Cubans Forced to Fight for Russia in Ukraine, Havana Charges

Investigators in Havana cracked a human trafficking ring that coerced Cuban citizens into fighting for Russia in Ukraine, the foreign ministry said on Monday. 

The government was dismantling a "trafficking network that operates from Russia to incorporate Cuban citizens living there, and even some from Cuba, into the military forces involved in military operations in Ukraine," the ministry said in a statement.

"Cuba is not part of the war in Ukraine," the ministry said, promising action against anyone "who participates in any form of human trafficking for the purpose of recruitment or mercenarism for Cuban citizens to use arms against any country."

The ministry didn’t release details of the ring. There was no immediate Russian government comment. But broad outlines of the participation of individual Cuban fighters emerged.

A Russian soldier told the Moscow Times that he had recently been assigned to a unit comprised mostly of foreigners, including Cubans.

“I was shocked," the unnamed serviceman told the news outlet. "There were only Cubans and Serbs. They spoke Russian badly or not by all." The unit was not part of a private military group, he said, but fighting on contract for Russia's defense ministry.

A Spanish translator working with the Cuban diaspora in Russia told the described a large number of Cuban fighters heading for Ukraine--but made no mention of coercion.

“There are a lot of young guys who come here for money straight from Cuba," the translator said, according to the Moscow Times. "These are not local Cubans, they do not stop in Moscow, they immediately sign a contract and go to fight.”

Communist Cuba, an enduring source of migrants to the U.S., suffers from 45% inflation and sluggish growth after the Covid-19 pandemic.

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said on X, the former Twitter, that authorities were "acting with the full force of the law" against the smuggling operation. 

Moscow and Havana have recently strengthened their longstanding ties.

Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Cuban Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz at the Kremlin in June, and the two countries’ defense ministers met in Russia last month.