Mohammed Razzaq, a 23-year-old from Sadr City in Baghdad, with only a primary school education, abandoned his dreams in Iraq early. In a country suffocated by unemployment, militias, and political and social deadlock, he saw no future. His only option was to leave, searching for a better life, only to find himself as a mercenary fighting in the ranks of the Russian army.
His journey began in Basra earlier this year through a local company that advertised opportunities for work. Mohammed contacted them and was asked to pay $500. He sent $100 as a down payment, followed by $400 later. After 33 days, he received a travel visa through a contact on Telegram named “Polina,” who used the account “Friend of Russia.” This person sent him plane tickets, and Mohammed departed Baghdad with a friend from Basra.
At first, the treatment was respectful, but everything quickly changed. Upon arrival, he was transferred to a training camp for a full month. The ordeal began there: harsh training from 4 a.m. until 10 p.m., nearly nonstop. “The treatment and attitude changed completely,” he said. “There is no life here. Everyone exploits everyone. Everyone devours everyone.”
In this environment, dignity does not exist. Instead, there is racism. The Russians openly despised him and his fellow foreign recruits. They repeatedly told them, “You came here with your money, not for free.” Even in daily details, there was humiliation: “When I was cooking, a Russian would come, snatch the pan from me, and cook himself, just because I’m a foreign mercenary.”
Despite everything, the promise of money tempts some to continue. During the first days of training, a fighter receives two million rubles. The monthly salary is 25 “papers” (around $25,000). Citizenship, too, is part of the bargain: Mohammed confirmed that many of his comrades obtained it. Some even had their contracts automatically renewed once they became Russian citizens, binding them to three years of compulsory service, extendable.
“Young people come to Russia hoping for a new life,” Mohammed said, “but the truth is that death is closer than anything else.”
On paper, the documents look “official” and guarantee rights. On the ground, Mohammed describes the situation as humiliating, degrading, and extremely dangerous: “The death rate is 1,000 percent… it’s rare for anyone to survive. Most of us die.”
Mohammed is now officially considered a Russian citizen, but his heart remains tied to Iraq. He speaks bitterly of the impossibility of returning: “Legally, I have the right to return, but the Russian state can fine me, jail me, or exempt me—it’s all arbitrary. At the same time, there’s no law or sovereignty in Iraq. No one has gone back.”
He says the main reason Iraqi youth migrate to Russia is hopelessness at home: “The government and militias are the first and last reason. Iraq is a country without rights, without factories, without a private sector. The situation is miserable, and young people leave clinging to a simple hope of life abroad.” He added: “I worked for years in Iraq and never managed to save what I earned here in just two months.”
But the money hasn’t brought him a better life. Service in the Russian army continues year-round without vacations. Assignments vary: five days, a week, a month, two months; then the mission ends and another begins. “After I returned from a military mission, they sent me to repair cars, then to make landmines. They never give you any rest.”
The contract lasts for one year, but if a fighter is on the front lines and has received citizenship and a passport, the contract is automatically renewed. The mercenary becomes a Russian citizen bound to military service. “No one gets out of here intact. The contract cannot be broken,” Mohammed said.
Within the Russian army, there are more than a thousand Iraqis. Mohammed revealed that around 600 of them have already died at the front. “Everyone is there,” he added, “and no one returns.”
Yet despite it all, Iraq still holds a place in his heart: “My homeland is very dear to me. God willing, I will return, but not now. Return is not in my hands. Whoever joins the army doesn’t come back—except when his contract ends, or he dies, or loses part of his body.”
Despite his deep entanglement, Mohammed has not stopped sending warnings: “I always advise Iraqi youth through my personal accounts not to do what I did. The situation here is very difficult. We are enslaved. But in Iraq, too, the situation is very difficult. The future is unknown, and life is unknown in both cases. Young men come to Russia hoping for a new life, but the truth is that death is closer than anything else.”
This is how Mohammed Razzaq, son of Sadr City, found himself trapped between a homeland without a future and an army without mercy. His dream of escaping unemployment and militias ended with him as a mercenary in a foreign war, caught between a life that withers every day and a death that looms at any moment.
Journalist and media professional Rafid Al-Jubouri explains that the issue of Iraqi fighters in Russia is not new, as some might think, but dates back to 2023 when the first report of an Iraqi death there emerged. At the time, the one who spoke about it publicly was Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the notorious Russian mercenary company Wagner, who named an Iraqi fighter, Abbas Watout, praising him as someone who “fought heroically.”
The case of Abbas Watout revealed a hidden side of this file: he was an Iraqi prisoner in Russia, like many irregular migrants who had entered the country intending to transit to Europe. According to Al-Jubouri, such people were offered the chance to fight for Wagner in exchange for release or privileges. Wagner did not limit itself to recruiting Russian inmates; it opened its doors to foreigners too, drawing Iraqis into its ranks.
Over time, the picture changed. Recruitment was no longer exclusive to Wagner; the Russian army itself began to directly recruit foreign fighters. The need for manpower became urgent in what Al-Jubouri describes as a “grinding war on both sides, where each side needs forces.” To avoid placing greater burdens of conscription on Russian citizens, Moscow turned to filling the gap with foreign nationalities, including Iraqis.
Al-Jubouri laments this reality: “This should not be happening, because Iraq is a wealthy country. But it suffers from poverty alongside a rapidly growing youth population. This growth should be a source of great strength for the state and society, when young people form the majority. Instead, the absence of sound economic and social policies has turned this potential into a tragedy, with Iraqi youth thrown into wars that do not concern them.”
Today, with the war widening, the issue has drawn wider attention as videos and accounts of Iraqi fighters in Russia circulate on social media, describing their experiences and revealing the scale of the tragedy. Al-Jubouri notes that “there is a large number of Iraqis there, and also a large number of casualties among them.”
Yet so far, there is no evidence of any direct role for Iraqi militias in this file. “The government has no role if an Iraqi is killed or captured in the war,” Al-Jubouri said. It is as if those who left Iraq for Russia are fighting alone—and losing alone—without protection or accountability.
Internationally, however, the involvement of Iraqis fighting alongside Russia may be understood as a form of official interference, placing Iraq in an embarrassing position and raising doubts about its neutrality.
From behind the walls of Al-Hilla Correctional Facility, a voice emerges: that of Karar Imad Abdul Amir, 27, who tells the story of his younger brother Mohammed, swallowed by the Russian war after family and social crises pushed him toward a fate where death and captivity intertwine.
“My brother’s name is Mohammed Imad Abdul Amir, he’s 20 years old. Four months ago, he left Iraq through a man called ‘Abu Aliyo al-Russi,’ a volunteer with the Russian army. Since then, we’ve had no news of him. He finished his training and told me: ‘I’m going on an assault mission and will call you.’
He went, but he never called again. Some say he was killed. Others say he’s a prisoner. Others claim a drone strike hit him, and now his body is in a morgue. My family is currently waiting for visas to travel to Russia to search for him.”
Mohammed never thought of fighting in Russia. His life in Iraq was difficult, hemmed in by family disputes and social pressures. His father, married to two women, had constant financial and domestic conflicts that tore the household apart. At one point, the father even filed legal complaints against his own sons in collaboration with their uncle, leaving Mohammed in constant fear of prosecution and imprisonment.
“After the complaints by our father and uncle, my brother would say: ‘I’m afraid of prison, I’m going to run away.’ He said he’d go to Basra to work and get away from the problems. But ‘Abu Aliyo’ convinced him through TikTok to go to Russia without anyone in the family knowing. Since that day, everything stopped. Four months have passed with no news,” Karar recounted.
Before this fateful journey, Mohammed was simply trying to make a modest living. But family strife and the threat of legal complaints pushed him to flee. His escape, however, led him to another path entirely, one that ended at the frontlines of the Russian war.
Karar speaks with anguish: “I could only reach my older brother through a few messages from Russia. He told me that ‘Abu Aliyo’ was the one who took him there. But this ‘Abu Aliyo,’ who recruits Iraqis to fight through social media, no longer answers my messages. I see him live-streaming and posting, but when I ask about Mohammed, he refuses to reply. He says Mohammed from Al-Musayyib is dead, but I don’t believe it.”
Mohammed’s story is not just an individual tragedy. It is a stark example of how poverty, family breakdown, and social neglect can drive a young man into a path of no return, turning his life into an anonymous entry in the records of a distant war, while his family waits desperately for either a sign of life or a death certificate to end their torment.
According to Iraq’s Ministry of Planning, the unemployment rate in 2021 stood at 16.5 percent. Among youth (ages 15–24), it reached 36 percent, highlighting the challenges in providing jobs for this demographic. Female unemployment stood at 28 percent, reflecting a significant gender gap in the labor market. Labor force participation overall was 39.5 percent, meaning more than 60 percent of working-age Iraqis were outside the labor force.
As for migration, while precise statistics are lacking, some studies suggest that around 74 percent of Iraqi migrants left due to deteriorating living conditions. Other sources estimate that between 4 to 5 million Iraqis live abroad—about 12 percent of the total population.
The phenomenon of Iraqis fighting abroad is not new. Since 2012, Shiite militias such as Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq, Kata’ib Hezbollah, Harakat al-Nujaba, and the Badr Organization fought in Syria alongside the Assad regime, backed directly by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. They justified their intervention as defending Shiite shrines, especially the shrine of Sayyida Zainab, and preventing the regime’s fall.
On the other side, Sunni jihadist groups also crossed borders. Elements of Al-Qaeda in Iraq moved into Syria after 2010, followed by the rise of ISIS in 2013, which shuttled thousands of fighters between Iraq and Syria without obstacles, declaring the so-called “Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham.” Iraqi fighters also reached Libya through ISIS networks, taking part in battles there.
With the war in Ukraine, this phenomenon has resurfaced. Iraqi mercenaries have again been documented fighting alongside the Russian army, recruited by intermediaries or companies like Wagner. Most came from impoverished areas plagued by unemployment, with several deaths among them already confirmed.
