Insight News reported the information.Russia has recruited over 18,000 foreign fighters from 128 countries to wage war against Ukraine, with 3,388 already confirmed dead, according to Dmytro Usov, Ukraine's Secretary of the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War. The staggering scope reveals a systematic operation that has transformed global poverty into a military resource.The statistics tell a troubling story: foreigners now comprise nearly half of all Russian prisoners captured in Ukraine, up from just 1% in 2022. And Moscow has shown zero interest in getting them back. "If a foreigner dies, there are no social payments and no responsibility," explained Andriy Yusov of Ukraine's Main Intelligence Directorate. "Russia doesn't request the exchange of any foreigners, except North Koreans."The recruitment map tracks global economic desperation. Nepal has supplied at least 801 confirmed fighters, with CNN reporting the total could reach 15,000. In a country where average monthly wages hover around $150-200, Russia's promise of $2,000 proves irresistible—until it proves deadly. Cuba may have sent between 1,000 and 25,000 fighters, depending on the source, drawn by salaries that represent nearly two years of Cuban wages in a single month.Africa has provided 1,436 citizens from 36 countries. Two captured Cameroonians said they were promised jobs at a shampoo factory and dental clinic. Instead, they found themselves in trenches near Kharkiv, used as assault troops. India, Central Asia, Syria, Colombia, Mexico, Bangladesh—the list spans continents.The recruitment machinery operates through what experts call "BDC": Bribe, Deceive, and Coerce. Russian private military company Redut, essentially a front for GRU intelligence operations, coordinates recruitment across multiple continents. Contracts promise warehouse security, construction work, or logistics—anything but combat. Documents are written in Russian with deliberately vague language about "special service conditions." Once recruits arrive in Russia, they discover the truth: this is a military contract, and there's no escape.For Central Asian migrant workers in Russia, the coercion is even more direct. Military commissariats detain workers, check documents, find violations—which nearly all undocumented migrants have—and deliver an ultimatum: sign a military contract or face 20 years in prison.What awaits these recruits is brutal. "Training" often lasts just two weeks—basic rifle handling, grenade throwing, minimal navigation. They're then funneled into assault companies, the most dangerous units used to reveal Ukrainian firing positions. "We were like dogs," a 35-year-old Nepali deserter said. "They beat us without reason. Russians got better food and better equipment. We were second-class people."Ukraine's Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha offered a chilling statistic: "Most mercenaries don't live longer than a month after arriving at the front."But the war's cruelest dimension involves Ukrainians themselves. Russia has forcibly conscripted 46,327 Ukrainians from occupied territories and Crimea—35,272 from Crimea alone. They're tracked through Russia's Gosuslugi database, detained at checkpoints, and sent directly to military commissariats. Families of those who resist face fines, property seizure, and imprisonment threats."We exchange Ukrainians for Ukrainians," Usov said. "It's absurd, but it's reality." Sixteen percent of all Russian prisoners in Ukraine are Ukrainians mobilized from occupied territories—a direct violation of the Geneva Convention and the Rome Statute.Some countries have pushed back. Nepal banned work permits for Russia in January 2024 and launched an information campaign. The result: recruitment plummeted from nearly a thousand contracts monthly to just one person in 2025. But most nations remain silent, either lacking resources or unwilling to jeopardize relations with Moscow.The numbers expose Russia's fundamental weakness. Moscow suffers approximately 50,000 casualties monthly but can only recruit about 25,000 through domestic contracts. Foreign fighters and forcibly conscripted Ukrainians fill the gap."Putin has turned the Russian army into an international legion of despair," wrote security expert Mark Galeotti in The Sunday Times. "The current crisis is not a sign of the empire's strength but that it's falling apart."The Economist calculated the brutal economics: replacing one Russian contractor with five foreigners saves Moscow's budget roughly $10,000 monthly. Multiply across thousands of recruits, and it becomes billions in savings. A Russian contractor receives $3,000-5,000 plus social benefits; families of the fallen receive millions in compensation. Foreigners cost $2,000 with zero obligations. If they die, there are no payments and no domestic political fallout.Ukraine has mounted a systematic counter-campaign through its I Want to Live project—a platform offering information about safe surrender in multiple languages. Hundreds have used it. Ukrainian officials transmit detailed documentation to the International Criminal Court, the UN, and international media.But the fundamental dynamic remains: as long as crushing economic inequality exists between nations, authoritarian regimes can weaponize poverty itself. Russia recruits where $2,000 represents life-changing money—Nepal, Cuba, Somalia, Burundi, Congo, Tajikistan. It doesn't recruit in Switzerland or Singapore."Putin's regime has turned systemic poverty into a military resource," Foreign Minister Sybiha told the UN. "It buys lives at a price that for some countries seems ordinary, but for Global South residents is the only chance to escape destitution."Eighteen thousand foreigners and 46,000 forcibly conscripted Ukrainians represent more than military statistics. They're evidence of a system that monetizes desperation and values human life at $2,000 per month until death. And without coordinated international action to address the economic conditions that enable such exploitation, this template threatens to define future conflicts—not as clashes between armies, but as auctions of lives where victory goes to whoever pays slightly more for cannon fodder.