How Indonesians Are Being Recruited Into the Russian Army

On September 18, Indonesia’s ambassador to Russia, Jose Tavares, told the state news agency Antara that his embassy had taken dozens of calls from families who believed their relatives had been recruited into Russia’s army by agents on social media promising large salaries. Jakarta has so far dealt with these cases one by one, in line with standard consular procedures. On September 19, the Indonesian embassy sent a note verbale, a formal diplomatic letter, asking the Russian Foreign Ministry to verify the names, and bring home those who failed Russia’s medical examination. Arrmanatha Nasir, the career diplomat who was sworn in as foreign minister on October 1, has inherited that approach.

However, the current approach is ill-equipped to handle a problem that has arisen alongside President Prabowo Subianto’s efforts to build a close relationship with Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Indonesian institutions have been promoting Russia as a labor destination, including in a special economic zone that assembles attack drones, even as they warn their citizens against the job offers that might lead to the frontlines in Ukraine. Meanwhile, Jakarta counts the personal closeness between Prabowo and Putin as an asset, yet it has made no public use of that closeness to aid the citizens caught in this recruitment trap.

Most of the public record on these cases comes either from one of the warring parties or from the recruits and their families. Ukraine’s foreign intelligence service said on August 27 that it had documents on at least eight Indonesians who were recruited into Russia’s army. However, Kompas noted that the documents are Russian e-visa notices, while Russia’s embassy in Jakarta called the release a disinformation campaign. Meanwhile, a man who told Republika that he was among those named said that an agent had promised him a security job and then pushed him into a military contract, although he had failed his medical examination in Moscow. He was in hospital when he spoke to the newspaper, after a Ukrainian drone had taken one of his fingers. In Natuna, the parents of a 30-year-old man said that a comrade had reported him killed by a Ukrainian drone on September 20, which the regent of Natuna still called uncertain and unclear 10 days later.

The cases point to three problems, the first of which is that recruitment follows the logic of labor migration long before it turns into military service. Hartyo Harkomoyo, Indonesia’s deputy ambassador in Moscow, told RRI that most recruits are promised civilian jobs, some of them as drivers, builders, cooks, or nurses under Russia’s Defense Ministry. Some are recruited from Indonesia through social media, and others from among Indonesians already in Russia, especially students. A content creator from Central Java told Republika that a Russian contact on social media had offered him a post in a government ministry or a large company and paid for his flight and his e-visa. The contract he was handed in Moscow was a military one, written in Russian, which he could not read. An Indonesian man filmed by Ukrainian soldiers after his capture in early September said he had been working as a cleaner when he was put into uniform and sent to the front.

The case of the man from Natuna shows the same path from a civilian job to the frontline. According to his family, the young man had worked as an electrician in the Philippines before going to Russia with seven other Indonesians. He believed he had been hired to deliver food to the troops. The head of his neighborhood said that he refused a transfer to a combat unit because it was not in his contract. He could not leave because his passport was being held. And yet, the migrant-worker protection office in his province found no record of him as a registered worker.

The second problem concerns the fact that Indonesian institutions themselves opened a formal labor channel to Russia this year. In January, the Ministry for the Protection of Migrant Workers (KP2MI) welcomed a plan by the aluminum producer RUSAL to take 50 vocational-school graduates, with departures scheduled for September. They presented it as part of Prabowo’s “SMK Go Global” program. A month later, KP2MI named Russia a new placement destination in manufacturing and shipbuilding. It also said it had received a draft Memorandum of Understanding from Russia’s Federal Service for Labor and Employment. In the same meeting, the deputy minister received a warning from the defense attaché in Moscow that Indonesians should beware of well-paid job advertisements for private military companies, suggesting that the Ministry knew of the risk from the start.

The West Java provincial labor office went further in June, when its one-stop service for migrant workers advertised jobs for women aged 18 to 24 in Russia’s Alabuga Special Economic Zone, with salary in dollars and a flight paid by the employer. The United States Treasury sanctioned the company that runs the zone in February 2024 for producing Iranian-designed Geran-2 attack drones under a contract with Russia’s military. An Associated Press investigation found that young African women recruited there, with offers of work in hospitality and catering, ended up assembling drones. The West Java advertisement, now marked closed, names no employer and gives no number of applicants or departures. No documented recruit is known to have left through these channels. Their effect is to present Russia, including the defense industry, as an ordinary destination for Indonesian workers.

In July, Indonesia’s embassy in Moscow warned Indonesians against taking job offers on tourist visas and signing contracts in a language they could not read. The warning did not mention military service, and a month later the embassy’s own job fair for Indonesians in Russia, held on August 17, listed Alabuga SEZ among the employers, beside RUSAL, En+ Group, and Rusagro. The ambassador presented the fair as a way to widen Indonesians’ chances to work and build careers in Russia. Indonesia’s national placement system still listed 76 places in Russia on October 1. Among them, 60 places are for fishery workers whose placement permits were issued on September 1.

The third problem is that Jakarta’s response to these recruitment traps has treated the issue as a series of separate cases. The Foreign Ministry’s spokesperson said on September 18 that the government would look into claims of fraud and exploitation, protect any Indonesians found to be victims, and prosecute recruiters. She added that any verified service in a foreign army would be seen as an individual act that does not represent the policy of the Indonesian government. Tavares described the embassy’s note verbale to the Russian Foreign Ministry as a request for verification and clarification. Meanwhile, KP2MI’s deputy minister, Christina Aryani, said the recruits had been lured by advertisements and declined to treat the cases as trafficking without proof of exploitation, thereby leaving any kind of repatriation for the Foreign Ministry to negotiate. Moreover, as of press time, the ministry’s online travel advisory for Russia still said nothing about recruitment.

I would suggest that the reason for this restraint lies in the relationship itself. Prabowo has met Putin five times since taking office, and in Vladivostok last month, he offered Indonesia to Russian businesses as a natural entry point to ASEAN. A government that has invested this much in the relationship at the presidential level is unlikely to seek a public quarrel with Moscow over a few dozen citizens. Therefore, it treats each case as a matter of individual choice and consular care. Friction between KP2MI and the Foreign Ministry, visible in Aryani’s remarks, explains why the cases pass between agencies, but not why no one has raised them with Moscow at the political level. The cost of that restraint falls on the men themselves, because Moscow has little reason to act on the cases of a partner that has not raised them at the political level publicly.

It is true that not every Indonesian in Russia’s army was deceived by a job offer. Among the eight named by Ukraine is a former activist and party cadre from Aceh whose friends told Generasi.co that he had spoken of going to Russia to fight if a business project failed, and Harkomoyo distinguishes recruits who were tricked from those who signed knowingly and were aware that they could lose their citizenship. Aryani made the same point when she compared the recruits to Indonesians who had knowingly taken jobs in scam compounds in Cambodia. However, the choices of individual recruits do not explain why Indonesians became a target in the first place, which is a question about Jakarta’s dealings with Moscow.

A West Java provincial labor office notice dated June 19, 2026, advertising placements for young women in Russia’s Alabuga Special Economic Zone. (Screenshot by Radityo Dharmaputra)

An investigation published by Germany’s public broadcaster in July suggests an answer. Tagesschau’s reporters followed an agency called WorkVia, which ran Instagram videos addressed to Indonesians and paid Facebook advertisements offering $3,200 a month and a $30,000 signing bonus for a contract with Russia’s army. Posing as an Indonesian applicant, one reporter was told by the agency’s recruiter that the job was risky but well paid. Since February 2026, according to the investigation, WorkVia has addressed mainly men from Cambodia and Indonesia, two countries from which Russia had hardly recruited before. Ukraine’s Defense Ministry told the reporters that Russia keeps 36 countries off its recruitment lists to avoid negative reactions from their leaders, and a version of that list obtained by the independent Russian outlet iStories includes India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, and Laos (although it does not mention Indonesia and the Philippines). iStories links the list to diplomatic pressure: Nepal, India, and Sri Lanka have appealed to Moscow since mid-2024, and Jordan was added after making similar demands in November 2025. Read together, the two findings suggest that recruiters moved toward countries whose governments had not objected, and that Indonesia was one of them.

Other governments have raised the issue with Moscow, and several have obtained concessions. Nepal suspended work permits for Russia and Ukraine in January 2024, after nine of its citizens were killed in the war. Prime Minister Narendra Modi raised the issue with Putin in July 2024, after which New Delhi said Russia had promised to discharge all Indians in its army. India reported 139 of its nationals released by the end of July this year, although New Delhi says its citizens are still being recruited despite its warnings. Sri Lanka’s foreign minister obtained an assurance from Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in June 2024 that no further recruitment from the island would take place, and South Africa’s president secured Putin’s support for the return of 17 men in a telephone call in February. Colombia formally asked Russia and Ukraine in September to stop enlisting its citizens. None of these governments had to break with Moscow to do so.

Jakarta’s first step should be political, since its leverage lies in the relationship itself. Prabowo, or his new foreign minister, can ask Moscow to stop recruiting Indonesians and to release those already under contract. India and South Africa, fellow BRICS members, made such requests at the highest level. Putin, for his part, has called Indonesia one of Russia’s trusted friends in ASEAN. A partner that close should have no difficulty in asking for the same treatment as others. The recruiters’ stop-list suggests that Moscow adjusts when a government’s leaders object.

Jakarta should also bring its own labor channels into line with its warnings. Until Russian employers can be checked, KP2MI and the provincial labor offices should stop placing Indonesians with firms tied to Russia’s defense industry, beginning with the Alabuga SEZ. The embassy in Moscow should not invite such firms to its job fairs. The draft labor memorandum with Russia’s Federal Service for Labor and Employment is the place to write that exclusion down. The cost would be small, since the national placement system lists more than 2,200 places in Slovakia and more than 1,400 in Poland, against 76 in Russia.

Indonesia’s warnings also need to reach the people whom the recruiters already reach on social media. WorkVia found Indonesians through Instagram videos and paid Facebook advertisements, although Meta has barred advertising from Russia since 2022, while the embassy’s warning was posted on a ministry website. The Foreign Ministry and KP2MI could run Indonesian-language warnings on the same platforms where the advertisements appear. The Communications Ministry could also ask Meta to enforce its own ban. Colombia offers a working model, since its Foreign Ministry has added an awareness campaign to a screening protocol in its passport offices for applicants who say they intend to fight abroad.

Lastly, Indonesia need not act alone, since other states in the region face similar recruitment challenges. The Philippines, which is also missing from the recruiters’ stop-list, said in September that it was verifying reports of Filipinos recruited into foreign armed forces, in terms close to Jakarta’s own, and WorkVia has turned to Cambodia as well. Indonesia, the Philippines, and Cambodia could take the matter up together in ASEAN, which would raise the political cost to Moscow of recruiting in Southeast Asia.

As I have argued elsewhere, calling these men mercenaries narrows the protection Indonesia can still give them. Treating them as a series of individual cases narrows it in the same way, because it leaves the routes that brought them to Russia intact. A government that offers itself as Russia’s entry point to Southeast Asia is well placed to ask Moscow to keep its recruiters away from Indonesians. It should make that request at the level at which the relationship itself is conducted, which is the presidential one.