Hyderabad: Telangana resident Mohammad Sufiyan was also among the Indian youths recruited in the Russian army against their will. After the intervention of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, 45 youths illegally recruited in the Russian army have returned home. Mohammad Sufiyan has expressed his gratitude to Prime Minister Narendra Modi for returning home safely. Sufiyan has been able to return after being stranded on the war-torn border of Ukraine-Russia for months. Sufiyan, a 22-year-old youth from Telangana, said that he had no hope of returning at all. He expressed his gratitude to PM Modi and the central government for ensuring his return home.
Mohammad Sufiyan said, “I still cannot believe that I have returned home. The horrific scenes of the war going on there are still fresh in my mind. Sufiyan was working as a support staff in the Russian army in the war with Ukraine and he returned home safely on Friday night. Sufiyan is a resident of Narayanpet district of Telangana. He thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Telangana government and the media for helping him return. Describing the entire incident, Sufiyan said that a Mumbai-based employment agent had promised him a job as a security guard, after which he reached Russia via Chennai and Dubai in December 2023.
Sufian told his eyewitness account of the war
Sufian said that he was taken to the Russia-Ukraine border and given training there, after which he was assigned tasks like loading goods in vehicles and building bunkers. Sufiyan and others like him realized that they had been misled, but they could not establish contact with the main agent. Sufiyan told that he was posted close to the front line, where he could not sleep at night due to the war, due to which his health deteriorated. Sufiyan told that later when he narrated his problem, he was transferred to a ‘green zone’ in the Russian-controlled Ukrainian region, about 60 km from the front line.
Sufiyan said, “We stayed in the jungle for eight months. The central government arranged air tickets for us from Moscow to Delhi.” During a conversation in July this year, Sufiyan’s family had expressed hope that their son would return home after Prime Minister Modi’s visit to Russia. During his visit to Russia, Prime Minister Modi had raised the issue of sending back Indian citizens working as ‘support staff’ with the Russian army as soon as possible with President Vladimir Putin ‘very strongly’, after which Putin had agreed to this demand.