Indian who returned from Russia said- when I refused to fight, I was imprisoned in a cold trench

New Delhi. All the youths trapped in the Russian army amid the Russia-Ukraine war have returned to India. They have shared their ordeal. Also, they have expressed gratitude to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Mohammad Sufiyan, a youth from Narayanpet in Telangana, was also trapped there. He shared his experience about that horrific scene. He said, I was in a camp with Russian soldiers 60 kilometers inside Ukraine. On September 6, a local army commander came and told us that we have been dismissed from the job and our contract is no longer valid. We can return to India. He provided an army bus to me, three youths from Gulbarga and other foreign nationals fighting with the Russians and we reached Moscow two days later.

Recalling his arrival in Moscow last December, Sufiyan said that an employment agent assured him that he was applying for a job as a security guard or assistant in a government office in the Russian government office in Moscow.

“As soon as we reached there we were given a document in Russian language to sign. We were told that it is a contract to work with the Russian government for a year at a salary of Rs 1 lakh per month. However, a day later we were taken to an army camp and asked to start physical training and learn how to shoot rifles. We fired AK17 and AK74 rifles as part of our training. Then we were given two weeks of sniper rifle training. If anyone dared to resist, the officers fired bullets at the right and left side of our legs. After about 25 days of training we were taken to the Russian border with Ukraine,” he said.

Every day was a constant struggle to stay alive, Sufiyan said. Some youths refused to work on the frontline after a youth from Gujarat, Hamil Mangukia, was killed in a drone attack along with 23 Russian soldiers in February. He said, as punishment, the officer in charge there forced us to dig a trench and made us spend the night in freezing temperatures with no food and only two bottles of water. As the war progressed, I and three young men from Gulbarga protested daily. We would tell the soldiers and officers that we had not signed up to die on their war front. We were digging trenches and they were reloading guns and throwing grenades.

Sufian said that he was promised a salary of Rs 1 lakh per month. The money was received in installments. The money was spent on food, generators for heat and renting space in the trenches to sleep. When we returned to Moscow to return to India, the army officials took India’s bank account numbers and promised to deposit the salary still pending to us. Let’s see if they do it or not.

Mohammed Ilyas Saeed Hussaini, Mohammed Sameer Ahmed and Naeem Ahmed from Gulbarga also landed at Hyderabad airport along with Sufiyan on Friday afternoon and were welcomed by their families. Two other Indians returning home include a youth from Kashmir and a youth from Kolkata.