Russia has been systematically forcing Central Asian labour migrants into military service in Ukraine, using arrests, threats of torture, and deportation of family members to compel men from Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan to "volunteer" for combat, according to accounts gathered in Ukraine. Hushruzjon Salohidinov, a 26-year-old Tajik courier, told journalists he was held for nine months in a Saint Petersburg pre-trial detention facility before prison staff threatened him with sexual violence unless he signed a military contract — one of tens of thousands of similar cases documented by human rights groups. Ukraine-based prisoner support organisation Hochu Jit reports that losses among these conscripts are "catastrophic," with an average front-line life expectancy of roughly four months, reflecting what observers say is a deliberate policy by Moscow to exploit migrants from politically dependent Central Asian states as Russia struggles to recruit enough of its own citizens to sustain the war.