Krishna Bahadur Shai was lured to Russia with the promise of a better life.
Instead, he found himself used as cannon fodder in Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine.
Everything went wrong on a biting cold day in December, when he was walking through a forest in Rostov-on-Don in southern Russia.
WARNING: Readers might find some of the details in this story distressing.
It snowed as he and several other Nepalese nationals collected wood that would be used to build a bunker for the Russian army.
They stayed in the forest for a few days and learned how to shoot the weapons they were carrying, before continuing their journey through the forest.
Then, suddenly, Ukrainian drones began firing bullets and tear gas at the men.
Krishna had no idea when they had crossed into the conflict zone.
“I fired for 15 minutes. A magazine has 30 bullets. I had four magazines. All the bullets were used up,” he said.
“I received four rounds of bullets.”
Krishna crawled back to his bunker thinking someone would come to his aid.
“But nobody came to rescue me,” he said.
“My body was covered in blood. I was drinking my own blood. Because I hadn’t even gotten to drink water.”
He says he limped 4 kilometres to the nearest hospital in Russian-held territory, where he was given basic treatment.
Krishna survived but watched three friends die in front of him.
“Only the Nepalis are sent on the front line there. Only if the Nepalis are finished do the Russians move forward,” he said bitterly.
Krishna is one of hundreds of Nepalese men who are estimated to have signed up to fight alongside Russia in its war against Ukraine.
The men were lured by promises of more than $US2,000 ($3,000) a month and a fast-tracked pathway to Russian citizenship.
In Krishna’s case, he said he was approached by a recruiter who promised him a job in Europe. But when he got to Moscow, he was told there was no work for him due to high snowfall during the northern hemisphere winter.
After three months, during which he became increasingly desperate, the recruiter suggested Krishna join the Russian military.
“We did realise we [made a] mistake. But the way we reached [Russia] and were tricked by the agent, we had no alternative,” he said.
Despite Nepal’s condemnation of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the offer is attractive considering Nepal’s struggling economy.
Statistics show one in five people live below the poverty line, youth unemployment is almost at 20 per cent, and an average of 1,500 young people leave Nepal every day to find jobs overseas — including in Russia.
But for many, those plans are ending in tragedy.
Sharmila Giri says her husband Rajkumar envisioned a better life for their children than the one they were living in Chitwan, a town in Nepal’s lowlands.
After serving eight years with Dubai Police, he decided to join the Russian army.
Sharmila didn’t want him to go.
“Our children are small. We have the responsibility of educating and feeding them. I had told him to return … but he couldn’t,” she said.
He was killed in combat last December.
Sharmila says her husband spoke about the money he had earned during his three months with the army. But the family hasn’t seen a cent.
And Russia hasn’t returned his body back to the family either.
The devout Hindu family had to perform Rajkumar’s last rites using a dummy body made from grass.
“We kept his photo there and conducted his funeral. There was so much pain. We wish we could see him,” she said.
The scam comes two years since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The war was not quite the weekend romp Russian President Vladimir Putin envisioned, with his troops facing fierce resistance from a well-armed Ukrainian army.
In 2022, Putin mobilised 300,000 Russian men to bolster his efforts in Ukraine, and relied on mercenary groups like Wagner to boost numbers with dastardly strategies like recruiting convicts straight out of penal colonies.
It’s unclear exactly how many Nepalese have gone to fight for Russia. It’s also not known how many went willingly and how many were lured there on false pretences.
But the ABC has obtained a confidential document from Nepal’s foreign ministry that shows 240 families have informed the department about relatives who have joined the Russian army.
The document shows 12 men have died in combat. More than 100 men can’t be contacted, a dozen are injured or hospitalised, about 93 have recently been recruited and just 10 men are on their way back to Nepal.
At least another nine men have died since the ABC received the document.
In January, Nepal’s government banned citizens from going to Russia or Ukraine for work.
But investigations by Nepalese authorities have revealed an organised syndicate of agents who helped traffic these men into the countries anyway.
Nineteen people including one woman have been arrested so far, some of them found with large amounts of cash, several passports and false documentation.
“Agents, consular officers, even police [and bureaucrats] will get some sort of money,” Bhupendra Khati, Kathmandu District’s police chief said.
The scam appears to be very simple.
Typically, a recruiter or agent approaches you with an education or job opportunity in Russia and all you’re required to do is deposit tens of thousands of dollars into a nominated bank account to arrange all the paperwork and travel costs.
A travel agent will get you into a city like Dubai or Kuala Lumpur — places where it is fairly easy for Nepalese to get a tourist visa.
Then, an intermediary prepares false documents and books your next leg to Russia.
Once you’re there, the agents change their initial offer and present you with an opportunity to join the Russian army.
In a small village, Ganga Dhakal and her husband wait for their only son Siddhartha, who went to fight for Russia late last year.
“We had asked him not to go. We were making do with what we had and that would be enough for him too,” she said.
Ganga told the ABC she borrowed about $US10,000 from their farming cooperative and deposited it into the account associated with an immigration agent they knew.
But when Siddhartha got to Moscow, the agent left him stranded and took his money, plunging his family into financial hardship.
The next time his parents heard from him was in a video released on social media.
“Namaste to everyone,” Siddhartha says in the video. He’s sitting in front of a Ukrainian flag with military fatigues and a buzz cut.
“It has been almost two months, since I came here to Russia.
“They treat you [like] a wild animal. Here we face a lot of difficulties to survive. A few of my friends have already died. I don’t know, what happened to others.”
Siddhartha had been captured by the Ukrainians and is being held as a prisoner of war.
No-one has been able to contact him since then.
N P Saud, who was Nepal’s foreign minister until earlier this month, says he’s been in regular contact with his Russian counterpart about the recruitment scam.
“We have requested the Russian government to repatriate the recruited ones and not recruit any more Nepalis,” he said.
“Those who have died in the war—their bodies should be handed over to their families for their funeral rites. The injured should be treated. We have also told them that they should provide compensation to the families of the deceased through the Nepali embassy in Moscow.”
Mr Saud admitted Nepal was struggling with unemployment and poverty.
“But going in the war, just taking part in war, is not a solution,” he said.
