Twenty or so rural workers and unemployed people, who thought they had landed a job in Dubai, were instead sent to fight in Ukraine.

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When his wife gave birth to a son in December 2023, Aazad Yousuf Kumar promised that he would find a good job, better than that of his father, a poor laborer from Kashmir. Desperate to work in India, the 31-year-old had contacted Baba Vlogs, a Dubai-based employment agency, at the end of the year. Aazad left his home in Poshwan, Pulwama district, for Dubai on December 14, 2023, just a few weeks after his wife gave birth.

The science graduate had seen a Baba Vlogs promotional video on YouTube offering jobs in Dubai to people like himself. Sajad Ahmad Kumar, his elder brother, contacted by Le Monde, said that Aazad had been offered a job as a hotel assistant. “We lost touch with him initially. When he eventually phoned us after about 20 days, he told us that he had been tricked and taken to an unknown place in Russia, where he had received weapons training for a fortnight, along with a dozen other Indians,” confided Sajad.

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