Cuba Busts “Human Trafficking Network” To Ship Cubans To Russia’s Frontlines

On Tuesday, the Foreign Ministry of Cuba said it has ‘neutralized’ and ‘dismantled’ a human trafficking network that operates from Russia to recruit Cubans to the Russian frontlines to fight against Ukraine. 

“Cuba faces human trafficking operations for the purpose of military recruitment,” the ministry said, adding: 

“The Ministry of the Interior detected and is working on the neutralization and dismantling of a human trafficking network that operates from Russia to incorporate Cuban citizens living there, and even some from Cuba, into the military forces participating in war operations in Ukraine. Attempts of this nature have been neutralized and criminal proceedings have been initiated against people involved in these activities.”

The ministry said, “Cuba is not part of the war in Ukraine,” and denounced “any form of human trafficking for the purpose of recruitment or mercenarism for Cuban citizens to use arms against any country.”  

Bloomberg said this comes one week after two Cuban teenagers told YouTube influencer Alain Paparazzi Cubano that Russia scammed them under the impression they would work construction jobs but instead ended up on the frontlines digging trenches and were not paid. 

“We are 19-year-old boys, we are in Russia supposedly for a contract, but everything has been a scam, a hoax,” they told YouTuber Cubano. 

“They told us that (we were going) for the construction, to fix the houses devastated by the war, trenches, rubble. Everything has been a scam,” they said.

“They haven’t paid us, we don’t have passports, we don’t have documents. They kept everything as soon as we got here,” they said.

“We have been to more than seven Russian cities, in the hospitals that we arrived they do the same tests, nobody knows about us,” they complained.

Russia’s Foreign Affairs Ministry has yet to comment on Cuba’s claim, but it comes at a period when the country has experienced a historic population decline due to low birth rates, high emigration, and losses in the war in Ukraine.