The Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine Has Exposed a Scheme to Legalize and Recruit Foreign Mercenaries for the War Against Ukraine

9/19/2026

The Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine has identified at least 27 citizens of Yemen whom the russian side plans to involve in the war against Ukraine. Military structures of the rf are directly involved in processing these individuals’ paperwork, which indicates a well-established administrative mechanism for recruitment.

In July 2026, chief of the contract military service recruitment center in khanty-mansiysk lieutenant k. pervushin, approached the border guard service of the rf’s fsb with a request to legalize the stay of some citizens of Yemen on russian territory. The aim of the request was to sign military service contracts with those individuals once their status had been legalized.

The legal basis for this legalization was putin’s decree No. 821 of November 5, 2025, which established a temporary procedure for granting citizenship of the rf and issuing residence permits. Formally, the document is a migration regulation; however, in reality, it is used as a tool to supply manpower for the war against Ukraine.

According to a well-established pattern, a foreigner is first granted legal status in russia through a simplified procedure, and only then is he or she enlisted as a contract soldier. In this way, the recruitment of foreign citizens into the rf’s armed forces has become systemic, involving the fsb border guard service and specialized military commissariats.

Among the citizens of Yemen identified by the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine, there are individuals born in 2006 and 2007 – that is, very young people whom the kremlin is willing to send to war in exchange for money and the promise of legal status in russia.