Indonesia Urges Russia to Stop Recruiting Its Citizens Into Ukraine War - The Diplomat – Asia-Pacific Current Affairs Magazine

Indonesia has officially urged Russia to stop recruiting Indonesian citizens into its armed forces following a report last week that an Indonesian national was killed while fighting in Ukraine.

According to a report in the state news agency Antara, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Yvonne Mewengkang said on Sunday that Jakarta had conveyed its objection to Moscow through diplomatic channels.

“The Indonesian government has asked the Russian government to take the necessary steps to ensure that Indonesian citizens are not recruited into the Russian military or other military-related formations through any channel,” Yvonne said.

She added that Jakarta had asked Moscow to formally designate Indonesia as a country whose nationals are excluded from military recruitment, which other nations, including India, Sri Lanka, Colombia, and South Africa, have already done.

The past year has seen growing numbers of Indonesians drawn into the Russian army. As per Antara, the move came after Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence Directorate (HUR) reported on October 27 that an Indonesian identified by the initials MT, born in 1978 and formerly employed as a taxi driver in Jakarta, had been killed on the frontline in Ukraine. The man “reportedly signed a one-year military contract but was killed approximately one week after being deployed to the battlefield,” it reported.

Ukraine’s Foreign Intelligence Service (FISU) also said on August 27 that it had documents on at least eight Indonesians who were recruited into Russia’s army. It stated that Indonesia “has joined the list of countries that the Kremlin has turned into yet another source of cheap manpower for the war.”

As Radityo Dharmaputra wrote in a recent feature for The Diplomat, in many cases these people have been attracted to Russia by the prospect of civilian employment, only to find themselves tricked or forced into joining the armed forces. This has been complicated by the fact that Indonesian institutions opened a formal labor channel to Russia this year, as relations between the two nations have grown warmer.

“The scheme Moscow uses to recruit foreign cannon fodder has already been tested in dozens of other countries,” the FISU claimed in its August 27 statement. “Promises of high pay, non-combat duties, expedited Russian citizenship, and social benefits attract people who, more often than not, have no idea where they are actually being sent.”

As Radityo wrote in early October, the issue had previously been overlooked despite (or because of) the increasingly close relationship between President Prabowo Subianto and Russian president Vladimir Putin. Jakarta “counts the personal closeness between Prabowo and Putin as an asset, yet it has made no public use of that closeness to aid the citizens caught in this recruitment trap,” he wrote, contrasting it with other nations that had intervened with Russia at the highest level to stop their nationals being recruited by the Russian military.

The report that Indonesia has now made an official protest with Moscow is a sign that Indonesia is finally taking concerted action to protect its citizens abroad. One security analyst who has researched the issue said in a post on X that Jakarta’s announcement was a “significant development on a topic that went unacknowledged for a long time.”

In Sunday’s press conference, Yvonne urged Indonesians considering overseas employment to exercise caution, verify job offers through authorized institutions, and avoid signing contracts that they do not fully understand, Antara reported. She also said that prospective workers should be suspicious of any job offers promising unusually high compensation.