Iraq Becomes a Recruiting Ground for Russia’s War Machine

Desperation, corruption, and foreign influence are turning young Iraqis into cannon fodder for Russia’s army, dying in a war that has nothing to do with them.

It sounds unbelievable, but it is happening. Iraq, a country that has bled for two decades under American occupation, sectarian militias, ISIS, and Iranian interference, is now exporting its sons to die in the killing fields of Ukraine. Not because Iraq declared war, not because the Iraqi people chose a side, but because poverty, corruption, and foreign manipulation have made Iraqi youth cannon fodder for Russia.

The videos are undeniable. Iraqi boys, some barely out of their teens, stand in Russian uniforms on the frozen frontlines of Ukraine. One of them shivers in the snow and says to the camera that he is “on the frontlines” and may not return. Another confesses: "Don’t let anyone fool you, there is no safety here, the danger is above 95 percent.”

Why would anyone choose this fate? Because recruiters promise them what Iraq has never given them: money, land, and a future. One Iraqi fighter explained the deal in brutal terms—foreign recruits receive a signing bonus of $10,000 to $20,000, a monthly salary of $2,500, a piece of land, and a Russian passport after a year of service. Another adds that if he dies, his family will receive $200,000 in compensation—if his body is ever recovered. In Baghdad, the government offers nothing but unemployment and humiliation. In Moscow, the offer is death packaged as an opportunity.

The notorious Wagner Group has already pulled Iraqis into its web. In 2023, Wagner announced the death of Abbas Witwit, an Iraqi from Babil, calling him a hero. In reality, he had been taken from a Russian prison and thrown into the slaughter of Bakhmut. He came home in a coffin, and he will not be the last. Wagner, weakened after the 2023 mutiny and its founder’s subsequent death, left behind a system the Russian military has kept alive: scouring prisons, refugee camps, and broken economies to fill its ranks. Iraq, with its staggering youth unemployment rates, is fertile ground.

And herein lies the scandal. Everyone knows. Iraqi intelligence has files on recruitment networks. Families whisper about sons leaving on flights to “work” in Russia, only to vanish without a trace. European governments are investigating an Iraqi MP accused of arranging the transfer of fighters in exchange for money. One source told Middle East Uncovered that a sitting member of Iraq’s parliament was involved in sending volunteers to fight in Ukraine in exchange for high salaries. And yet Baghdad says nothing. No investigations, no prosecutions, no outrage. The ruling class that feeds off oil money and militia patronage does not care if Iraqi boys die in Kyiv or Kharkiv, so long as their own sons are safe in London or Paris.

And the whispers go further. Some sources inside Iraq say that Harakat al-Nujaba, led by Akram al-Kaabi, is one of the factions involved in recruitment. A message Middle East Uncovered received from someone connected to Iraqi circles claimed that the going rate for a fighter is $4,000, with $2,000 going directly to the faction running the recruitment. This is not just foreign exploitation; it is Iraqi factions selling off their own youth to Russia’s war machine. And Iran’s proxies inside Iraq are profiting from the blood money.

The human cost is unbearable. In one clip, an Iraqi fighter says, “Whoever goes up comes back wounded, and whoever doesn’t come back is dead”. Others speak of disappearing comrades: those who die are not even called martyrs, only “missing”. Families are left without graves to visit, without closure, and without answers. Imagine Iraqis who survived the 2003 war, the civil war, and ISIS, now sent to die in trenches thousands of kilometers away in a war that has nothing to do with them.

Iraq has entered the Ukraine war, not by strategy or sovereignty, but via human trafficking. Iraqi youth are sold to Russia’s war machine because their leaders at home have abandoned them. This is what happens when a state collapses into corruption and foreign dependency—the bodies of its young men become an export commodity. How many more? How many more Iraqis will die in someone else’s war before Baghdad wakes up? Or is the silence not ignorance, but complicity? Iraq is being dragged into the bloodlands of Eastern Europe, not as a nation with policy, but as a graveyard supplier. This is the bitter truth: Iraq enters the Ukraine war not as a player, but as a pawn. And thousands of young Iraqi men are paying the price with their lives.

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