Jordan demands Russia stop recruiting citizens after two killed in fighting | Russia-Ukraine war News

Aman says it will take ‘all available measures’ to prevent Russian authorities from recruiting its citizens to fight in the war.

Jordan has demanded that Russian authorities stop illegally recruiting its citizens after two Jordanian citizens were killed fighting in the Russian army.

Jordan’s Foreign Ministry issued a warning Thursday against Moscow and external “entities” working online to recruit people on Moscow’s behalf.

The ministry did not mention Russia’s nearly four-year-long war on Ukraine, where thousands of paid foreign fighters have joined Moscow’s side.

In a statement shared on Twitter, the Jordanian Foreign Ministry said it would “take all available measures” to end further recruitment of Jordanians and asked Moscow to terminate the contracts of its currently enlisted citizens.

The recruitment violates both Jordanian domestic and international law, the ministry said, and “endangers the lives of (its) citizens”.

The statement did not provide any further identifying information or say where or when the two civilians were killed, although Russia has a track record of recruiting foreigners to fight in Ukraine.

Ukraine says Moscow has recruited at least 18,000 foreign fighters from 128 countries, according to data shared by Brigadier General Dmytro Usov. In a post on the Telegram messaging app, he said another 3,388 foreigners had been killed fighting for Russia.

Usov did not provide details of the foreign troops fighting in Ukraine for Russia, but most likely most of them were from North Korea.

The New York-based Council on Foreign Relations, citing Western officials, said Pyongyang had sent 14,000 to 15,000 troops to fight for Russia in 2024.

According to Ukraine’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Andriy Sybiha, Moscow has recruited at least 1,400 Africans from more than 30 countries, using methods ranging from deception to coercion.

Sibiha previously said that signing contracts with the Russian military was “equivalent to signing a death sentence” for foreign recruits.

“The fate of foreign citizens in the Russian army is tragic. Most of them are immediately sent to so-called ‘meat attacks,’ where they are immediately killed,” Sibiha said in a November 9 post on X.

“The Russian command understands that there will be no accountability for killed foreigners, so they are treated as second-rate, expendable human material,” he said.