The Cubans – two 19-year-olds identified as Alex Vega and Andorf Velasquez – recounted how they ended up wounded in battle alongside Russian forces in Ukraine.
Speaking from what they said was a military hospital in Russia’s Kaliningrad region, the two said they had traveled to Russia “to make some money,” a trip they said was arranged and paid for up front, by a trio of women: two Russian, one Cuban.
When they arrived in Moscow, the pair told a popular Cuban video blogger, they were forced to sign a Russian-language contract they did not understand and were then sent to the provincial city of Ryazan, where they were housed in a school dormitory.
They ended up on the front lines in Ukraine, digging ditches -- and eventually being wounded, they said in the August 2023 video.
Nearly 44 months into its all-out assault on Ukraine, Russia has deployed nearly 700,000 men to wage its war, according to Ukrainian and Western estimates. And Moscow has cast its net wide to keep up the flow of personnel: some 12,000 North Koreans are believed to be fighting alongside Russian forces.
First among other nationalities? Cubans.
SEE ALSO: Russia Turns To Cuban Recruits As It Struggles With Conscription, RFE/RL RevealsUkrainian intelligence estimates several thousand Cubans have been recruited, many of them tricked into fighting alongside Russian units. An internal US State Department cable seen by Reuters put the number of Cubans fighting in Ukraine around 5,000, and the Cuban government, US officials allege, is actively supporting them.
According to Ukrainian officials who traveled to Washington last month to brief congressional leaders, at least 20,000 Cubans in total are “awaiting travel and deployment” to Russia.
Hundreds, possibly thousands, of Cubans may been recruited by a 41-year-old, multi-lingual travel agent from Ryazan: more than 3,000 foreigners, in fact, according to a letter written by her lawyer and obtained exclusively by Systema, RFE/RL’s Russian investigative unit.
And she wasn’t alone.
A growing number of Cubans have publicly complained about being tricked into fighting in Ukraine-- including these 2 men who went on a popular Cuban video blogger's show in August 2023
‘Cubans In Moscow’
Since the outset of the Russian invasion, a patchwork network of recruitment schemes has emerged, sometimes with formal state approval, sometimes with less official backing. Private mercenary companies like Wagner Group, for example, built their own approved recruiting pipeline, targeting Russian prison inmates.
SEE ALSO: Inside Russia's Improvised System For Mobilizing Men For The Ukraine War: An RFE/RL InvestigationThe details of how Vegas and Velasquez got to Ukraine are murky; neither could be located for further comment.
However, their description of the journey shares several details overlapping the scheme orchestrated by Yelena Smirnova, a Russian woman who ran her own travel agency in Ryazan, a city about 200 kilometers southeast of Moscow.
Their story also overlaps with that of Frank Manfuga, a 36-year-old Cuban man who was captured by Ukrainian troops in March 2024, three months after joining the Russian military. In interviews with Schemes, the investigative unit of RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service, he claimed he was tricked into boarding a Russia-bound plane with the promise of a job in construction.
Sometime in early 2023, Smirnova began posting Spanish-language job announcements on Facebook and the Russian equivalent, VK, in a Spanish-language group called "Cubans in Moscow.”
The job postings, which have since been deleted, offered a signing bonus, a monthly salary of around 200,000 rubles ($2,000), and eventually Russian citizenship. The amounts were vastly higher than average wages in Cuba.
Smirnova and her co-workers posted Spanish-language job advertisements on social media, recruiting Cubans for work.
Under terms of the contracts, detailed in the defense lawyer’s letter obtained by Systema, Smirnova would front the costs for a recruit’s travel from Havana to Moscow, accommodation in Russia, and related expenses.
After arriving in Russia, the person would then reimburse her for these expenses after signing a contract. Smirnova or her co-workers would make a copy of the person’s bank card and withdraw an initial payment from it—to cover their expenses.
A May 2023 article in the newspaper Ryazanskiye Vedomosti detailed how a group of new recruits, from Russia as well as Cuba, had signed new contracts. “The main motivation is to help our Motherland in these difficult times for her, and the financial component is a nice bonus,” the paper quoted a local military recruiter as saying.
A May 2023 article in a Ryazan newspaper described a group of recruits who signed up to fight in Ukraine. Among them Cubans.
‘Twisting The Facts’
By the summer of 2023, however, a group of around a dozen Cuban recruits began to refuse to make payments to Smirnova. Some months later, several Cubans claimed in media interviews that she had skimmed money from their bank accounts. Two formal complaints were filed with police on April 25, 2024, and a third the following day.
That same month, Smirnova was arrested, charged with theft, and jailed.
In a letter to Russia’s human rights commissioner, Smirnova’s defense lawyer Sergei Poselyagin protested her client’s prosecution, and detention, saying investigators were “twisting the facts” and she was the victim of a conspiracy. He requested that Smirnova be granted early release in exchange for signing a Defense Ministry contract, to serve as a translator in a signals intelligence unit.
The letter was provided to Systema from Ukrainian lawmaker Marian Zablotskiy, who was among those who traveled to Washington last month. He said he obtained the letter from sources he did not identify.
In the letter, dated October 23, 2024, Poselyagin wrote that Smirnova has been involved in the recruitment of more than 3,000 Cubans and other foreigners. He wrote that Smirnova told all the recruits that she would be recouping her up-front payments from their bank accounts after a contract was signed.
He claimed the 11 people who filed complaints were pressured to do so by law enforcement officials.
Poselyagin did not respond to Systema's inquiries sent via e-mail.
Three of the people who signed complaints against Smirnova are Cuban citizens, according to information from a leaked database of police reports that was reviewed by Systema.
One of them, identified as Rene Fleitas, has a Facebook account, where he posted a photograph on March 11, 2025, showing him standing in Moscow with the Kremlin in the background.
The man did not respond to messages sent to him via Facebook. However, a relative identified as Fleitas’s cousin told Systema via Facebook message, complained that Fleitas had been deceived, and ended up on the battlefield. The cousin said Fleitas was now missing.
Soap Flowers
In the Cubans’ police complaints against Smirnova, another woman named Olga Shilyayeva was also named as alleged co-conspirator. Shilyayeva, a 41-year-old, part-time hairdresser whose husband serves in a military aviation maintenance brigade, worked closely with Smirnova handling contracts for foreign recruits.
In this image posted to VK on April 30, 2025, Olga Shilyayeva, one of the people who worked with Smirnova, is shown apparently after being deployed to Ukraine.
According to a mutual acquaintance, who spoke to Systema on condition her name be withheld, Smirnova and Shilyayeva were seen constantly at the Ryazan recruitment center, formalizing contracts for between 30 and 40 people a day.
A Cuban woman who worked as a nanny for Smirnova, caring for her three children, also assisted, helping with the paperwork, purchasing tickets, and meeting arriving recruits.
Smirnova, who could not be reached for comment, was released from pre-trial detention earlier this year. Shilyayeva also declined to comment when contacted by Systema via her social media accounts.
However, another acquaintance of the women told Systema both had been sent to Ukraine sometime in the spring of 2025. Тhey were currently serving in a unit made up mainly of former prison inmates, attached to a brigade of Russia’s 1st Tank Army, the person said.
Some of the Cubans, when they arrived in Russia, did not know they were going to war, according to the mutual acquaintance; they believed they were going to work on construction sites or similar jobs.
The acquaintance also pinned the lion’s share of the blame for defrauding the Cubans on a 37-year-old Cuban woman who lives in Russia named Dayana Diaz.
Diaz’s VK page features a photograph of her wearing a hat with the letter V and the Russian flag on it, along with a Cuban flag patch on her sleeve. A Telegram account she runs advertises bouquets made out of soap elaborately carved in the shape of flowers, among other things.
Dayana Diaz, shown here in a social media image, with a Cuban flag on her shoulder. She is one of several people identified who worked with Smirnova to recruit Cubans.
Diaz’s phone number is featured in the Facebook and VK recruitment ads posted by Smirnova. In the "Cubans in Moscow" Facebook group, some individuals accuse her of deceiving their acquaintances. The two men who appeared in the 2023 YouTube video also mention a woman named Dayana.
Systema contacted Diaz via her Telegram account and asked if she helps foreigners find employment and sign military contracts.
"No,” Diaz replied.
Tour Under Cover
It’s unclear to what extent the recruitment scheme allegedly overseen by Smirnova operated with official approval. Systema found no evidence pointing to direct ties between her or her alleged co-conspirators and intelligence agencies or the military, other than Shilyayeva’s enlisted husband.
However, obtaining visas and travel permits for scores, if not hundreds, of Cubans and other foreigners would have drawn scrutiny from the Foreign Ministry, the Interior Ministry, or other government agencies.
Zablotskiy, the Ukrainian lawmaker, said he believed Smirnova’s operation was conducted with the knowledge of the FSB or GRU, two of Russia’s principal intelligence agencies.
"Tour operators have traditionally served as a cover for [Russia] for logistics,” he told Systema. “Specifically, in the case of Cuba, they are not essential. We see recruitment by FSB and GRU agents, whose identities are reliably known.”
“The fact that one of them also had a tour operator [as part of the scheme] is not at all surprising," he said.
A spokeswoman for Russia’s Foreign Ministry directed questions sent by Systema to the Defense Ministry, which did not respond to e-mails.
In Havana, Cuba's Foreign Ministrydisputed US allegations that its troops were fighting in Ukraine
"Cuba is not part of the armed conflict in Ukraine, nor does it participate with military personnel there, or in any other country," it said in a statement October 11.
The ministry said it did not know how many nationals were involved on either side of the conflict, but said it had "a practice of zero tolerance for mercenaries, trafficking in persons and the participation of its nationals in any armed confrontation in another country."