A Cuban teenager unwittingly found himself on the front lines of the war in Ukraine after accepting a job offer he received on WhatsApp to do “construction work” for the Russian military, according to Time magazine.
Alex Vegas Díaz, 19, and a friend were taken to a military base, outfitted with weapons, and then sent to fight, according to Time, which reviewed social media footage posted by Vegas Díaz.
In one of the videos, dated August 31, which went viral, Vegas Díaz can be seen in a Russian hospital recovering from an unspecified illness. According to Time, he said he was due to be sent back to the front upon recovery.
From his hospital bed, he pleaded to “help get us out of here,” adding: “What is happening in Ukraine is ugly—to see people with their heads open before you, to see how people are killed, feel the bombs falling next to you.”
According to Time, Vegas Díaz said in one video: “There are dead Cubans, there are missing Cubans, and this is not going to end until the war is over.”
He added: “We know that Cuba is aware and our advice to Cubans is not to come here. This is the craziest thing. Crazy. Don’t do it.”
Time reported that Vegas Díaz became part of a large operation that openly recruited hundreds of Cubans to join the Russian army to fight in Ukraine.
According to the magazine, the recruitment effort involved adverts for job contracts with the Ministry of Defence in Russia that began to appear on Cuban Facebook groups in June.
It said that recruits were offered 204,000 rubles, or $2,120 US dollars, to sign up.
Average monthly salaries in Cuba are dramatically lower, making it an enticing prospect.
Time reviewed the job contracts, which it said required a one-year commitment, but came with an enlistment fee and a payout for the families of recruits if they are killed in action.
The exact number of Cubans recruited through this initiative remains uncertain, with estimates provided to Time ranging from hundreds to more than a thousand
Though Cuba’s foreign ministry described the recruitment effort as a “human trafficking network,” four Cuba experts and former US officials expressed skepticism to Time
They said that the Cuban government, a long-standing ally of Russia, may be using such language to maintain the appearance of a neutral stance in the Ukraine conflict, Time reported.
Regardless of the nature or provenance of the recruitment drive, there is concern in the US that recruits such as Vegas Díaz may have been deceived into accepting job offers.
The State Department said in a statement provided to Time that “we are deeply concerned that young Cubans may have been deceived and recruited to fight for Russia in its brutal full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and we continue to monitor this situation closely.”
The US State Department did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.
Putin is not a Comrade and is just as bad if not worse than Bush. This is a war to secure resources, not a war to denazify Ukraine.
It feels weird to compare Putin to bush given the probable genocide going on. Murdering whole villages, raping babies, shipping kids back to Russia to brainwash them, forcing fake elections to annex territory, purposefully causing international crisis by limiting the export of food, and purposefully blowing up dams. Bush and Putin are incomparable.
Bush and Cheney deserves prison. Putin and his whole government deserve to see the world upside down for a brief time.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmudiyah_rape_and_killings
It’s quite disingenuous to compare the worst atrocities committed by individuals, which were then tried and sentenced, to Russia’s standard operation procedure and doctrine.
We used rape and sexual assault as an official interrogation method. The general in charge of Abu Ghraib, who as someone who would be in charge of those things is obviously a horrible person, was absolutely thrown under the bus by the Bush Administration to try and limit the explicitness that this was official US policy, but somewhat unsuccessfully. She was just a scapegoat.
In Afghanistan it was official policy that US soldiers had to guard the Northern Alliance warlords that we outsourced large parts of the war too as they would rape small boys. If they tried to interfere, they were officially reprimanded.
The US explicitly has used rape and sexual assault as part of its official doctrine.
This is just one of many examples. If it wasn’t the president directly raping children then he definitely enabled it.
Here’s what happened to the American soldiers who did that:
Russian soldiers in Ukraine are encouraged to commit rape. US soldiers in Iraq were sentenced to lengthy prison terms for committing rape.
The Iraq war was stupid shit based on lies. But the conduct of US soldiers and Russian soldiers is really freakin’ different.
It’s even worse: putin himself awarded the war criminals with medals, it’s just utter shameless https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/ukraine-war-putin-medals-bucha-b2060568.html
💀
No it is one of a handful of examples whereas Russia has NEVER abandoned rape as a war tactic.
Ok how many thousands of examples can you come up with in the US invasion of Iraq perpetrated by Americans. There are reports of thousands of rapes as Russia still utilizes rape as a war tactic and always have.
So not that much different from what America did in Iraq, got it!
Less rape, genocide and outright theft of appliances in America’s invasion but yeah both were objectively fought to steal resources.
Maybe we need to stop assuming we’re in a position to say what other people deserve
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Sure bub
Man I fuckin hate bush but you’re too high on the borscht if you think he’s comparable to Putin.
Manufacturing a war based on deceiving your population with hyper patriotic propaganda and out right lies is Manufacturing a war based on deceiving your population with hyper patriotic propaganda and out right lies 🤷♂️
Yeah, so far Bush is responsible for far more death.
I’m not sure what metric you would use to quantify how bad a person is, but the number of people they are responsible for killing seems like an okay one.
They are both fucking evil, and should be lined up against a wall.
Stop trying to rehabilitate Bush, and justifying the horror of the Iraq war. You don’t need to do that to criticize Putin.
Bruh, never in my wildest dreams did I think comparing Bush to Putin in 2023 could be construed as me trying to rehabilitate bush’s image, I’m literally 💀Lemmy be wilding out, I love it here.
My comment wasn’t a reply to you, it was a reply to @Fantomas@lemmy.world (Unless that account is an alt of yours, and you forgot to change accounts before replying.)
However, the comment I responded to was this:
Bush is easily responsible for more deaths. If you have a better metric for evil, I’d love to hear it.
Oh shit just realized that, I’m high as cake balls on some home made edibles I underestimated. My bad.
Goddamn, I’m envious. I was getting stoned every day to the point that it wasn’t affecting me anymore. So I went cold turkey. It’s been 28 days so far.
Dry vape, then combine with oil at 175F for 4 hours, filter, bake = super dank.
How about deaths per month? This war has “only” gone on for 16 months and probably there are already 500.000 dead and 1.5 million wounded…and that’s not counting at least 20.000 dead civilians (>10% of inhabitants) just in Mariupol, at least 500.000 kidnapped children and at least 8 million refugees. If this war drags on for 20 years like Iraq at this intensity, are you sure it won’t be 10 times worse?
Okay… But why should you use deaths per month instead of overall deaths?
Because we don’t know how long this war is going to last and you’re making comparisons with a short war+long counterinsurgency that ended…so it’s hard to say more died in Iraq when you don’t know how many are going to die plus refugees plus kidnappings in this.
It seems to me at least that this is a war to eradicate a people as evidenced by Russia targeting schools, abducting children and brutally killing civilians. Make no mistake, Putin intends to end Ukraine not just by annexing territory, but by erasing their entire history and cultural identity.