"They Killed My Brother Themselves": How Russia Is Luring Cuban Citizens into War Against Ukraine

Money, Deception, and Longtime Friendship with Russia. This is how we can briefly describe why Cuba has become one of the main countries from which foreign soldiers for the Russian army come. Donbas Realia (a Radio Liberty project) tells why Cubans are going to war against Ukraine and what awaits them in the Russian army.
Poverty on an island thousands of kilometers from Ukraine and the promise of big money in Russia. This is a typical story of a Cuban who joined the ranks of the Russian army. Juan Viondi, 28 years old - on the list of 54 Cuban citizens killed by the Ukrainian authorities, his last name is ninth.
"He was offered a one-year contract with a salary of $2,000 a month. And after the contract expired - a Russian passport, accommodation. I talked to him, told him not to go there, that it couldn't be true. But he had already made his decision," says Michael Duro, the brother of a Cuban citizen who died in the war.
Duro lives in the United States and has been battling cancer for a long time. He says that Hoan wanted to come to America and help his brother, but it was impossible to earn the necessary funds in Cuba.
"I read a text in which it was written that the closest he would get to the war was if he dug trenches. That they would work on building houses, buildings destroyed by the war, that it had nothing to do with the war. They paid him a ticket. And when he got there, it turned out that it was all a lie," says Michael Duro.
The key, according to him, in this story was his acquaintance with Cuban Diana Diaz. According to the Sistema research project, she was involved in recruiting numerous compatriots to join the war effort under the guise of construction work.
“He was taken to the Donetsk region, to the part occupied by Russia. He tried to escape, and because he tried to escape, he never participated in the conflict, he was far from all this. He was on a motorcycle and carried food in backpacks for other soldiers,” Michael assures.
He says his brother’s passport was taken away, but he spoke to him every day via video link, the last time on October 3, 2024. Then, Duro recalls, Hoan was ordered to go to the front line, he refused, after which he was allegedly promised that his documents would be returned and he would be taken to Moscow. The call ended, and since then Michael has not received any information from his brother.
“The average Cuban barely makes $100 a month. In a stagnant communist economy, of course they are attracted to the idea of making money somewhere else, and also the idea of leaving Cuba, leaving a repressive state and getting rid of disinformation. They don’t realize that they are going from one repressive place to another repressive place, to Russia,” says Joe Cardona, content director at Marti Noticias, a multimedia news agency focused on Cuba.
Ukrainian special services know the names of more than a thousand Cubans who signed contracts with the Russian Ministry of Defense. The Main Intelligence Directorate (GUR) told Donbas Realiya that the actual number of Cuban citizens recruited is much higher.
“We do not consider Cuban mercenaries as some kind of separate military force that can influence the battlefield. In general, the figure could be around 10, 12, 15 thousand. This is not a large number of people who were forced to sign a contract, either by fraud or in some other way,” says Andriy Chernyak, a representative of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine.
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On the social network VKontakte, many Cubans do not hide their involvement in the Russian army. Donbas Realia wrote to several soldiers and offered them an interview to tell the details of their service and explain why they signed the contract. Most of them ignored these messages, only one of them, Orlexis Ramirez-Gonzalez, replied.
“I’m sorry, but a good soldier, while on duty, does not reveal such information without permission,” Ramirez-Gonzalez wrote.
According to the Ukrainian project “I Want to Live,” Orlexis has been in the Russian army since January 30, 2024.
Last year, he posted a photo on Facebook, in the background of which you can see the flags of Russia and the Russian Airborne Forces. Earlier, journalists from the project “Sheme” found out in their investigation that a large part of the Cubans who signed the contract ended up in the paratrooper units.
Last October, the US State Department reported in a closed telegram to embassies that Cuba had become "the largest supplier of foreign troops to Russian aggression after North Korea."
Official Havana calls these accusations false, saying that if there are Cubans in the war, it is of their own free will. In this context, Ukraine voted for the first time in the United Nations in October against a General Assembly resolution calling for the lifting of the US embargo against Cuba.
"The Cuban regime is completely totalitarian. Nothing can be done on the territory of the country without the permission of the regime. Nothing can be done without payment. The Cuban regime collects money from everyone who wants to escape from Cuba, makes money from everyone, and of course, the only way this can work is if the Russian regime pays the Cuban regime for the very possibility of recruitment. And of course, this happens through their agents, the GRU, the FSB," says Marjan Zablotsky, a deputy of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine.
He has long investigated how the Kremlin lures Cuban citizens into war. Last fall, information about cooperation between Moscow and Havana, collected by the Ukrainian authorities and special services, was passed on to American congressmen of Cuban origin.
“There has always been a historical connection between Russia and Cuba, which goes back to the roots of the Cuban Revolution. Since 2022, Russia has been very busy invading Ukraine and trying to continue this aggression. But relations have remained very good. Now the level of support they can provide to Cuba has decreased, because Russia is clearly spending huge amounts of money on the invasion of Ukraine,” notes Joe Cardona.
It is difficult to assess the practical benefit for the Russian army from the recruitment of Cuban citizens and other foreigners. After all, over all these years, fewer Cubans have signed contracts than Russian citizens go to war every month. But in this story, the propaganda aspect plays an important role for the Kremlin. 
“Russia has enough of its own mobilization resources, which it can use to conduct a certain intensity of hostilities. Russia is only interested in the geopolitical interest of having representatives of certain countries in the Russian army. They use this on the political stage, for the domestic consumer, and thereby try to show that Russia is not an aggressor and that other countries, for example, of the civilized world, also support Russian ideas and plans,” says Andriy Chernyak.
At the same time, starting in January of this year, according to the publication “Important Stories”, Cuba was included in the so-called list of “friendly” countries, from which Russian recruiters are prohibited from importing mercenaries. The recruitment process from China, India, Brazil, a total of about 40 countries, was also stopped. The reasons for such a decision, as well as the degree to which it functions in practice, are currently difficult to assess. At the same time, over the past year, the Ukrainian Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War noted only an increase in the number of foreigners in the Russian army.
"At least 24,112 foreign nationals have been identified. These are only those foreigners whose data we have, and in fact this number may be much higher. In general, there is now a steady growth in the recruitment of foreign mercenaries. The largest number of recruited citizens are from Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Belarus and Kazakhstan. Cuba is also among these top 5," says the representative of the headquarters Tamara Kurushkina.
Michael Duro, whose brother apparently died as a soldier in the Russian army, has repeatedly written appeals to various official structures of the Russian Federation, trying to find out what happened to Hoan. Documents published by the Ukrainian authorities indicate that Hoan Viondi was declared dead on May 12, 2025 - seven months after the last conversation with his brother.
"I wrote four letters to President Vladimir Putin, to which he allegedly replied, signed with his name. They are very rude, they don't care, they honestly don't care," says Michael Duro.
He wants to go to Moscow to find out what really happened to Joan, but says that $2,000 for a plane ticket is too expensive for him.
"I want to know the truth, because in my opinion they themselves killed my brother. I think he became an obstacle for them, because he opposed them. I don't understand how from October 3, 2024 to May 12, 2025, as Ukraine claims, he was killed. What happened?", the man asks, barely holding back tears.
Last year, Russia and Cuba signed a new agreement on military cooperation, which provides for the training of personnel and the exchange of experience. Even in such a weakened state, on the brink of energy collapse due to lack of oil revenues, Cuba remains an island of Russian influence in the Western Hemisphere. And Cubans in the ranks of the Russian army continue to fight against Ukraine.