Ukraine urged Global South countries on Friday to do more to prevent their citizens from being recruited to fight for Russia in its war on Ukraine, presenting to the public what it said were eight prisoners of war from such countries.
Those people included five men from Nepal, and one each from Cuba, Somalia and Sierra Leone, according to Petro Yatsenko, a representative at the Ukrainian government’s Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War.
“By showing these citizens who are captured, we are saying that perhaps it is necessary to use more radical, more effective steps so that tens, hundreds of these people won’t be conned by agitators,” he told reporters in Kyiv.
“If we take a country with a low level of income per population, there is a high probability that some citizens of that country may be recruited by Russia and used as storm-troopers, cannon fodder,” Yatsenko said.
Last week, India said it uncovered a major trafficking network which it said lured young men to take jobs in Russia before sending them to the front. In December, Nepal said it asked Moscow not to recruit its citizens into the Russian army and to send back any Nepali soldier serving there.
“As long as they aren’t decreed by a court to be mercenaries, we are treating them in the same way we are treating other prisoners of war,” Yatsenko added. He said the number of foreigners fighting for Russia appeared to have risen as the flow from Russian prisons dropped.
Russian response
French President Emmanuel Macron should stop sending weapons to Kiev and propose a ceasefire agreement to parties to the Middle East conflict, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said. Commenting on the latest initiative by the French leader who said he would ask Russia to observe a ceasefire in Ukraine during the Paris Olympics, the Russian diplomat said: “I come forward with a proposal in response to Macron’s: Stop supplying weapons being used to kill (civilians) and also stop sponsoring terrorism.” “I also suggest that Macron come up with a similar proposal to the parties to the Middle East conflict. A lot probably depends on what France says there,” Zakharova maintained. — TASS
