{"id":591713,"date":"2026-10-20T21:52:37","date_gmt":"2026-10-20T18:52:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/reform.news\/?p=591713"},"modified":"2026-10-21T10:13:16","modified_gmt":"2026-10-21T07:13:16","slug":"belarusian-citizens-rank-among-top-three-sources-of-foreign-recruits-for-russian-army","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/belarusian-citizens-rank-among-top-three-sources-of-foreign-recruits-for-russian-army","title":{"rendered":"Belarusian Citizens Rank Among Top Three Sources of Foreign Recruits for Russian Army"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"fb-root\"><\/div>\n<p>Russia recruited more than 16,000 foreign mercenaries in the first nine months of 2026. The largest numbers came from Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Belarus, <a href=\"https:\/\/t.me\/Koord_shtab\/23599\">Ukraine\u2019s Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War reports<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Since the start of the war, a total of 45,959 foreign nationals from 151 countries have signed contracts with the Russian army.<\/p>\n<p>In 2022, 94 foreign nationals were recruited into the Russian armed forces, followed by 4,067 in 2023, 8,877 in 2024 and 16,085 in 2025.<\/p>\n<p>In the first nine months of 2026, Russia recruited 16,168 foreign nationals, while its target for the full year is 18,500.<\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cThe largest numbers of foreign nationals have been recruited in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Belarus. At the same time, recruitment is growing fastest in countries in Africa and Latin America,\u201d<\/em> the Coordination Headquarters said.<\/p>\n<p>Since the beginning of this year, 1,449 Colombian citizens, 699 citizens of Burundi, 530 citizens of Zimbabwe and 503 citizens of Peru have signed contracts with the Russian armed forces.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Russia recruited more than 16,000 foreign mercenaries in the first nine months of 2026. The largest numbers came from Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Belarus, Ukraine\u2019s Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War reports. Since the start of the war, a total of 45,959 foreign nationals from 151 countries have signed contracts with the Russian [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":119,"featured_media":568879,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sharing_image":{"poster":"https:\/\/reform.news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/6ad8660f9ed67.jpg","width":1200,"height":630,"template":"691142dd","mode":"auto"},"_sharing_image_fieldset":{"dTVKfmI95PYT":"Belarusian Citizens Rank Among Top Three Sources of Foreign Recruits for Russian Army"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[142338,143291,143284],"tags":[143118,143121,143123],"class_list":["post-591713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-army","category-world","tag-belarus","tag-rossijsko-ukrainskaja-vojna","tag-ukraina"],"wps_subtitle":"","permalink_manager":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/119"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=591713"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591713\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":591715,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591713\/revisions\/591715"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/568879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=591713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=591713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=591713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}