Andean Group - September 2026

Russia’s ambassador in Lima, Alexei Ushakov, was summoned by Peru’s foreign ministry on 10 August to answer questions about the recruitment of Peruvians for Russia’s war in Ukraine. Concerns have also been growing in Bolivia in recent months about the extent of Russian recruitment efforts.

A foreign ministry statement said that President Keiko Fujimori’s government summoned Ushakov to “express the Peruvian government’s position regarding the situation of Peruvians killed or disappeared in the war between Russia and Ukraine”. The previous day, the foreign ministry had announced that 459 Peruvians were confirmed as having enlisted to fight for Russia, of which 11 had been killed, 114 had disappeared, and three had been captured by Ukraine.

The summoning of the Russian ambassador came amid growing concern about a Russian recruitment network seeking fighters from Latin America. A 28 June report by US broadcaster CNN stated that Peruvians are being lured to Russia with employment offers for jobs such as cooks. Similarly misleading recruitment tactics have also been reported in African and Asian countries. A 9 August foreign ministry statement urged the public “not to be fooled by false employment offers, because you could fall into criminal human trafficking networks”. It noted that fighting on behalf of a foreign country requires the approval of the Peruvian government and called on the public to report foreign military recruiters to the police.

Similar concerns are growing in neighbouring Bolivia, where on 18 July three people were charged with human trafficking in relation to Russia’s military recruitment efforts. Mijail Cavero, a prosecutor in the eastern department of Santa Cruz, told journalists that the recruitment was carried out over social media. Bolivia’s foreign minister, Fernando Aramayo, said on 21 July that 26 Bolivians are known to have travelled to fight for Russia, of whom 20 “maintain active contracts”, four have been wounded, one killed, and one repatriated to Bolivia. He said that President Rodrigo Paz’s government has launched diplomatic efforts to secure the Bolivians’ return, including a meeting on 17 July between Aramayo and the Russian ambassador, Dmitry Verchenko, and a consular mission which travelled to the occupied Ukrainian territory of Donetsk in early June.

The Russian embassy in Bolivia issued a statement on 14 July to “robustly deny any link between this diplomatic mission and the alleged recruitment of Bolivian citizens to participate in the special military operation”. It said that Russian defence ministry data shows that “numerous” Bolivians have also travelled to fight for Ukraine, and that “many of them lost their lives”. The statement questions why the enlistment of Bolivians in the Ukrainian army did not receive “comparable attention”. The number of Bolivians and Peruvians who have joined the Ukrainian military is not publicly available.

Regional comparisons

The FIDH report states that, based on open-source reports, between 1,000 and 8,000 Latin Americans have joined the Russian armed forces. This contrasts with over 10,000 recruits from Central Asia, around 1,800 from South Asia, and between 1,700 and 4,000 in Africa, “with actual figures likely to be much higher”.

Cuba leads Russia’s Latin American recruitment efforts

A 29 April report by the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), an NGO headquartered in Paris, stated that “Cuba stands out in terms of intensity of recruitment to the Russian army”, in contrast with “sporadic” recruitment from other Latin American countries. The report cites Ukrainian military intelligence as saying that 20,000 Cubans have been recruited by Russia since early 2023, “forming one of the largest foreign contingents in the Russian military”. The report also cites a lower figure from newswire Reuters, which quoted US diplomats as saying in October 2025 that 5,000 Cubans were fighting for Russia.