Who’s Recruiting Cubans To Battle In Ukraine? A Journey Agent In Provincial Russia For One.

The Cubans – two 19-year-olds recognized as Alex Vega and Andorf Velasquez – recounted how they ended up wounded in battle alongside Russian forces in Ukraine.

Speaking from what they stated was a navy hospital in Russia’s Kaliningrad area, the 2 stated they’d traveled to Russia “to make some money,” a visit they stated was organized and paid for up entrance, by a trio of girls: two Russian, one Cuban.

When they arrived in Moscow, the pair instructed a well-liked Cuban video blogger, they had been compelled to signal a Russian-language contract they didn’t perceive and had been then despatched to the provincial metropolis of Ryazan, the place they had been housed in a faculty dormitory.

They ended up on the entrance traces in Ukraine, digging ditches — and finally being wounded, they said in the August 2023 video.

Nearly 44 months into its all-out assault on Ukraine, Russia has deployed almost 700,000 males to wage its conflict, in accordance with Ukrainian and Western estimates. And Moscow has forged its internet huge to maintain up the move of personnel: some 12,000 North Koreans are believed to be preventing alongside Russian forces.

First amongst different nationalities? Cubans.

Ukrainian intelligence estimates a number of thousand Cubans have been recruited, lots of them tricked into preventing alongside Russian items. An internal US State Department cable seen by Reuters put the variety of Cubans preventing in Ukraine round 5,000, and the Cuban authorities, US officers allege, is actively supporting them.

According to Ukrainian officers who traveled to Washington final month to transient congressional leaders, no less than 20,000 Cubans in whole are “awaiting travel and deployment” to Russia.

Hundreds, presumably hundreds, of Cubans might been recruited by a 41-year-old, multi-lingual journey agent from Ryazan: greater than 3,000 foreigners, in truth, according to a letter written by her lawyer and obtained exclusively by Systema, RFE/RL’s Russian investigative unit.

And she wasn’t alone.

‘Cubans In Moscow’

Since the outset of the Russian invasion, a patchwork community of recruitment schemes has emerged, typically with formal state approval, typically with much less official backing. Private mercenary corporations like Wagner Group, for instance, constructed their very own authorised recruiting pipeline, focusing on Russian jail inmates.

The particulars of how Vegas and Velasquez received to Ukraine are murky; neither might be situated for additional remark.

However, their description of the journey shares a number of particulars overlapping the scheme orchestrated by Yelena Smirnova, a Russian girl who ran her personal journey company in Ryazan, a metropolis about 200 kilometers southeast of Moscow.

Their story additionally overlaps with that of Frank Manfuga, a 36-year-old Cuban man who was captured by Ukrainian troops in March 2024, three months after becoming a member of the Russian navy. In interviews with Schemes, the investigative unit of RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service, he claimed he was tricked into boarding a Russia-bound aircraft with the promise of a job in development.

Sometime in early 2023, Smirnova started posting Spanish-language job bulletins on Facebook and the Russian equal, VK, in a Spanish-language group known as “Cubans in Moscow.”

The job postings, which have since been deleted, offered a signing bonus, a monthly salary of around 200,000 rubles ($2,000), and eventually Russian citizenship. The amounts were vastly higher than average wages in Cuba.

Under phrases of the contracts, detailed within the protection lawyer’s letter obtained by Systema, Smirnova would entrance the prices for a recruit’s journey from Havana to Moscow, lodging in Russia, and associated bills.

After arriving in Russia, the individual would then reimburse her for these bills after signing a contract. Smirnova or her co-workers would make a replica of the individual’s financial institution card and withdraw an preliminary cost from it—to cowl their bills.

A May 2023 article within the newspaper Ryazanskiye Vedomosti detailed how a gaggle of recent recruits, from Russia in addition to Cuba, had signed new contracts. “The main motivation is to help our Motherland in these difficult times for her, and the financial component is a nice bonus,” the paper quoted an area navy recruiter as saying.

‘Twisting The Facts’

By the summer season of 2023, nonetheless, a gaggle of round a dozen Cuban recruits started to refuse to make funds to Smirnova. Some months later, several Cubans claimed in media interviews that she had skimmed cash from their financial institution accounts. Two formal complaints had been filed with police on April 25, 2024, and a 3rd the next day.

That similar month, Smirnova was arrested, charged with theft, and jailed.

In a letter to Russia’s human rights commissioner, Smirnova’s protection lawyer Sergei Poselyagin protested her consumer’s prosecution, and detention, saying investigators had been “twisting the facts” and she or he was the sufferer of a conspiracy. He requested that Smirnova be granted early launch in alternate for signing a Defense Ministry contract, to function a translator in a alerts intelligence unit.

The letter was supplied to Systema from Ukrainian lawmaker Marian Zablotskiy, who was amongst those that traveled to Washington final month. He stated he obtained the letter from sources he didn’t establish.

In the letter, dated October 23, 2024, Poselyagin wrote that Smirnova has been concerned within the recruitment of greater than 3,000 Cubans and different foreigners. He wrote that Smirnova instructed all of the recruits that she can be recouping her up-front funds from their financial institution accounts after a contract was signed.

He claimed the 11 individuals who filed complaints had been pressured to take action by regulation enforcement officers.

Poselyagin didn’t reply to Systema’s inquiries despatched through e-mail.

Three of the individuals who signed complaints towards Smirnova are Cuban residents, in accordance with data from a leaked database of police reviews that was reviewed by Systema.

One of them, recognized as Rene Fleitas, has a Facebook account, the place he posted {a photograph} on March 11, 2025, displaying him standing in Moscow with the Kremlin within the background.

The man didn’t reply to messages despatched to him through Facebook. However, a relative recognized as Fleitas’s cousin instructed Systema through Facebook message, complained that Fleitas had been deceived, and ended up on the battlefield. The cousin stated Fleitas was now lacking.

Soap Flowers

In the Cubans’ police complaints towards Smirnova, one other girl named Olga Shilyayeva was additionally named as alleged co-conspirator. Shilyayeva, a 41-year-old, part-time hairdresser whose husband serves in a navy aviation upkeep brigade, labored carefully with Smirnova dealing with contracts for international recruits.

According to a mutual acquaintance, who spoke to Systema on situation her identify be withheld, Smirnova and Shilyayeva had been seen consistently on the Ryazan recruitment heart, formalizing contracts for between 30 and 40 individuals a day.

A Cuban girl who labored as a nanny for Smirnova, caring for her three youngsters, additionally assisted, serving to with the paperwork, buying tickets, and assembly arriving recruits.

Smirnova, who couldn’t be reached for remark, was launched from pre-trial detention earlier this yr. Shilyayeva additionally declined to remark when contacted by Systema through her social media accounts.

However, one other acquaintance of the ladies instructed Systema each had been despatched to Ukraine someday within the spring of 2025. Тhey had been at the moment serving in a unit made up primarily of former jail inmates, hooked up to a brigade of Russia’s 1st Tank Army, the individual stated.

Some of the Cubans, after they arrived in Russia, didn’t know they had been going to conflict, in accordance with the mutual acquaintance; they believed they had been going to work on development websites or comparable jobs.

The acquaintance additionally pinned the lion’s share of the blame for defrauding the Cubans on a 37-year-old Cuban girl who lives in Russia named Dayana Diaz.

Diaz’s VK web page contains a {photograph} of her carrying a hat with the letter V and the Russian flag on it, together with a Cuban flag patch on her sleeve. A Telegram account she runs advertises bouquets made out of cleaning soap elaborately carved within the form of flowers, amongst different issues.

Diaz’s cellphone quantity is featured within the Facebook and VK recruitment adverts posted by Smirnova. In the “Cubans in Moscow” Facebook group, some people accuse her of deceiving their acquaintances. The two males who appeared within the 2023 YouTube video additionally point out a girl named Dayana.

Systema contacted Diaz through her Telegram account and requested if she helps foreigners discover employment and signal navy contracts.

“No,” Diaz replied.

Tour Under Cover

It’s unclear to what extent the recruitment scheme allegedly overseen by Smirnova operated with official approval. Systema found no evidence pointing to direct ties between her or her alleged co-conspirators and intelligence agencies or the military, other than Shilyayeva’s enlisted husband.

However, obtaining visas and travel permits for scores, if not hundreds, of Cubans and other foreigners would have drawn scrutiny from the Foreign Ministry, the Interior Ministry, or other government agencies.
Zablotskiy, the Ukrainian lawmaker, said he believed Smirnova’s operation was conducted with the knowledge of the FSB or GRU, two of Russia’s principal intelligence agencies.

“Tour operators have historically served as a canopy for [Russia] for logistics,” he instructed Systema. “Specifically, in the case of Cuba, they are not essential. We see recruitment by FSB and GRU agents, whose identities are reliably known.”

“The indisputable fact that considered one of them additionally had a tour operator [as part of the scheme] is under no circumstances stunning,” he stated.

A spokeswoman for Russia’s Foreign Ministry directed questions despatched by Systema to the Defense Ministry, which didn’t reply to e-mails.

In Havana, Cuba’s Foreign Ministrydisputed US allegations that its troops had been preventing in Ukraine

“Cuba just isn’t a part of the armed battle in Ukraine, nor does it take part with navy personnel there, or in every other nation,” it said in a statement October 11.

The ministry said it did not know how many nationals were involved on either side of the conflict, but said it had “a follow of zero tolerance for mercenaries, trafficking in individuals and the participation of its nationals in any armed confrontation out of the country.”

RFE/RL Senior International Correspondent Mike Eckel contributed to this report.