Three men from the Dominican Republic are begging to be rescued from Russia, where they say they were lured by false promises of jobs — and then sent to the front lines of the war in Ukraine.
In a video posted on social media last week, the three unnamed men said they were conscripted into the Russian military and sent to fight in the four-year-old war, the New York Post reported.
"We were deceived, contrary to what is being said, that we came here knowing what we were getting into," one of the soldiers said in the video. "That's a lie. We were brought here under an employment contract – to work."
"Treated like slaves" under drone fire
One of the men described the grim reality of life on the battlefield, alleging the Russians have treated them as "slaves" as they face relentless drone attacks by Ukrainian forces.
"When those people send us to the front, there are drones that show no mercy to anyone," he said. "When one of them crashes into you – boom! It blows you to bits, shredding you into tiny, bite-sized pieces."
The men claimed that on average, only two out of every 100 soldiers survive their missions.
The three Dominicans did not reveal when they first arrived in Russia or how long they have been there, what training — if any — they received, how they were recruited, how much they were paid, or what jobs they thought they would be doing.
One of the soldiers said in the video that fighters from Peru, Panama and India had already been pulled out of Russia and repatriated to their home countries.
A direct plea to Luis Abinader
The men addressed their appeal directly to Dominican President Luis Abinader, asking him to bring them home.
Under Dominican law, nationals are required to seek permission from the government if they wish to join another country's armed forces — and could lose their citizenship if they do so without approval.
The case lands as the Dominican Republic is already on high alert over the crisis across the border in Haiti, where President Luis Abinader has reinforced the frontier with armoured vehicles and drones and warned Haitian gangs they will "have a very bad time" if they threaten Dominican territory.
Why it matters
The video is the latest evidence of how Russia's war machine is drawing in foreign fighters with promises of civilian work — men who say they signed up for a job and woke up on a battlefield. For Santo Domingo, the rescue plea now poses a diplomatic problem with no easy answer: how to bring home citizens who may have broken Dominican law simply by putting on a foreign uniform.
Reporting based on the New York Post.