As Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed over 150 Chinese soldiers are fighting for Russia on his country’s soil, messages are emerging showing the harrowing reality of war to prospective recruits. Social media videos trying to lure Chinese nationals to join Russian forces in their unlawful invasion of Ukraine have been circulating since 2022, it has been reported.
One post on Douyin, China’s local version of TikTok, dating back to September 2022 seemingly shows one freshly recruited eparing to be picked up from the Beijing airport, the Kyiv Independent reports. Another video, this time in Russian with Chinese subtitles, invites people to join Russia’s Armed Forces in return for monthly salaries around 18,000 RMB (£1,900) and sign-on bonuses of up to 200,000 RMB (£21,000), Radio Free Europe reports. But some of the recruits ending up on the most dangerous frontlines have shared their own experiences, urging people to reconsider their plans to fight.
One of them was Chongqing’s Zhao Rui. The 38-year-old signed a contract with the Russian army at the end of September 2023. In December 2023, according to Ukrainian media, he was killed in the Zaporizhzhia region.
According to the Ukrainian publication, the soldier shared with local media: “Don’t come. There is nothing good here to come to.”
Another Chinese soldier identified as ‘Macron’ gave an insight into life at the front, as he told the journalist Chai Jing: “I realised I might die here someday, so I decided to share some real experiences. Since Chinese people haven’t been at war in a long time, I wanted to show what a regular soldier, especially a foreign one, really goes through in war.”
He added: “There has been severe racial discrimination since training camp, discriminating against Black people, Arabs, and Chinese.”
Another military man, 38-year-old Ruiqi Sun, also complained on social media about the conditions in the Russian army.
He said: “There is no medical help here. Everyone doesn’t care. The pain is killing me. I contacted the Chinese Embassy in Russia. They said it was my personal problem.”
Zelensky’s warning over the dozens of Chinese soldiers he said are fighting in Ukraine came after his country’s military captured two Chinese fighters earlier this week.
China says it is a neutral party to the conflict, although its leader, Xi Jinping, and Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, are public allies. Zelensky demanded answers from Beijing, accusing it of ignoring Russia’s recruitment of its citizens.
