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Thousands of Nepalis were paid to join Russia’s war against Ukraine. Now they’re haunted by trauma and debt
- Nepali fighters were lured by promises of higher pay and a better life in Russia, while some were tricked into the war zone by unscrupulous agents
- The trafficking of soldiers spotlights Nepal’s high youth unemployment and the perils of social media in glamorising Russian army life
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On a freezing winter night in January, Khim Bahadur Thapa and two other Nepalis decided to risk their lives and flee the occupied Ukrainian city of Bakhmut to the Russian border, grasping at a small window of opportunity to return home alive.
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The men – who were paid several hundred US dollars a month to fight for Russia – had decided they were likely to die unless they fled Bakhmut, a city pulverised by war.
They trudged through two-feet-deep snow from Bakhmut to the Russian border, where a prearranged car from an “agent” picked them up bound for Moscow 800km away.
The trio eventually secured a travel document from Nepal’s embassy in the Russian capital and landed in Kathmandu in mid-January, ending a three-month ordeal fighting someone else’s war, thousands of kilometres from home.
The escape cost Thapa 600,000 rupees (US$4,500), money he did not have and had to borrow from home.
He had already paid a hefty sum to similar agents months earlier, to transport him along a trafficking trail that has been followed by thousands of Nepalis who have joined Russia’s invasion of Ukraine since it began in February 2022.
“I had so many hopes when going to Russia, but it didn’t turn out to be anything like I thought,” Thapa, 35, said. “I lost so much money, but I’m happy to come back alive.”
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