Peruvians trapped in Russia’s war by a job promise: ‘They’re taking us as cannon fodder’

Since May 6, Karina — a fictitious name used to protect her identity — has clung to a WhatsApp audio message to hold on to the hope that her husband is still alive. In those 39 seconds, Jorge asks her to pray, to have faith, and to trust that everything will turn out all right. “I promised you I would come back and I will. I came here for a purpose, and what good is it to come and suffer so much if I’m not going to fulfill it?” he tells her in a faint voice.

Jorge, a retired sailor in his late forties, left Lima for Moscow on March 25, convinced he had landed a good job opportunity. He was offered a $20,000 signing bonus and a $2,500 monthly salary to provide security for embassies, hospitals, and schools. A friend at the security company where he worked told him about the offer. The explanation sounded plausible: many Russians had been sent to the front in Ukraine and there was a shortage of personnel to guard public institutions. That, he was told, is why positions for foreigners had opened up.

In one of the few communications Jorge managed to conduct with Karina from Moscow, he told her the whole scheme was a lie. He said he had been forced, under threat, to sign a contract written in Russian, that his documents had been confiscated and that they were preparing to send him to the front line. “They’re taking us as cannon fodder,” he warned her. He also complained about the food and mistreatment. The man who had traveled to work as a security guard had ended up trapped in someone else’s war.

For him, that job meant more than the chance to earn a decent wage. Above all, it was a way to get the money Karina needed. She has cervical cancer and must undergo a hysterectomy, a major surgery to remove her uterus. “With the bonus we’ll get you treated at a private clinic and goodbye cancer, love,” Jorge promised her before leaving. Nearly five months later, Karina has not received a single dollar and her husband is still missing. With no money to pay rent, she had to leave Lima and move to another city with their two children, who ask about their father every day.

Jorge is far from an isolated case. According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 459 Peruvians have enlisted in the Russian forces fighting in Ukraine, 114 remain missing, and three were captured by the Ukrainian army. The foreign ministry also says it has evacuated 31 citizens: 28 returned to Peru and three stayed in Europe by choice. A few days ago, the ministry reported the repatriation of two young people who, it said in a statement, managed to escape “forced recruitment.” Both landed in Lima in the early hours of August 9.

Their lawyer, Percy Salinas, told this newspaper that both were in a Moscow hospital and took advantage of a lapse in security to escape and seek refuge at the Embassy of Peru in Russia. Salinas, however, questions the official figures. The group of lawyers working on behalf of the victims estimates that since 2024 around 1,200 Peruvians have enlisted in the Russian army. Most are men living in poverty who barely finished high school. They come mainly from Lima but also from Amazon cities such as Iquitos and Pucallpa; from the north, from places like Chiclayo and Trujillo; and from Pataz, in the La Libertad highlands, an area hard hit by the advance of illegal mining.

Recruiters have targeted men regardless of age or health. “They took young men from an evangelical church choir in Lima, between 18 and 21 years old, as well as men aged almost 60 with tachycardia and ocular pressure who could not belong to any army,” says Salinas. Nor are most of them men with weapons experience. Only a tiny fraction had belonged to the police or the armed forces.

Recruitment pattern

The lawyers representing the families have reconstructed, from victims’ testimonies, a recruitment pattern. Most arrived in Russia through recommendations from acquaintances. Behind those offers are Peruvian and Colombian recruiters, but also former colleagues from the private security sector with prior experience in conflict zones. Some had years earlier guarded the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad during the Iraq War. For that group, accepting a security job in a country at war was not an unfamiliar prospect.

Between 2004 and 2017, Peruvians were reported to have traveled to Iraq, drawn by salaries of around $1,000 a month — well below the sums now being offered to those willing to go to Russia. However, there was a crucial difference: those workers received the wages they had been promised, carried out security duties largely within protected areas, and were not enlisted in the U.S. military but hired by private security companies.

Alejandro — who also prefers to remain anonymous — fits that profile. He is 61 and guarded the U.S. Embassy in Iraq from 2010 to 2013. He traveled to Russia on March 19 and his family lost all contact with him on May 23. “They took advantage of his time in Iraq. He told us they were going to put him at a base to work as a guard, but weeks later he told us they wouldn’t let him use his phone, that they had kept his passport and that they held them like prisoners,” says one of his sons.

Alejandro was also forced to sign a contract to serve for one year in the Russian army. The $20,000 bonus and the promised salary never reached his family. “The contracts say the money is handed to a Russian who represents the Peruvian soldiers. They create an account in a Russian bank and they handle the money, because we haven’t received anything,” he says. The next news came on July 7. In one of the groups that track the war’s developments, an alert circulated: the identity document of a Peruvian had been found on the battlefield in Donetsk, eastern Ukraine. It was Alejandro’s. Since then he has been listed as missing.

The families, who have staged several protests outside Peru’s Foreign Ministry in Lima, are demanding a more active search effort. They want authorities to check hospitals, shelters and cemeteries, to speed up efforts to repatriate those still alive and to recover the remains of those who have died. They are also calling for a specialized prosecutor’s office to investigate the recruitment networks, identify those responsible, and determine whether a human trafficking structure is operating behind these cases.

Pressure from relatives has pushed the crisis into the diplomatic arena. Peru’s Foreign Minister Carlos Espá recently met with the Russian ambassador to Peru, Aleksei Ushakov, to demand precise information on Peruvians who have died, are missing or have been captured during the conflict. The Foreign Ministry has asked to know the exact status and location of the missing — an answer many families have been waiting months for. Karina, for example, still does not know where Jorge is. More than three months have passed since she last heard his voice.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition