![]() “Hi, good afternoon,” Viondi said to her in a July 21 message, viewed by Reuters. Dayana was also mentioned as a key contact by most of the recruits and relatives Reuters spoke with. He said a friend gave him the WhatsApp contact for Dayana, a Cuban woman who he said bought plane tickets for recruits. Yoan Viondi, 23, who lives a few-minute bike ride up the road from the main drag, said he knew about 100 men in Villa Maria, the district that includes La Federal, had been recruited for the Russian war effort since June. “Almost all of our friends have gone over there.” More than two dozen young men interviewed by Reuters in and around Havana spoke of the scale of the exodus.Ĭristian Hernandez, 24, broke into laughter when asked how many people had left the area around La Federal. Offers to join up, shared via Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, became the talk of the town, with Dayana named as the contact. In La Federal, word of the army work began to spread in June, according to the residents interviewed. The Cuban recruitment activity identified by Reuters began weeks after a May decree issued by President Vladimir Putin that allowed foreigners who enlisted with the military on year-long contracts to receive Russian citizenship via a fast-track process, along with their spouses, children and parents. “We are deeply concerned by reports alleging young Cubans have been deceived and recruited to fight for Russia,” the spokesperson said. Reuters was unable to contact any of the other men who joined the military, though confirmed via WhatsApp messages and photos that they had flown to Russia and two are now in Crimea.Ĭontacted for comment on the recruitment of Cubans into the Russian military, Ukrainian foreign ministry spokesperson Oleg Nikolenko said: “I can confirm that the Ukrainian embassy in Havana has reached out to the Cuban authorities on this matter.”Ī US State Department spokesperson said the US was monitoring the situation closely. “Everything is good here, but when we go there, we will be in a war zone.” “I have several friends in Ukraine, and they are in places where bombs are falling but they haven't actually been in confrontations with Ukrainians,” he added. ![]() Gonzalez said the 119 Cubans there were being trained to fight in the war, though still wasn't clear where they'd be sent. “Everyone here knew what they were coming for,” he said, smiling in military garb as he gave Reuters a digital phone tour of the camp, ringed by pine trees. When he arrived in Russia, he said, he had signed a contract to work for the military, translated into Spanish. In Alamar, an eastern Havana suburb, most of the five men signed up for non-fighting roles such as in construction, packaging of provisions and logistics.Ĭervantes' husband Gonzalez, speaking via video call from a Russian military base outside the city of Tula, south of Moscow, told Reuters he was one of 119 Cubans training there. In La Federal, for example, all nine recruits identified by Reuters signed up to fight in the war. The recruits identified by Reuters volunteered to go to Russia to work for the military after overtures on social media from a recruiter who identified herself as “Dayana”. Reuters could not establish the identities of those involved in the alleged trafficking ring and when or whether they were arrested. News of Cubans ending up in the Russian military hit headlines this month when the Havana government - a long-standing ally of Russia that says it is “not part of the war in Ukraine” - said it had arrested 17 people connected with a human-trafficking ring that lured Cubans to fight for Moscow. The Cuban government also didn't respond to queries for this article. The Kremlin and Russian defence ministry didn't respond to queries about Cubans being recruited for their military. Interviews with many of the men plus friends and relatives, together with a trove of WhatsApp messages, travel papers, photos and phone numbers they provided to corroborate their accounts, paint the most detailed picture yet of how Cubans are flocking to shore up Moscow's war machine. Eleven of the men ended up flying to Russia while the other seven got cold feet at the last moment. Reuters traced the stories of those four men, together with more than a dozen other Cubans recruited to go to Russia from districts in and around the capital Havana, ranging from a builder and a shopkeeper to a refinery worker and phone company employee. “You can count on one hand those who are left,” the 42-year-old said as she surveyed the street from a small terrace where she'd repurposed two broken toilet bowls as flower pots.
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