Cuba says it’s dismantling human trafficking ring sending Cubans to fight for Russia in Ukraine

Following dramatic accounts by alleged victims on social media, Cuban authorities said they are working to dismantle a human trafficking network coercing Cubans to join the Russian military to fight against Ukraine, according to Cuba’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The government Sunday said its Ministry of the Interior detected the network and was working to “neutralize” it, adding that “criminal proceedings have been initiated against those involved in these activities.” The statement does not provide any details on the cases but said that the ring had targeted Cubans residing in Russia and living on the island.

The announcement came after two 19-year-old Cubans, identified as Andorf Antonio Velázquez García, from Havana, and Alex Rolando Vega Díaz, from Santa Clara, told a Cuban influencer last week that, desperate to leave the island, they had been scammed and lured to Russia under false pretenses, ending up sleeping in a trench in Ukraine along Russian forces.

They said that “friends” in Cuba provided them with the contact of a Cuban woman who offered them a contract to do construction work in Russia. Members of the ring, which included at least two other Russian women, they said, sent them a contract in Russian they were told not to translate and bought them a ticket to fly from Varadero to Moscow. Cubans do not need a visa to travel to Russia.

“I couldn’t stand it in Cuba, that’s why I was dying to leave; I had to help my family some way,” Velázquez García told Alain Lambert Sánchez, known in social media as Alain Paparazzi Cubano, a Cuban influencer who now lives in Miami.

The young men told Lambert that once in Russia, a Russian woman seized their passports, and they took a citizenship test they thought was used to get fake Russian documents on their behalf. They never got the money promised. Instead, they ended up in a unit in Ryazan, a city in Central Russia, where they passed military training. They were later sent to a place in Ukraine they could not locate but described as a forest 60 miles from the front lines When they got sick, they were taken to several hospitals and later returned to the Ryazan unit.