As of May 2026, Uzbekistan ranks first in the number of citizens who have signed contracts with the armed forces of the Russian Federation. Now it is known about almost 5 thousand Uzbek citizens who fought or continue to fight against Ukraine, the Ukrainian state project “I Want to Live” reported on May 29 on Telegram.
Also, it is the citizens of Uzbekistan who are most numerous among foreigners captured by Ukrainians, as noted in the project.
According to “I Want to Live,” Russia en masse recruits labor migrants and foreigners, promising money, citizenship or release from prison, but most of them are sent to the front “as expendable material.”
In the project, referring to the Uzbek publication Gazeta, they talked about another sentence to a mercenary from Uzbekistan for participating in the war on the side of the Russian Federation. According to investigators, in 2022 he came to Russia and got a job in a bakery shop in the Moscow region. The following year, a 30-year-old man and an acquaintance drove a rented car to Voronezh. On the way, they stopped near a store, and when the acquaintance left, the police approached the car and during the search allegedly discovered drugs, after which both were detained.
In Russia, an Uzbek citizen was sentenced to nine years in prison. According to the publication, in the colony he was forced to enter into a contract with the Russian Ministry of Defense, after which in August 2025 he went to war against Ukraine. In 2026, already in Uzbekistan, a man was sentenced to 4.5 years in prison for mercenarism and recruitment.
