Haryana youths chase Russian dream, perish in trenches

Rohtak/Hisar: When a flag-draped coffin reached Madanheri village in Hisar district, 170 km from Delhi, silence swept the dusty square. Twenty-eight-year-old Sonu had left just months earlier on a study visa — a ticket to a language course and a stable job abroad. Instead, he came back in a coffin. Across Haryana’s northern belt, grief has descended in a similar pattern on the families of Aman Punia, from the same village, and of Sandeep, from Rohtak district.  Youths were lured with promises of a high salary abroad, and then families had to deal with vanished agents and phones that fell silent once the young men reached the battlefield in Russia.

Sonu's brother Vikas recalls the moment when hope turned into horror. “He called once, said he was told to join security guard duty,” he says, holding a page of official-looking text printed in Russian. “He couldn’t read it. The next week they took his phone. They trained him for hardly ten days, gave him a gun, and pushed him to the border. When he realised it was the warfront, it was too late.”

In Sonu’s courtyard, the smell of incense mixes with diesel from tractors parked outside. Neighbours recall his last words — “I’ll come back with money.” Vikas flips through his brother’s documents again. “Look at this,” he says, waving the Russian contract. “None of us can read it. They made him sign, and we lost him.”

The last call came on September 3. Three days later, the family received the message that Sonu had been killed in a drone strike. “They sent his body, a uniform, a post-mortem paper — but no compensation, no message from any office,” Vikas says. “We had one acre of land. We borrowed ₹5 lakh to send him abroad. Now we have neither Sonu nor savings.”

Aman, Sonu’s friend and co-villager, left around the same time. His younger brother Ashu Punia says Aman always wanted to serve in the Indian Army like their grandfather, a retired soldier. “He couldn’t clear the selection, so he thought he’d go to Russia, earn money and support us,” Ashu says, standing outside their modest brick home.

Aman tried to use Google Translate on his phone to understand the contract — “They saw him doing that, snatched his phone and sent him into a forest area,” Ashu says. “Since that day, no call, no message. We don’t know if he’s alive.”

The Punias live off marginal farming and occasional labour work. Their home has become a gathering point for neighbours wondering how a “study visa” turned into recruitment for a foreign war. “He just followed his dream and vanished,” Ashu says quietly.

Sandeep’s trench video

In Taimpur village of Rohtak, Sandeep’s mother plays a shaky video on her phone. Her son is crouched in a trench, face smeared with dust, whispering that he wants to come home. Behind him, several Indian youths remain silent. “He went to study, but now he sends messages from a place with bombs” she says.

His elder sister Jyoti, a postgraduate in Hindi, says Sandeep never went abroad to fight. “He was trapped. He wanted to come back with some money, to pay our family’s debt, to give us a better life — a small house in the city, decent clothes, maybe a vehicle. We are daily wagers; even a few lakhs could have changed our lives. It was compulsion, not greed," she says.

Her mother, Jyoti says, has barely eaten since Sandeep last called. “He told us food came only once a day, dropped by drone. He was in the jungle and wanted to escape,” she says, wiping tears. “For a month now, there’s been no contact. What do we do?”

Their uncle Shree Bhagwan adds that families of other missing youths have joined together to demand action. “We protested at Jantar Mantar in Delhi on November 3. The government must bring them back,” he says.

The families’ accounts reveal a grim pattern — arrival in Russia, a crash training course of about ten days, confiscated phones, and immediate deployment to the frontline. Contracts are written in Russian; interpreters are missing. “My brother said they were warned, ‘If you refuse, you’ll be jailed,’” one father recalls.

Each time news breaks of an Indian killed in Ukraine, villages across Hisar, Rohtak and Fatehabad fall silent. Families count the days since the last phone call, wondering if the next message will carry their child’s name.

Indian embassies and the Ministry of External Affairs have acknowledged some cases and begun facilitating returns, but families say official help comes only after the tragedy. By the time missions are alerted, the youths are untraceable, phones switched off, passports seized. Recruiters change names, numbers, and offices faster than police can track. Families are left shuttling between police stations and online complaint portals.

Amid the mounting tragedies, former Hisar MP Brijendra Singh wrote to the Ministry in Delhi, raising the issue as one of “extreme humanitarian crisis”. His letter flagged the case of Sonu and other youths from Haryana who had gone to Russia on study or tourist visas, only to be allegedly pushed into combat roles. The letter asked the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) to intervene urgently, track the missing and ensure safe repatriation. The MEA responded by confirming Sonu’s death and stating that his remains are being transported to India after completion of formalities.