2024-07-07 22:10:12
Although there has always been a need for labor from Central Asia in Russia, since the invasion of Ukraine, hundreds of thousands of Russians have become war workers, so extra hands are urgently needed.
Migrant workers are sent to rebuild destroyed cities in the Russian-occupied territory of Ukraine, dig trenches and even fight.
Many of the foreign prisoners recruited by the Wagner mercenary group in Russian colonies have died in Ukraine, and their families have been trying for months to at least return the bodies of their loved ones to their homeland.
Bypassing sanctions
In one of the main markets of Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, it used to be easy to find American uniforms – shoes, jackets, pants, on the stalls of the US military base, which until 2014. operated at Manas airport near Bishkek.
Now there are no American products. Sellers do not hide that they order fakes from China: tactical backpacks, special clothing, gloves are in demand.
One shopkeeper showed the BBC rows of shoes and bundles of camouflage backpacks hanging from the ceiling. He said the product is popular among a variety of customers, including hunters, fishermen, and paintball players. However, a new market – Russia – has also opened up.
“We load 1,500 units of each product and send them to Russia. In September, the demand increased significantly,” said the seller.
He did not reveal who specifically orders copies of American military shoes and backpacks, but assured that they are ordinary people and not state-owned enterprises.
After the European Union and the United States imposed sanctions on Russia, the Kremlin began to increase shipments of necessary goods through Central Asian countries, especially Kyrgyzstan, as can be clearly seen from the open data of the Kyrgyz National Statistics Committee.
For example, in 2022, Russia from Kyrgyzstan for 405 thousand bought electronic integrated circuits, which are subject to the 10th EU sanctions package, as well as electric detonators for 833 thousand euros. euros.
The largest Russian markets have already established warehouses in Bishkek – in 2022, Kyrgyzstan’s trade with Russia will increase by 40 percent.
“When the war started, no structural changes took place in Russia. The country is trying to use all the same tools it had, only for other purposes, said Temur Umarov, an expert at the Carnegie Center for Policy Research. – If we look at how modern Russia has developed over the last 30 years, and at all the main objects that have appeared there, including the crazy projects of the Sochi Olympics, we will see that migrants from Central Asian countries contributed a lot to them. And now, when Russia has other priorities and is bombing Ukrainian cities and then rebuilding its own destroyed facilities in the annexed territories, it is using all the same resources it used before the war.”
Time as second-class citizens
After leaving the Bishkek market, you can see a row of minibuses going to various Russian cities: Orenburg, Samara, Penza, Surgut, Moscow. The trip takes several days with overnight stays on the bus, and sometimes in roadside cafes, but its price is only 5-6 thousand. Kyrgyz soms (approximately 55 euros).
One million Kyrgyz migrants live in Russia, and their remittances account for a third of Kyrgyzstan’s gross domestic product.
“The people to whom this money is sent spend it on short-term necessities, such as clothes, food, weddings,” explained T.Umarov. This situation determines Kyrgyzstan’s political dependence on Russia.
According to the driver who takes those who want to go to Russia, Kyrgyz are considered second-class people there. Despite this, the flow of passengers does not decrease: five to seven minibuses, each with about 20 people, leave Bishkek every day.
“At the customs, if they want, they let us through, if they don’t want to, they don’t let us in.” We just sit and wait,” said minibus driver Danijar.
“Russia gets some of the benefits in this situation – the overpopulation in Central Asia goes very well with the labor shortage in Russia.” It is these people who are ready to do the same work for much less money, which the Russians don’t want to do,” claimed T. Umarov.
Migrants from Kyrgyzstan mostly work in construction and trade, but when Russia launched a large-scale invasion of Ukraine, residents from Central Asia began to be drawn into the war.
On September 20, 2022, the day before Russia announced the so-called partial mobilization, the State Duma adopted amendments to the law – citizens of other countries now only need to serve in the country’s army for 1 year under contract in order to obtain a Russian passport.
Previously, this procedure took three years.
In addition, citizens of Central Asia, who came to Russia to earn money, are hired to dig trenches in the Belgorod region and occupied territories in Ukraine.
Registration is coercion
Mirlan, a Kyrgyz who worked as a lawyer in Moscow for many years, faced various cases. He started his career assisting Kyrgyz arrivals with mandatory migrant registration. Then Mirlan began to examine administrative cases.
“Unlawfully detained, not provided an interpreter,” Mirlan said about the violations of his clients’ rights. Later, together with other lawyers, he also got involved in criminal cases.
“I won’t say we did some kind of human rights protection, we just helped our citizens,” said Mirlan. The lawyer maintained contact with clients even after the verdict was announced, when the migrants were already serving their sentences in prisons. in 2022 In the summer, he learned that Wagner was recruiting prisoners from Kyrgyzstan.
“At first, they just started persistently asking for them: for example, there are conditions for getting an amnesty to release them early.” But since the end of September last year, foreigners who were imprisoned did not only join the mercenary group voluntarily – Wagner registered them by force.
At the beginning of October, our client from the prison called and told us that when the recruiters showed up, all the newcomers – Kyrgyz, Uzbeks, Tajiks – were placed in a separate building and asked to sign a contract. The arguments were: “Here you eat for free, but you have to work. How? You have to go to war and when you come back we will give you amnesty and you will be free.”
Radio Azattyk also reported attempts to recruit Kyrgyz citizens serving time in Russian colonies.
The father of one man in prison in the Sverdlovsk region said that the convicts were moved to a barracks with a strict regime without water and food, and thus all were forced to sign a contract with Wagner.
Last September, the recruiters of the mercenary group also visited the colonies of the Kaluga region.
“On September 7, recidivists of the Tovarkov security prison in the Kaluga region were lined up on the parade ground immediately after the Wagner leadership landed by helicopter.
Yevgenij Prigozhin spoke from the podium campaigning to sign up as volunteers for Donbass. He did not hide his past, mixing simple words with swearing,” said Alexey Shestun, the former head of the Serpukhov district of the Moscow region.
The core group was sent out of the Medyn correctional colony in 2022. August 28 The prisoners spent the first weeks in the “training camp”, which lasted only a few weeks, before leaving for the vicinity of Bachmut at the end of September.
Last January, the relatives of those convicted began to receive the first funeral certificates.
The dates of death varied: some in November, some in October, some on September 25, right after the “training camp”.
The man did not call again
Nurbek usually called his wife Gulkan from the colony in the evenings. After February 24, 2022 the topic of war was more frequent in their conversations. The couple usually communicated a couple of times a week, but in mid-October, Nurbek started calling frequently.
During one conversation, Nurberk announced that he would soon return home – in February.
“My husband was halfway through his sentence, so I immediately thought he had done some good work and was going to be paroled. But to avoid the negative answer that it was just a joke, I didn’t even bother to ask how it would happen,” Gulkan recalled. Nurbek never called again.
Back in 2017, he went to work in Russia, and a year later, his wife Gulkan also took a bite.
“The man was looking for a more favorable environment for himself. We had work here, but what we earned in Bishkek was only enough for food. That’s why we went to Russia,” said Nurberk’s wife.
In 2019, Nurbek and Gulkan, together with other migrants from Kyrgyzstan, received an order to repair and furnish houses in the Kaluga region of Russia. One evening there was a dispute among the workers. Nurbek went outside with his acquaintance, a fight broke out – Nurbek hit him with a bottle, hitting a vein in his forearm and the man bled to death.
In December 2019, the court sentenced Nurbek to 8 years of imprisonment and he was sent to the 4th correctional colony of the Kaluga region.
Gulkan used to go to visit her husband, but in 2022 in August, Nurbek suddenly issued a strict ban: “Don’t do it. Until I tell you otherwise.”
Reported death
When the connection with Nurbek was lost, Gulkan at first just waited. When the man didn’t call on New Year’s Eve, the woman got worried and went to the colony to see him, but she didn’t make it.
On January 21 last year, Gulkan received a message on the WhatsApp app: “Dear Gulkan! Please accept our condolences! Nurbek died in the Donetsk region, in the city of Artyomovsk (that’s what the Russians call Bakhmut. – Ed.). We report that his father has agreed to have him buried on the Walk of Fame in Moscow. He refused monetary compensation.
You will receive more information from the Ministry of Defense of Russia.”
“I read and I don’t understand. What does Nurbek have to do with the Russian Ministry of Defense? He is serving a sentence in the Kaluga region, he is a prisoner. How did you get to Ukraine? I read it, I don’t understand it, I see his name and details, but it’s as if it’s about a stranger,” the woman recalled the painful message.
This message came from an addressee known to Gulkan – her uncle Urbek, who lived and worked in Bishkek. Tried to call, but he had already blocked the woman’s number.
Two files were attached to the message. The first is a photo of the death certificate issued by the “Ministry of Justice of the Luhansk People’s Republic”. It stated that the man died in the city of Artyomovsk in 2022. October 24
Another document, “Regarding the payment of one-time monetary compensation”, stated the cause of death as “a gunshot wound in the torso and lower limbs with destruction of body parts.”
Heard of Wagner
Gulkan decided to go to the military registration and conscription department closest to her home: “I was already crying, hysterical. They began to ask, “Is he a contractor?” Are you a volunteer? From which region? From our military registration and conscription service?’
The woman told them that Nurberk was serving his sentence in a prison in the Kaluga region.
“Ah, it’s through Wagner. He is not in our possession. The company takes him there,” he assured her in the summoning department. The officer wrote “Wagner Center” on a piece of paper and told Gulkan to look up phone numbers online.
“That’s when I first heard about the Wagner company,” she recalled. “And from that day my endless search began.”
While trying to contact Wagner, Gulkan discovered the contacts of Rakhat Abdibalieva – her son Ayan Alisherov was also serving a sentence in a colony in Russia, signed a contract with a mercenary company and in 2023. died near Bachmut in early January. His body was given to his mother.
“The son was simply sent to the slaughterhouse,” said A. Alisherov’s mother. The plane carrying the remains of a 28-year-old man landed in the southern Kyrgyz city of Osh on January 22. – the coffin was transported from Moscow by passenger aircraft in the cargo compartment.
in 2022 in autumn, when A. Ališerovas probably signed the contract with “Wagner”, the mercenaries had already besieged Bachmut. Evidence mounted of the group’s massacres of captured Ukrainian soldiers and its own mercenaries, including videos of the bodies of Wagner fighters strewn in fields near Soledar and Bakhmut.
Even before the recruitment, Rakhat tried to get her son transferred from the Mordovia colony in Russia to serve his sentence in his homeland. in 2022 January 24 His case was examined in the Kyrgyz Supreme Court, but A. Alisherov remained in prison in Russia.
In October 2022, he called his mother and said that he would return home in 6 months.
But in 2023 In January, Rakhat received a message on WhatsApp about the loss of her son. 100,000 was transferred to the mother of the deceased. rubles in cash (about 1 thousand euros), his son’s documents and awards.
“My son was not a Russian citizen, he served his sentence in prison. How was he taken to war? We, Kyrgyz, are not considered human in prisons,” said Rakhat.
Top Kyrgyz officials have not commented on the deaths of their country’s citizens in Ukraine. Information has just appeared that Kyrgyz who are involved in the war – both on the side of Russia and Ukraine – are being tried in their own country. (BBC, LR)
2024-07-07 22:10:12