embassy in Kyiv did not respond to Al Jazeera\u2019s request for comment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Kharkiv, Ukraine \u2013 Hushruzjon Salohidinov, 26, was working as a courier in Saint Petersburg, Russia\u2019s second-largest city and President Vladimir Putin\u2019s hometown. But last year, the Tajik man and practising Muslim says he was arrested while picking up a parcel which police claimed contained money stolen from elderly women. Salohidinov says he never interacted with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19171,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19170"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19170\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Russia](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Hushruzjon-Salohidinov-26-a-Tajik-man-forced-to-fight-for-Russia-at-a-war-prisoner-facility-1776327430.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C578&quality=80\")
\u2018Catching migrants\u2019<\/h2>\n
![\"Russia](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/2025-10-15T114607Z_446671936_RC2ACHAZEK4X_RTRMADP_3_UKRAINE-CRISIS-RUSSIA-CONSCRIPTS-1776330090.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C513&quality=80\")
\u2018We\u2019ll have our fingers broken\u2019<\/h2>\n
![\"Ukraine](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/2026-04-11T164524Z_604139942_RC21NKAHFE71_RTRMADP_3_UKRAINE-CRISIS-PRISONERS-EXCHANGE-1776329867.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C514&quality=80\")
\u2018Glad I got captured\u2019<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"