Conned for combat: The Indians hired for Russia’s Ukraine war

Indian national Mohammed Asfan, in a photo held by his wife Asma Shireen and their child in Hyderabad, was deployed amid the conflict in Ukraine. — AFP

AN apple farmer, an airline caterer and an out-of-work graduate are among the Indian nationals hired by Moscow, with the help of recruiters around the world, for the Russian army in Ukraine.

Two years into the war tens of thousands of Russian soldiers have died in Ukraine, and Moscow is on a global quest for more combatants, sometimes with the assistance – complicit or oblivious – of informal intermediaries.