French magazine claims Russia recruiting Afghans to fight in Ukraine

L’Obs added that the Russian army also started recruiting former service members of the Afghan army trained by the US-led NATO troops for the Ukraine war a year ago.

According to this report, the Russian contractor group Wagner is responsible for employing the former members of the Afghan armed forces.

The report invoked statements by former Afghan interior minister Haibatollah Alizai who was the last commander of the Afghan army before the Taliban takeover of the country in 2021.

L’Obs further cited a former Afghan army officer with his alias being Sadeq as saying that he took part in missions in Afghanistan alongside the US forces but after the Taliban takeover, he was forced to flee to Iran.

Sadeq tells the French magazine that he is confident that he will not return from the Ukraine war alive but he is waiting for the Russian embassy in Tehran to give him a green light.

L’Obs added that with the expiry of Sadeq’s visa, he is living illegally in Iran.

He is afraid of being sent back to Afghanistan and he says that in Iran, two people took him to a building that he did not know where it was and they gave him a final deadline to go to the Russian embassy in Tehran to be transferred to Moscow.

The magazine quoted former Afghan interior minister Haibatollah Alizai as also saying that 6 former generals of the elite forces of the Afghan army, who were trained by the US, are now cooperating with Russia under pseudonyms to recruit and organize Afghan forces.

They act, Azizai noted, as mediators between the Russian side and the Afghan military. Each of them is allegedly responsible for a group of hundreds of troops.

The Russian embassy in Tehran has not commented on the French magazine’s report.

The report comes as the Western media and governments admit that Russia has already the upper hand on the battlefield in Ukraine.