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A Cuban mercenary has issued a warning to his fellow countrymen against fighting for Russia in Ukraine.
Wearing the Russian flag, a man who remains unidentified is seen speaking with a Cuban accent in Spanish about the current state of affairs on the front lines. According to him, Cuban soldiers are not receiving the payment that was guaranteed to them.
‘This is a message for all the Cuban soldiers who are here in Ukraine,’ he said.
‘I’ve been here in the war for a while now and we are not being paid. Many of my friends have already been killed in combat and they don’t pay us what they said they would.’
Russia has recruited soldiers desperate to escape the Communist island by luring them with promises of salaries of $2,000 a month. To put things into perspective, the monthly average wage in Cuba is less than $20.
However, the Cuban soldier in Ukraine claimed: ‘There are a lot of things they are doing wrong and I want to say that the salary that they are paying us is not what is supposed to be.
‘Many of my friends died at the front line with no documentation, they don’t want to give us documentation.
‘They continue to scam us and lie to us and we keep dying and nobody does anything.’
The soldier then spoke directly to those in his position, saying: ‘For all my fellow Cubans who are in combat like me: don’t let them keep lying to you. Don’t take up arms. Don’t lose your lives, brothers, I’m telling you. Put down the weapons. We are dying and not getting paid.’
The soldier then appeared to address the risk he is likely taking by filming the video.
He said: ‘I would rather be sent to Moscow than lose my life and have my family receive no money.’
Cuba and Russia are political allies and Cubans do not require a visa to travel to Russia. Many go there to study or to work.
Last year, Cuban officials arrested 17 people in connection with what they described as a network to recruit Cuban nationals to fight for Russia in Ukraine.
In May 2023, a newspaper in the Russian region of Ryazan, about 100 miles southeast of Moscow, reported from a military enlistment office there that ‘several citizens of the Cuba Republic’ signed up to join the army.
The Ryazanskiye Vedomosti newspaper quoted some Cubans as saying they were there to help Russia ‘complete tasks in the special military operation zone.’ It also said ‘some of them in the future would like to become Russian citizens.’
In Havana, prosecutor José Luis Reyes told state TV that suspects are being investigated for crimes, including being a mercenary or recruiting mercenaries, and could face sentences of up to 30 years or life in prison, or even the death penalty.
Marilin Vinent, 60, said that her son Dannys Castillo, 27, is one of the Cubans recruited in Russia.
From her home in Havana last September, she said her son and other Cubans traveled at the end of July to Russia after being promised work in a construction job.
‘They were all deceived,’ she said.
Vinent showed reporters photos of her son in her cellphone, including some of him dressed in military fatigues.
She said that her son told her he had accepted the offer to go to Russia because he wanted to economically help the family, as the island is suffering an economic crisis, with people facing shortages of some products.
‘I don’t know if my son is alive. We don’t know anything,’ she said. ‘What I would like is to talk to him.’
Cuban seamstress Yamidely Cervantes told Reuters her 49-year-old husband Enrique Gonzalez, a struggling bricklayer, left their home in the small town of La Federal on July 19, 2023, to fight for the Russian army in Ukraine.
Days later, he wired her part of his signing-on bonus of about 200,000 rubles ($2,040) which she received in Cuban pesos, Cervantes told Reuters.
That represents a windfall on the economically stricken communist-run island. It’s more than 100 times the average monthly state salary of 4,209 pesos ($17 in the informal market), according to the national statistics office.
Cervantes’ 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. When he arrived in Russia, he said, he had signed a contract to work for the military, translated into Spanish.
‘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. ‘They came for the war.’
The US State Department has said it’s aware of the reports.
‘We are deeply concerned that young Cubans may have been deceived and recruited to fight for Russia in its brutal full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and we continue to monitor this situation closely,’ it said.
Russian law allows foreign nationals to enlist in its army, after signing a contract with the Defense Ministry.
Since September 2022, foreigners who have served in the Russian army for at least one year are allowed to apply for Russian citizenship in a simplified procedure, without obtaining a residency permit first.
