More than 200 Cuban men have been recruited to fight as mercenaries with the Russian Army in Ukraine, according to research by the Ukrainian ‘hacktivist’ group, Cyber Resistance. 

Since May, recruitment has been directed by Major Anton Valentinovich Perevozchikov. He is a 46-year-old commander of the 488th Motorized Rifle Regiment, a unit largely wiped out a year ago in Kharkiv Region.

The hiring of foreign mercenaries reflects a desperation by the Kremlin to avoid repeating the disastrous national draft last fall. In the space of several weeks, an estimated 1 million Russian men left the country. Next March, Russia holds presidential elections.

From the Cuban side, the recruitment of Cubans speaks to the island nation’s economic crisis, one of the deepest since the communist revolution of 1959. Last year, a record 300,000 Cuban emigrated to the America, largely through Mexico.

For Cuban men, money is the big lure. Russian Army recruiters offer monthly salaries of $2,000 — something like ten times the average at Havana. Unlike the Cuban military intervention between 1975 and 1991 in Angola, when Cuba sent up to 55,000 troops to prop up Angola’s Marxist regime, today’s ‘internationalists’ are not trained soldiers. Instead, passports and social media accounts indicate they are largely casual laborers looking for a financial break during economic hard times.

Havana’s foreign ministry has denounced the recruitment as “human trafficking.” Last week, 17 people were arrested in Cuba for flying Cubans to Moscow or Minsk for mercenary work. The head of Cuba’s criminal investigation department, César Rodriguez, told a state-run news channel, Canal Caribe, that recruiters targeted men with “anti-social behavior and criminal records.” The idea of “mercenarism” is a big taboo in Cuba, where the government often accuses its opponents of working for money.

In a country where state controls are omnipresent, though, clues suggest Cuban military involvement. In mid-May, Cuba’s military attaché in Belarus, Mónica Gómez, signed a series of military agreements with her counterparts in Minsk.

According to a Belarus military officer’s posting on X, then called Twitter, the agreements focused on “on the training of Cuban military personnel in the Republic of Belarus” and the “promotion of military cooperation between the two countries.” Nominally independent, Belarus has a satellite relationship with Russia.

On June 28, only four days after facing down the mutiny by Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, Russia’s defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, gave a red carpet welcome to his Cuban counterpart, Minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, General  Alvaro Lopez Miera.

“Cuba has always been and continues to be Russia’s key ally in the region,” Mr. Shoigu said on camera. Referring to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, he said: “Our Cuban friends have confirmed their attitude toward our country by demonstrating a complete understanding of the goals of the special military operation in Ukraine.”

Looking ahead, the Russian said: “The composition of your large delegation testifies to Cuba’s readiness to discuss a wide range of issues in the military and military-technical sphere. I propose to discuss in detail all the existing and promising cooperation projects in the military field.”

The Cuban general replied: “The expansion of NATO to Russia’s borders… forced Russia to launch a special military operation. In this context, Russia plays a leading role in the fight against fascism.” President Putin gave General Lopez Miera Russia’s Order of Friendship medal.

While Cuba’s foreign ministry may have intervened to stop recruitment of Cuban men to fight alongside Russians in Ukraine, the two nations bond ever more tightly in face of Western isolation. Last November, Cuba’s president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, met with Mr. Putin in Moscow. In June, Prime Minister Manuel Marrero capped an 11-day trip to Russia with a meeting with Mr. Putin. On July 1, Aeroflot restored direct flights between Moscow and Havana.

On the economic front, Cuba took the unprecedented steps in May of allowing Russian investors to repatriate profits in hard currency and Russian companies to lease land for 30 years. The announcements were made by the chairman of the Russia-Cuba Business Council, Boris Titov, who led a delegation of 50 Russian companies to Havana. 

Mr. Titov, who is Mr. Putin’s commissioner for entrepreneurs’ rights, told a packed forum at Havana’s Hotel Nacional the Cubans “are giving us preferential treatment…they are ready to provide special conditions for Russian businessmen.” Last year, bilateral trade hit $450 million, three times that of 2021, Russia´s trade representative in Cuba, Sergei Baldin, told Reuters.

In a separate announcement, Russia’s deputy prime minister, Dmitry Chernyshenko, told Russian investors at Havana that the Cuban government will also allow Russian banks to open subsidiaries to finance Russian businesses on the island. He told Tass: “We intend to do everything possible to help the Cuban economy reach a decent level.”

Spain-based Prisoners Defenders charges that economic cooperation expanded this summer to “renting” Cuban soldiers to Russia. The NGO writes:  “You only have to have the Cuban Law to know that no Cuban soldier can leave the island and enter said conflict without having been sent by his government with the ‘official’ passport. That is, they are soldiers ‘rented’ to Russia by the Cuban government, since otherwise they cannot leave the island by law.”

Ukraine’s Cyber Resistance says they got the information by hacking into the email account of Major Perevozchikov. The hacker group posted reams of passport photos, landing cards, and template military service contracts. Ages of recruits range between 18 and 68, and included one set of twins. Traveling in groups of 10 to 30 men, the Cubans flew into Moscow’s Sheremeyetevo Airport. For “purpose of visit,” the men marked on their landing cards “tourism.”

The digital dump includes photos of  the head recruiter. Major Perevozchikov ran the operation out of a Western Military District office on 28 Komintern Street, at Tula. Contacted last week by the Intercept, Major Perevozchikov, “did not deny his role in recruiting the Cubans,” and sent instead “an expletive-laced reply” to the Intercept condemning NATO and averring, “Russia will win.”

From the Ukrainian side, 30 members of Ukraine’s parliament, sent a statement last week to the Assembly of the Resistance, a Miami-based coalition of exile organizations, expressing concern “about the presence and participation of forces and mercenaries loyal to the dictatorship in the Republic of Cuba in the genocidal invasion of the territory of Ukraine.” The parliamentarians said: “We are watching how the regime in Havana supports Russian aggression in the international diplomatic arena.”

To dissuade Cubans from falling for recruitment pitches, the Assembly posted a Spanish-subtitled video recorded Wednesday in the Donbas by a platoon of Ukrainian soldiers in full battle gear. “Cubans: do not let yourselves be fooled, as in the Soviet era,” one soldier appeals in the video. “Do not allow [the Russians] make you part of the war and genocide against Ukraine.”