Recruiters are targeting Central Asian migrants in prisons and at work centres to join the war.
These men were drafted as part of Russia's partial mobilisation last year - but the country is still looking for more troops for its warRussia's Wagner mercenary group has reportedly recruited tens of thousands of prisoners to fight in Ukraine. But the growing number of casualties and extrajudicial executions make it much harder to find volunteers, even in prisons.
At the end of January, he told his father that a group of Central Asians had been sent to fight in Ukraine without their consent. "There are lots of Uzbeks, Tajiks, Kyrgyz there in that prison. Now they are planning to send another group and my son is worried that they will force him to go too," Anuar's father told the BBC.
Penal Colony Number Six is notorious for its ill-treatment and frequent beatings of convicts. Olga Romanova described it as "a torture prison". It's where Alexei Navalny, the prominent Russian opposition figure, is being held. BBC Uzbek has spoken to Farukh , a citizen of Uzbekistan who is in prison in Russia's Rostov region. Several of his fellow inmates joined Wagner. First it was voluntary, Farukh said, but now he's worried that prisoners may be forced to go to war.
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