6 Nepali KIA and 4 POWs in Ukraine

The number of Nepalis in the Russian Army appears to be much higher than the 200 that Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal estimated last week, even as news came of the sixth known Nepali killed in action on the Ukraine front.

Bharat Shah (pictured above), 36, was killed on 20 November in the strategic town of Avdiivka but the family received the news only on 15 December. A fellow Nepali conscript in the Russian Army informed the family that Shah had been wounded but died when he did not receive emergency treatment in time. 

Shah was working as a ‘royal guard’ in Dubai, but had been attracted by the promise of a much higher salary and promise of Russian citizenship. He was flown to Moscow only three months ago along with other Nepali recruits.

"I had told him time and time again not to go to Russia to become a soldier because we had heard bad things,” Shah’s younger brother Mahendra told Nepali Times. “We had always feared the worst.”

After hearing about Bharat Shah’s death, his family in Kailali district performed a cremation ritual on the banks of the Karnali River on Saturday without his body. Shah leaves behind a wife, a son, and a two-month-old daughter.

However, like the other Nepalis killed in action, there has been no information from the Russian military about Shah. Indeed, Russia has not officially acknowledged that there are foreign mercenaries in its army fighting in Ukraine.

Another young man from Kanchanpur who is also in the Russian Army in the ‘Red Zone’ on the Ukraine front broke military regulations to send a mobile text message to his family that fighting was fierce, it was really cold, and that there was little chance of him making it out alive. 

He also said that there were 200 Nepalis just in one camp where he had been trained, and believed that there were many more.

Soldiers on the frontlines are not allowed to use mobile phones for fear of being tracked by the Ukrainians. A few Nepalis are also fighting on the other side in the Ukrainian Army. 

Four Nepali prisoners of war are also in detention by the Ukrainians, and Foreign Minister N P Saud said on Friday that he is using diplomatic channels to bring them home. Among them are Pratik Pun from Dang, Siddharth Dhakal of Kavre, and Bibek Khatri of Bardia – all captured from Bakhmut and Zaporizhia sectors in the past three months.

Among those killed in action besides Bharat Shah are Pritam Karki of Syangja, Raj Kumar Roka of Dolakha, Sandip Thapaliya, Rupak Karki of Kapilvastu and Ganga Raj Moktan of Ilam. A Russian website published photos of the graves of Thapaliya and Karki who it said were killed in June in Bakhmut. Their names are engraved in Cyrillic script on the tombstones.

The Nepal government has tried to control nationals going to Russia, except on business and student visas, and arrested a dozen recruiters said to be involved in supplying soldiers to the Russian Army last week in Kathmandu. 

However, recruiters and human traffickers are now said to have moved their operations to the Gulf where they are actively recruiting Nepalis working there as security guards. Some of the Nepalis in the Russian Army are either former Maoist guerrillas or retired from the Nepal Police or Army.

Ram Chandra Khadka is from Khara in Rukum, which saw a fierce battle between the Maoist militia and the Nepal Army in 2002. Khadka himself rose to be Company Commander with the Maoists, and after the ceasefire served in Afghanistan.

Khadka, 36, was recruited by agents in October in Kathmandu and sent directly to the frontlines where he was wounded by a mortar round dropped from a Ukrainian drone in Bakhmut. He is being treated for shrapnel wounds in a Moscow hospital.

Several Nepalis have deserted the Russian Army and one of them who somehow found his way back to Kathmandu in November warned fellow Nepalis in a video interview with Himal Khabar not to fall for the promises of human traffickers.

Recruiters promise Nepalis six months of training during which they are paid Rs500,000 a month, that they will fight behind Russian soldiers, and will get Russian citizenship. However, even if they are paid the Nepalis get much less than promised and are sent to the frontlines with less than a week’s training where they are used as human shields to expose Ukrainian firing positions.

There have been so many Nepalis trying to desert that one Nepali POW in Ukraine said Russian units have taken away the passports of Nepali recruits and put them under surveillance in the trenches on the frontlines.