Forces

The armed forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have taken over the town of Luvungi in the Rusizi Plain of Uvira territory in South Kivu after M23 fighters vacated the area. Following the fierce battle for control among the warring parties, the Rwandan troops and their M23 allies retreated, succumbing to military and diplomatic pressure.

The Congolese army officially retook control of the town on Monday, May 12, restoring the blurry hope of civilians trapped under the violent rule of the rebels.

“We do not know yet whether this withdrawal by the Rwandan army and their M23 surrogates is in respect of various UN resolutions and international demands for the Rwandan army to withdraw from zones they occupy in the DR Congo, or it is just a tactical military withdrawal,” a senior official of the armed forces declared in Kinshasa, the country’s capital city.

Some members of the M23 group and Rwandan fighters are reportedly still present in Katogota, a neighbouring town to Luvungi. The Congolese army has stated that rebel reinforcements have arrived in Kamanyola, which is a strategic border town in South Kivu.

Reagan Mbuyi Kalonji, the spokesperson for Operations Sukola 2, a military campaign aimed at neutralising rebel groups in South Kivu, has revealed that Rwandan forces have deployed heavy weapons on the Bugarama hills. This positioning is intended to maintain their military and strategic control over Kamanyola and its surrounding areas.

The entry of Congolese troops into Luvungi signifies the culmination of troop movements observed in the Rusizi Plain and the upper plateau of South Kivu. Since Saturday, May 9, the Congolese army has been systematically occupying positions left vacant by the M23 fighters, moving from Sange to Mutarule and finally to Luvungi.

The army attributes the withdrawal of Rwandan troops and their M23 allies to “intense military and diplomatic pressure,” while the M23/AFC describes their withdrawal as a “repositioning and a gesture of goodwill” towards the peace process. 

May 4 (UPI) — The Iranian military threatened Monday to attack U.S. forces if they attempt to implement U.S. President Donald Trump‘s “Project Freedom” to bring ships trapped in the Persian Gulf out through the Strait of Hormuz.

In a statement carried by state-run broadcaster IRIB, the commander of Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, the Iranian military’s central command, warned the Americans not to approach the strait and that no vessels would be permitted to transit safely without Iran’s permission.

The statement also appeared to threaten Iran’s neighbors in the Gulf and other allies of the United States.

“Do not approach the Strait of Hormuz. Any foreign armed force, especially the aggressive American army, will be attacked if they intend to approach and enter the Strait of Hormuz. Supporters of the evil America should be careful and not do anything that will lead to irreparable regret, because America’s aggressive action to disrupt the current situation will have no result other than complicating the situation and jeopardizing the security of vessels in this area,” said central command chief, Maj. Gen. Ali Abdullahi.

“In any circumstances, any safe passage through this strait will be carried out in coordination with the Armed Forces,” added Abdullahi.

The warning came hours after Trump announced plans to use U.S. military assets deployed in the region, including guided-missile destroyers, over 100 land and sea-based aircraft, multi-domain unmanned platforms and 15,000 marines, to “guide” ships and crews “safely out of the Strait.”

U.S. Central Command confirmed in a news release posted on X that the operation to restore freedom of navigation for all commercial shipping, with the exception of vessels servicing Iran, would get underway on Monday.

“The mission, directed by the president, will support merchant vessels seeking to freely transit through the essential international trade corridor. A quarter of the world’s oil trade at sea and significant volumes of fuel and fertilizer products are transported through the strait. Our support for this defensive mission is essential to regional security and the global economy as we also maintain the naval blockade,” said U.S. CENTCOM Commander Adm. Brad Cooper.

The developments came as two ships, an oil tanker and a bulk carrier, were attacked near the strait on Sunday.

However, it was unclear how effective the operation might be with Copenhagen-headquartered BIMCO, the world’s largest international shipping association, with more than 2,000 members across 130 countries, telling the BBC that while much depended on the “risk appetite” of individual ship owners, it couldn’t see how an evacuation could work without agreement from Iran.

As many as 20,000 merchant sailors are languishing aboard 2,000 commercial ships marooned in the Persian Gulf by Iran’s effective closure of the Hormuz Strait, according to the U.N.’s International Maritime Organization, which Friday adopted a resolution condemning attacks on shipping that “threaten the welfare of seafarers, represented a grave danger to life and posed a serious risk to the marine environment.”

Israeli forces have raided the city of Nablus in the occupied West Bank, firing live ammunition that killed a 26-year-old Palestinian man and wounded four others, including children. Dozens of people have suffered tear gas inhalation.

Donald Trump says US forces are ‘like pirates’ taking over Iranian ships and cargo near the Strait of Hormuz. The US is maintaining a blockade of Iran’s ports and has seized at least three Iranian flagged vessels.

April 30 (UPI) — U.S. President Donald Trump announced plans that could see cuts to the tens of thousands of U.S. forces stationed across 20 bases in Germany.

Writing on his Truth Social platform Wednesday night, Trump said the process of scaling back the United States’ eight-decade-long military presence was already underway.

“The United States is studying and reviewing the possible reduction of troops in Germany, with a determination to be made over the next short period of time,” Trump wrote.

The announcement came two days after German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Iran was running circles around the United States in ongoing peace negotiations to end the military conflict, saying “the Americans clearly have no strategy.”

Lack of support for the war from European NATO allies has seen Trump and other senior U.S. officials repeatedly threaten to pull out of the 32-country defensive alliance, complaining that Europe was “freeriding” and never there for the United States when it needed it.

On Friday, a Pentagon leak suggested that Spain could face being suspended from NATO in retaliation for not supporting the United States in its war with Iran.

U.S. troop strength in Germany stood at 36,436, mainly army and air force personnel, stationed at 20 bases across the country in December, the latest month for which U.S. Department of Defense data is available.

That compares with around 28,000 across the rest of Europe, with the bulk of those deployed in Italy, Britain and Spain.

Active-duty personnel numbers in Germany were cut from more than 50,000 from 2013 to 2017 during President Barack Obama‘s second term, in line with a strategic shift in the United States’ defense priorities involving pivoting to the Asia-Pacific and reducing the focus on Europe.

Before that, numbers had fallen to 94,000 in the first half of the 1990s following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, and then down to 71,000.

The United States currently has more than 54,000 troops in Japan, another 23,500 in South Korea and 7,000 in Guam.

There has been a continuous significant U.S. military presence in Germany since the end of World War II, initially as an army of occupation and then as the front-line of NATO deterrence during the Cold War and more recently as a bulwark against a resurgent threat to Europe from Russia.

The United States Marine Corps on Tuesday gave us our first glimpse of its evolving plan for its ground forces to succeed in the battlefield of the future. Dubbed Ground Combat Element 2040 (GCE 2040), it calls for ensuring that Marines are not just equipped with the latest technology, but that they know how to use it, all while maintaining readiness as they integrate these new systems into their formations. While all the final details remain in flux, we are getting a general idea of some of the elements the plan will include.

A working concept of the plan was presented for the first time today during a panel at the Modern Day Marine Expo held in Washington, D.C. It builds on the vision of former Marine Commandant Gen. David Berger’s Marine Force Design 2030 initiative, according to one of the current Corps leaders working to implement GCE 2040.

“This is really an opportunity for us to describe the future of the ground combat element in the United States Marine Corps,” explained Maj. Gen. Jason Morris, the Corps’ Director of Operations, Compliance, Policies and Operations. We want to “make sure that we have a clear vision of the capabilities required to field the most lethal, survivable ground combat element in the world, and make sure that we’ve got a pathway over the next three fiscal year defense programs that we are keeping our eye on the horizon, staying adaptable and incorporating new technologies into our Marine divisions and those subordinate elements that are a part of it.”

In addition, the Marines are “also continuing to refine the force design vision, to make sure that we are ready to go for any crisis, contingency or conflict in the future,” Morris added.

To better explain the GCE 2040 concept, Morris played a video laying out some of what it entails.  The video, which has not been yet been shared online, and a document that will be published in coming weeks, focuses on how the Marine Corps approaches human-centric warfare of the future.

“GCE 2040 is about equipping the Marine, not the machine,” the video stated. “While looking ahead to integrate robotic and autonomous systems into our formations and operationalizing AI at the tactical edge through concepts like Project Dynamis [an integrated battle management system being developed by the Marines], the Marine Corps will enable combat formations to sense, make sense and act with greater speed and precision than any adversary.”

Under GCE 2040, Marines will “integrate advanced sensors and intelligence networks to find and fix the enemy across all domains” while “conducting expeditionary maneuver in contested spaces and sustaining a resilient force through all phases of the operation,” the video stated. In addition, Marines will employ “joint forceful fires and achieve the effects of mass while mitigating vulnerabilities striking adversary targets from land, air and sea,” and establish “persistent, survivable [command and control] networks that enable decision making at machine speed from the strategic level down to the squad.”

The objective “is to generate the tempo of decision and action that allows us to shape, seize and hold key maritime terrain, deter aggression and prevail decisively in any future conflict,” the video explained.

This broadly fits with the U.S. military’s push to create ever larger and faster kill webs, in order to break the enemy’s decision cycle.  

When we asked for more details, the Marines told us that the plan includes addressing the need for ground-based air defense down to the squad level. 

“The proliferation of inexpensive one-way attack drones is the most significant tactical threat we face,” the Marines told us. “While systems like the Marine Air Defense Integrated System (MADIS) and Medium-Range Intercept Capability [MRIC] are critical for a layered defense at echelon we must continue to thicken the protective layer that cover Marines at all echelons.”

You can read more about the Marines’ emerging doctrine for devolving air defense down to the individual Marine in our story here.

In a broader context, including air defense and offensive capabilities, the Marines told us “We must increase investment in multi-domain lethality and targeting systems that enable the right weapon to engage the right target at the right time to maximize the efficient use of lethal means against the enemy… The modern battlefield demands that we develop and field dispersed, AI-enabled targeting systems to create a network of sensors across the entire GCE.” 

The plan also involves evolving how Marines view technology. Autonomous systems and AI are a central focus of the new plan. The Marines state that these are not just tools, but are members of the team and the Marines are being trained to consciously accept risk with hardware rather than troops. 

Both AI and large quantities of autonomous systems will be critical to enabling future kill webs as discussed above. The USMC also says interoperability, both with other U.S. military branches and allies will be more critical than ever to achieving its aims going forward.

“The fact is that the Marine Corps is focused on the human being, individual, sailor, how we recruit and develop them, and how we build them into lethal combat teams,” proffered Maj Gen. Farrell J Sullivan, Commanding General of the Second Marine Division. “That has always been the case, and that will always be the case in the Marine Corps going forward, but modernization matters, and although we’re doing well, we have a long way to go, and as long as I’m in command of Second Marine Division, I will not be satisfied with where we are”

The GCE 2040 concept, he added, draws on lessons learned from modern combat that has evolved over the past decade into one where unmanned systems – like large drones such as Shahed-136s and smaller, first-person view (FPV) types – have become a major threat in Ukraine, the Middle East and many other places around the world.

The following image shows a U.S. Air Force E-3 Sentry AWACS destroyed in a combined Iranian missile and drone barrage during the now-paused war.

The following video shows an Iranian-backed militia using FPV drones to strike a Black Hawk helicopter and a critical air defense radar at an American base in Iraq.

The new plan envisions future combat particularly in the Pacific, where Marines would likely have to fight inside the Chinese weapons engagement zone and across wide swaths of ocean. In such a battle, they would face standoff weapons and non-kinetic effects like advanced electronic warfare far more damaging and disrupting than what U.S. forces have faced in the fight against Iran. A Pacific conflict would also strain logistics as like never before.

“When you envision the type of fight we’re preparing for, where we face a peer or near peer adversary in a high-end fight, where all domains are contested, and in some the adversary will have an advantage, that’s not the battlefield we have fought on, at least not since I’ve been in the Marine Corps,” Sullivan stated. “And we see, if you look back over the last 10 or so years, how that manifests itself in places like Ukraine. Again, I don’t want to have a bias towards that conflict and say that all the future will look exactly like that, because it won’t, but we would be criminal not to be paying attention to that.”

Clearly the USMC is painting in very broad strokes at this time as there is still a lot more work to do to hammer out the details of GCE 2040.  The Marines say they will provide more details in the next few weeks and we continue to cover this issue as they become available.

Contact the author: howard@thewarzone.com

Former enemies in Mali, including an al-Qaeda-linked group, have join forces to target military sites.

The defence minister has been killed.

Russian mercenaries backing the government have come under attack.

What are the implications of this unrest?

Presenter:

Imran Khan

Guests:

Oluwole Ojewale – Regional co-ordinator for West and Central Africa at the Institute for Security Studies

Nicolas Normand – Former French Ambassador to Mali and vice president of the Friends of Mali Association

Ovigwe Eguegu – Policy analyst at Development Reimagined, an independent African think tank, and a specialist in West Africa and Sahel geopolitics

The Department of War has released a video it says shows US forces boarding a sanctioned tanker in the Asia Pacific region as part of their efforts to disrupt vessels providing support to Iran.

Morbi, India – For seven years, Pradeep Kumar would walk into the ceramics factory in western India at 9am, load raw materials – clay, quartz and sand – into the kiln, and spend the day around the heat and dust of the furnaces.

He handled the clay at different stages, sometimes feeding it into machines, sometimes moving semi-processed pieces towards firing. The work was repetitive and demanding, with no protective gear, such as gloves and masks, against the high temperatures.

“It would be very challenging in the summers since the heat would be at its peak,” he told Al Jazeera.

But on March 15, he lost his job – not because of anything he or the company behind his factory had done, but because the United States and Israel attacked Iran, triggering another war in the Middle East and a global fuel crisis.

Barely two weeks after the war began, the ceramics company where he worked shut down due to a shortage of propane and natural gas. The company, in Morbi in Gujarat state – like all of its peers in the ceramics industry – depends on these critical ingredients.

Morbi is the centre of India’s ceramics industry that employs more than 400,000 people. More than half of these workers, like Kumar, are migrants from poorer Indian states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

Five days after Kumar lost his job, the 29-year-old took his wife and their three children back to their home in Uttar Pradesh’s Hardoi district.

“I am here until every other migrant worker who came back home with us goes back,” he told Al Jazeera.

“We don’t want to suffer like dogs, like we did during the COVID-19 pandemic,” he added, referring to the 2020 and 2021 exodus of migrant workers from India’s more industrialised western states to the poorer east, with millions of starving families, including children, walking on foot for days and sometimes weeks to reach their homes amid a coronavirus lockdown.

About 450 of 600 companies shut

With more than 600 companies, Morbi produces about 80 percent of India’s ceramics in the form of tiles, toilets, bathtubs and wash basins. But at least 450 of those companies have been forced to shut down as a standoff on the Strait of Hormuz, a lifeline for India’s gas imports, continues.

Meanwhile, the war continues, with the US on Sunday capturing an Iranian cargo vessel, even as Washington says it is willing to hold another round of talks with Tehran in Pakistan to reach a deal. Tehran has refused to commit to peace talks after its ship was seized.

The developments came as a fragile ceasefire agreed by Iran and the US after a month of fighting expires on Wednesday. But a re-escalation in hostilities has seen Iran shutting down Hormuz for traffic, disrupting global fuel supplies and raising oil prices.

“All manufacturing units in Morbi rely on propane and natural gas to fire kilns at high temperatures. While propane is supplied by private companies, natural gas is provided by the state to those with connections. Around 60 percent of manufacturers use propane because it is comparatively cheaper,” Siddharth Bopaliya, a 27-year-old third-generation manufacturer and trader in Morbi, told Al Jazeera.

Manoj Arvadiya, president of the Morbi Ceramic Manufacturers Association, said they had shut down the units till April 15, hoping that the Middle East crisis would be resolved by then.

“But even today, only around 100 units have opened, and most have still not begun the manufacturing process. For at least another 15 days, it is likely to remain the same,” he told Al Jazeera.

Arvadiya said the closure has impacted 200,000 workers, with more than a quarter of them forced to go back to their homes in other states.

India’s ceramic industry is valued at $6bn.

“About 25 percent of Morbi’s ceramics are exported to countries in the Middle East, Africa and Europe, with a net worth of $1.5bn. But exports are now delayed and, in some cases, completely halted, especially to Middle Eastern countries, due to the production slowdown over the past month,” Arvadiya told Al Jazeera.

Factories that rely on propane remain shut in Morbi. Though natural gas is mostly available, many units have not made the switch yet, as new connections are being priced at 93 rupees a kilo, while existing users receive it at about 70 rupees.

Khushiram Sapariya, a manufacturer of washbasins who relies on propane, said he will wait this month before deciding on reopening his factory.

“Because then I have to call hundreds of staff who have gone to their homes, and I want to be sure before taking their responsibility,” he said.

Returned home with ‘Morbi disease’

Among the workers who left Morbi last month is 27-year-old Ankur Singh.

“The shutdown of my company did not send me back alone, but with a Morbi disease – silicosis. I would often have fever and cough but kept ignoring it, until I came back to my hometown near Patna in Bihar and found after a check-up that it was silicosis,” he told Al Jazeera.

Silicosis is an incurable lung disease caused by inhalation of silica dust found in rock, sand, quartz and other building materials. One of the oldest occupational diseases in the world, it kills thousands of people every year.

Gujarat-based labour rights activist Chirag Chavda says the disease is “widespread in Morbi because workers are routinely exposed to fine silica dust generated during ceramic production”.

“Even those not directly involved in moulding or kiln work often inhale the particles due to poor ventilation and prolonged exposure across factory spaces,” he told Al Jazeera.

Chavda said most ceramic companies do not follow the government regulations regarding the safety of workers.

Harish Zala, 40, had worked in different ceramic companies in Morbi for two decades before he got silicosis two years ago. He said he received no help from his employer, who allegedly abused and threatened his father when he visited the company after the diagnosis.

“Every year, at least one labourer dies of silicosis in each company, while several get detected for silicosis,” Zala told Al Jazeera. “Some like me get lucky and survive, but have no choice but to quit the job immediately.”

Zala said many companies do not provide the workers with written proof of employment, such as appointment letters, salary slips, or identity cards. “This is done so that if a worker later demands labour rights or legal entitlements, they have no concrete evidence to prove that they were employed by the company.”

Chirag added that such workers are also denied social security under various Indian laws regarding salaries or pension funds, since doing so would establish proof of employment.

“As a result, even after working for years, workers are deprived of their labour rights due to a lack of evidence. This leaves employers with little to no legal accountability,” he said.

In Morbi, there are also migrants like Sushma Devi, 56, who did not go back to her home in West Bengal because the tile company her son works at has promised to continue giving them shelter and food as it waits for manufacturing to resume.

“I am here with a few more people because we did not want to spend money on travelling. Here, at least our ration is sorted,” she said as she walked with a bundle of dry twigs, wood and discarded plywood for the cooking.

“We step out to collect these every day to be able to cook our two-time meal,” said Devi. “I hope the kilns and manufacturing resume soon, but I also hope they don’t stop giving us rice and potatoes even if the kilns don’t start running anytime soon.”

Devi’s husband, Debendar, and their son Ankit live in a one-room set given to them by their company. The family has access to a common toilet for 10 families on one floor.

Kumar, meanwhile, is running out of his meagre savings and fears he could fall into a debt trap.

“Initially, we ate from whatever we had saved. But the house needed repair and we had to borrow 20,000 rupees ($214) from a relative, which we have no idea when or how we will repay,” he said, looking at the reworked roof of his brick house in Hardoi.

US Central Command has published a video said to show a guided-missile destroyer firing at an Iranian-flagged cargo ship near the Strait of Hormuz. The USS Spruance fired several rounds into the Touska’s engine room for ‘violating the US blockade’, before marines boarded it.

UN Children’s Fund calls on Israeli authorities to investigate and ‘ensure full accountability’.

The United Nations Children’s Fund says it is “outraged” after Israel killed two drivers it had contracted to deliver clean water to families in Gaza.

UNICEF said in a ⁠statement the incident occurred during routine water trucking on Friday morning at the Mansoura water filling point in northern Gaza, which supplies Gaza City. Two other people ‌were wounded in the attack.

The agency said it had suspended activities at the site and called on Israeli authorities to investigate and “ensure full accountability”.

“Humanitarian workers, essential service providers, and civilian infrastructure, including critical water facilities, must never be targeted,” it said.

It said that “the protection of civilians and those delivering life-saving assistance is an obligation under international humanitarian law”.

More than 750 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces since the US- and Qatar-brokered “ceasefire” in Gaza took effect last October, according to Palestinian health authorities.

More than 72,000 people have been killed since Israel launched its genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza on October 7, 2023, following a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel.

Meanwhile, in the occupied West Bank, a Palestinian man was shot and killed by Israeli forces in Khirbet Salama, the official Palestinian news agency WAFA reported.

Muhammad Ahmad Suwaiti, 25, was pronounced dead at the scene, WAFA said.

Israel’s military said a person carrying a knife in the illegal settlement of Negohot was killed. It did not say who was responsible.

Using the biblical term for the West Bank, the Israeli military said in a statement that “a terrorist who infiltrated the community of Negohot in Judea and Samaria was identified and eliminated in a rapid response”.

Israeli forces and settlers have killed more than 1,060 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank since the start of the Gaza war in October 2023, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

Kharkiv, Ukraine – Hushruzjon Salohidinov, 26, was working as a courier in Saint Petersburg, Russia’s second-largest city and President Vladimir Putin’s hometown.

But last year, the Tajik man and practising Muslim says he was arrested while picking up a parcel which police claimed contained money stolen from elderly women.

Salohidinov says he never interacted with the alleged criminals, but nevertheless spent nine months in the Kresty-2 pre-trial detention centre about 32km (20 miles) from the city, while a judge refused to start his trial because of the “weak evidence” against him.

But instead of releasing him after that, prison wardens threatened to place him in a cell with HIV-infected inmates who, they said, would gang-rape him – unless he “volunteered” to fight in Ukraine.

“They said, ‘Oh, you’ll put on a skirt now, you’ll be raped,’” Salohidinov, who has raven black hair and a messy full beard, told Al Jazeera at a centre for war prisoners in northeastern Ukraine, where he is now being held, having been captured in January this year by Ukrainian forces.

Using a carrot-and-stick tactic, the wardens also promised him a sign-up bonus of 2 million rubles ($26,200), a monthly salary of 200,000 rubles ($2,620) and an amnesty from all convictions.

So, in the autumn of 2025, Salohidinov signed up as he “saw no other way out”.

Officials in Kresty-2, St Petersburg’s prosecutors’ office and Russia’s Ministry of Defence did not respond to any of Al Jazeera’s requests for comment.

‘Catching migrants’

Salohidinov is just one of tens of thousands of labour migrants from Central Asia coerced by Russia to become soldiers as part of the Kremlin’s nationwide campaign, according to human rights groups, media reports and Russian officials.

Hochu Jit, a Ukrainian group that helps Russian soldiers surrender, has published verified lists of thousands of Central Asian soldiers like Salohidinov.

“They are literally sent to be killed, no one considers them soldiers that need to be saved,” the group wrote in a 2025 post on Telegram. These soldiers’ life expectancy on the front line is about four months. “Losses among them are catastrophic,” the group reported.

With its low birthrate and large oil wealth, Russia has for years been a magnet for millions of labour migrants from ex-Soviet Central Asia, especially Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.

The campaign by the Kremlin to force Central Asians to fight in Ukraine dates back to 2023 – the year after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – when police began rounding up anyone who didn’t look Slavic and charging them with real or imagined transgressions such as a lack of registration, expired or “fake” permits or blurred stamps on their documents. Sometimes, migrants are simply bused straight to conscription offices.

In 2025, Al Jazeera interviewed another Tajik man who said he had been detained with an expired work permit and was then tortured into “volunteering” while being subjected to countless xenophobic and Islamophobic slurs from his officers.

Migrants say they are abused, tortured and threatened with jail or having their entire families deported.

“The main way of recruiting as many migrants as possible is pressure on them with threats of deportation,” Alisher Ilkhamov, the Uzbekistan-born head of the London-based Central Asia Due Diligence think tank, told Al Jazeera.

Sometimes, migrants are simply duped.

Salohidinov said one serviceman in his squad was an Uzbek who “didn’t speak a word of Russian” and was fooled into “volunteering” while signing papers at a migration centre.

In their reports about “catching” migrants, officials frequently use derogatory terms about them, and also when they describe men who have obtained Russian passports but skipped registration at conscription offices. Since the Soviet era, such registration has been obligatory for all men and, since 2024, a newly naturalised Russian national can lose his citizenship if he fails to do it.

“We’ve caught 80,000 such Russian citizens, who don’t just want to go to the front line, they don’t even want to go to a conscription office,” chief prosecutor Alexander Bastrykin said in May 2025, referring to the migrants’ alleged patriotic sentiments.

He boasted that 20,000 Central Asians with Russian passports were herded to the front line in 2025.

The year before, he said 10,000 Central Asians had been sent to Ukraine.

Such remarks resonate with the Russian public that lives with “a high level of xenophobia in the stage of fear and helplessness,” Sergey Biziyukin, an exiled opposition activist from the western city of Ryazan, told Al Jazeera.

“For them, such phrases from Bastrykin are a form of sedative.”

What makes Central Asians easy targets is that they hail from police states, which depend on Moscow politically and economically, observers say.

“While the migrants are frightened into signing contracts, their motherland doesn’t really pay any attention,” Galiya Ibragimova, an Uzbekistan-born, Moldova-based regional expert, told Al Jazeera.

Despite hefty signup bonuses and relentless propaganda, the number of Russians who want to fight in Ukraine fell by at least one-fifth this year, and Moscow will strive to recruit more Central Asians, she said.

‘We’ll have our fingers broken’

After signing the contract and leaving his debit card with his sign-up bonus with his parents, Salohidinov was sent to the western city of Voronezh for three weeks of training that did little to prepare him for the war.

“We just kept running back and forth with guns,” he said.

Their drill sergeants, he says, told the conscripts that the standard-issue flak jackets, helmets, boots and flashlights were of subpar quality and urged them to pitch in a million rubles ($13,100) each for “better” gear.

The incident corroborates reports on dozens of similar cases in Russian military units.

Salohidinov was ordered to work in a kitchen – and was verbally abused and beaten for the slightest transgression.

Of 28 men in his unit, 21 were Muslims – but their ethnic Russian officers ignored their pleas not to have pork in meals, repeating a decades-old practice of ignoring religion-related dietary restrictions dating back to the Soviet army.

The commanders demonised Ukrainians, telling them “that if we surrender, we’d be tortured, have our fingers broken, maimed, get [construction] foam up our a**, have our teeth yanked out one by one, have our arms broken”, Salohidinov says.

In early January this year, the conscripts were bused to the Russia-occupied Ukrainian region of Luhansk.

Salohidinov says he was tired, frightened and disoriented – Ukrainian drones were “always” above them and a grenade explosion nearby damaged his left eardrum.

‘Glad I got captured’

On the fourth day of his service, Salohidinov was ordered to run beyond Ukrainian positions as part of Russia’s new tactic to send two or three servicemen to infiltrate the porous front line.

The mission was suicidal because the terrain was open, dotted with landmines and the bodies of dead Russian soldiers, while Ukrainians were firing machineguns and flew drones above them.

“I ran and ran and saw we were being shot at,” he said. “Me and my commander decided to surrender voluntarily instead of dying for nothing.”

They detached their assault rifles’ magazines, raised their hands and yelled they were surrendering.

What followed was “a calm feeling, beautiful”, he said. “They fed us, let us have a smoke, gave us food and water and even cake.”

Now, Salohidinov hopes to return to Tajikistan and panics at the thought of being made part of a prisoner swap – these have taken place several times each year – and returning to Russia because he would be sent back to the front line.

Tajikistan and other Central Asian nations have never endorsed Russia’s war in Ukraine, but nor have they openly criticised it.

In August 2025, Tajikistan’s Prosecutor General Habibullo Vohidzoda declared that no Tajik national would be charged for fighting in Ukraine.

So, what Salohidinov needs right now is an extradition request.

“I’m even glad that I got captured, because I’m not fighting anyone now, not risking anything,” he said. “I’ll even say thanks to Ukraine for taking me prisoner.”

The Tajik embassy in Kyiv did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.

Video shows Israeli forces firing stun grenades towards journalists who were reporting on the army’s raid of Nablus. Palestinian media outlets say soldiers accompanied an Israeli settler incursion to Joseph’s Tomb, in Area A of the occupied West Bank, under full PA control.

The killings mark the fourth US deadly strike in the past four days on vessels in the eastern Pacific Ocean.

The US military has killed four more people in its fourth deadly attack on vessels in the eastern Pacific Ocean over the past four days.

US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) announced the attack in a social media post on Tuesday, alongside a video that showed a stationary boat with outboard engines being hit by a missile and exploding into a huge ball of flames.

SOUTHCOM, which is responsible for US military operations in Latin America and the Caribbean, claimed that the four people killed were “narco-terrorists”, but provided no evidence to support its claims.

Justification for the lethal attack, according to SOUTHCOM, was due to intelligence – details of which were not provided – that confirmed that “the vessel was transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the eastern Pacific and was engaged in narco-trafficking operations”.

The latest killing of people on board vessels in international waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean and Caribbean brings the overall death toll to at least 175 since early September, when US President Donald Trump ordered the attacks to stop what the White House claims are Latin American cartels transporting drugs to the US.

Tuesday’s killings came after two people were killed in a US strike on Monday, and five people were killed in two separate strikes on Saturday, also in the eastern Pacific.

The Associated Press news agency reported that the US coastguard has suspended a search for one survivor from the two attacks reported on Saturday.

International legal experts and rights groups say the US military campaign amounts to “extrajudicial killings” in international waters and that the attacks have targeted civilian fishing boats.

Legal experts have said that if some vessels were involved in drug trafficking, those on board should face the law, rather than deadly attacks.

Critics have also questioned the effectiveness of the US military operation in part because the fentanyl behind many fatal overdoses in the US, which Trump has used to justify his campaign, is typically trafficked to the US over land from Mexico, where it is produced with chemicals imported from China and India.