Hyderabad: A Hyderabad man identified as Mohammed Ahmed alleged he was forcibly recruited into the Russian army after being promised a construction job by a Mumbai-based consultancy.
A resident of Khairatabad, Ahmed was in desperate need of a job when he was approached by Adil, who introduced himself as the owner of Trust Consultancy and offered him a construction job in Russia.
With hopes of a ‘lucrative’ job opportunity abroad, Ahmed believed Adil and departed India on April 25 for Russia.
His dreams soon crashed after he found himself unemployed for 25 days. “I kept calling Adil and asked him to give me a job. But he made some excuse or the other,” Ahmed said in a released selfie video on Thursday, October 16.
Unable to return and desperate, Ahmed started looking for jobs in the country. “I went to several places but got cheated. I lost all my money. And then I found myself in this situation,” he says.
According to Ahmed, 30 others like him were taken to an unknown area and given weapons training. After that, they were sent to the Ukrainian border to fight. He says that he tried to jump from the military vehicle but sustained a fracture in his left leg.
He also claimed that there were a total of 25 soldiers with him at the border base, fighting in the war, and 17 of them were killed.
“We were six Indians. Today, we got the news that one of us has been killed. We refused to fight. They (Russian army officials) put a gun to my head and threatened us. ‘We will kill you here, we will say that you got hit by a drone or a bomb was dropped, you will be buried anywhere,’” Ahmed is heard in the video.
“I am helpless. I might be called by them tomorrow,” he says.
Adding that it was his fault for trusting Adil, Ahmed urged the viewers not to let go of him since he put him in the predicament. “The agent trapped me here. If the agent had just given me work, I wouldn’t be in this situation,” he said.
He concluded the video by asking forgiveness from anyone he had ever wronged.
Mohammad Ahmed is the sole breadwinner. He has a paralysed elderly mother, wife and two young children, 10-year-old Zoya Begum and four-year-old Mohammad Taimur.
His family has appealed for swift diplomatic intervention, requesting the Government of India, the Ministry of External Affairs and the Indian Embassy (Moscow) to contact Ahmed and bring him back safely.
In February 2024, another Hyderabad youth, Mohammed Afsan, was tragically killed in the Russia-Ukraine conflict after being similarly lured into a job scam and forcibly recruited into the army.
Since 2023, around 10 Indians have been reportedly stranded in different areas along the border.
