20 thousand natives of Central Asian countries, who had obtained Russian citizenship have joined the Russian army in its war against Ukraine, said the chief of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation Alexander Bastrykin during the St. Petersburg International Legal Forum (SPILF).
"Our military investigative department has been authorized by me to conduct regular raids in places where migrants work and live. We are catching the citizens of the Russian Federation - who have received citizenship, the previously foreigners - but have not conscripted for military service, although they are obliged to do so by the Constitution. We have already caught 80 thousand of these, who do not want to go to the front lines, they do not even want to go to the military enlistment office. We caught 80 thousand, put them on military registration and already 20 thousand "fresh" citizens of Russia, who for some reason prefer Russia to living in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, are on the front lines," Bastrykin said on May 19, speaking at a session dedicated to migration-related regulation.
In October 2023, Alexander Bastrykin proposed to recruit migrants who have received a Russian passport in the war against Ukraine, and in case of refusal, to strip them of citizenship.
While in June 2024, Bastrykin said that Russia had "caught" more than 30,000 people who had recently received a Russian passport and put them on military registration. About 10,000 of them, according to him, were sent to the "military special operation" zone to "dig trenches and build fortifications."
In July 2024, the State Duma of the Russian Federation passed a law requiring foreigners to register for military service simultaneously with receiving a Russian passport, in case of failure to do so, they could be stripped of their citizenship. In August, the bill has been signed into law by the Russian president Vladimir Putin.
In April 2025, the Ukrainian state project "I Want to Live", created to help Russian soldiers voluntarily surrender, published a list of 1,110 citizens of Uzbekistan who had signed a contract with the Russian Armed Forces and participated in the invasion of Ukraine. Taking into account the people from Uzbekistan who have Russian citizenship, the total number of Uzbeks involved in the war could reach several thousand, the project added. The Uzbek Foreign Ministry later reported that the country's secret services had begun checking this information.
