Iraq urged to summon Russian Envoy over war recruitment comments
Shafaq News – Baghdad
Recent remarks by Russia’s ambassador to Iraq are an alarming attempt to promote the recruitment of Iraqis to fight in the war against Ukraine, the Iraqi Observatory for Human Rights (IOHR) warned on Monday, describing them as a violation of Iraq’s sovereignty and international law.
In an interview with Shafaq News on October 17, Ambassador Elbrus Kutrashev declared that “thousands of Iraqis are ready to join the Russian army if the door is opened to them.” The IOHR viewed the statement as a calculated effort to exploit widespread poverty and unemployment among Iraqi youth.
Under Russian law, foreign residents fluent in the language may legally enlist in the army, earning between $2,500 and $3,000 a month. Estimates suggest that since 2022, more than 5,000 Iraqis have been drawn into the conflict through coercion or deceptive offers. Families in several provinces told our agency they have lost contact with relatives who traveled to Russia to fight alongside its forces.
The observatory noted that with poverty exceeding 27 percent nationwide and more than 40 percent in some southern provinces, portraying war as a source of income amounts to “an unethical and unlawful” form of exploitation. It emphasized that such economic coercion constitutes human trafficking under the 2000 Palermo Protocol, which prohibits recruitment through financial pressure.
Read more: The Desperate and the Damned: Why thousands of Iraqis are fighting in Ukraine
According to the IOHR, attempts to enlist Iraqis for military service abroad—whether through intermediaries or fraudulent contracts—violate Article 9 of Iraq’s constitution, which bans armed formations outside state control, and contravene both the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and the UN Charter’s principle of non-intervention.
The group urged Baghdad to summon the Russian envoy for clarification, adopt a clear public stance rejecting any attempt to recruit Iraqis for foreign wars, and investigate suspected local intermediaries. It also recommended stronger oversight of travel and employment offices that may be facilitating such activities under the guise of work contracts.
Ignoring these remarks, the observatory cautioned, could be interpreted as complacency and would erode Iraq’s credibility while exposing its citizens to further exploitation.
“The blood of Iraqis is not a commodity in the markets of war.”
