By Mary Henderson
It has been estimated that Russia has recruited as many as 15,000 Nepali men to fight on the frontlines of its war in Ukraine.
Most recently, the death of forty-five-year-old Man Bahadur Tamang hit the headlines in February 2026 as the latest in a wider pattern of Nepali men, often facing unemployment or debt at home, travelling to Russia on visit visas or through informal networks before being recruited into the military, and all too often, never returning home.
In a domestic environment ridden with unemployment, low wages and lack of opportunity in Nepal’s own military, Nepalese citizens have become increasingly willing to look for better pay, higher pension options and associated social respect abroad. 70% of the Nepalese domestic workforce is employed in the informal sector, with its associated job insecurity and limited protections. The data for 2024 shows the country’s unemployment rate was 10.71%, while the youth unemployment rate is a staggering 20.82%. Unsurprisingly, mass youth-led protests followed in September 2025, setting fire to the Parliament building and toppling Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli’s government over allegations of widespread state corruption. Chosen via a chaotic online vote on the ‘Youths Against Corruption’ Discord channel, former chief justice Sushila Karki was sworn in via extra-constitutional means on September 12, the country’s first woman prime minister.
Meanwhile, the Russian government raised the salary of foreign fighters to $2000 a month in 2024 and made it easier than ever to gain fast-tracked Russian citizenship, only requiring one year of military service. Since then, hundreds of Nepali youths and retired veterans have enlisted in Russian forces as contract soldiers, often through exploitative human traffickers.
Nepal has had a long tradition of formally sending soldiers to fight for foreign militaries. Nepalese soldiers have served as elite voluntary units in both the British Army and Indian Army for over 200 years, with Gurkhas particularly renowned for their military skill and bravery. The Gurkha Contingent has also served with the Singapore Police since 1949. Joining foreign armies is thus a culturally recognised option for young Nepali people facing limited opportunities or debt at home.
Nepal’s government criticised Russia’s attack on Ukraine in 2022, one of the few Asian countries to do so. This was contrary to Kathmandu’s ordinary commitment to neutrality and nonalignment, marking a significant shift in its foreign policy. Analysts have posited that this could be not only a marker of Nepal’s support for the principles of justice and international law, but an attempt to minimise its reliance on its more powerful neighbours, India and China. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine did worry smaller, nonaligned nations who fear similar threat amidst regional struggles over territorial dominance. For Nepal, ideological alliance with the West, and the US in particular, could be a way of keeping Beijing and New Delhi at bay.
However, despite the country’s neutral foreign policy priority, these soldiers are joining as private citizens, without a formalised recruitment agreement between Russian and Nepal.
International humanitarian law has no prohibitions over the recruitment of soldiers from neighbouring countries. While there is nothing, therefore, distinct about Nepali soldiers joining the Russia-Ukraine war, there is an issue with lack of clarity over how many and in what conditions these soldiers are fighting.
The Nepali government has declared that only 200 Nepalese are fighting for the Russian army and that at least thirteen have been killed in the war zone. Lawmakers and human rights campaigners have challenged this, however, arguing that this is a vast underestimation of the actual figures. The former foreign minister Bimala Rai Paudyal told the upper parliamentary house in February 2024 that between 14,000 and 15,000 Nepalis are fighting on the front lines, citing the testimonies of soldiers returning from the war zone and demanding the Russian authorities release the actual numbers.
Returned Nepalese soldiers recount a large number of recruits from across the global south, with language barriers between instructors and trainees. A former fighter claimed this was a large contributing factor to the deaths of many Nepalis on the front lines, often having to resort to hand signals or voice-translating apps to communicate with Russian officers, leading to confusion over instructions. The Russian army is now larger than it was at the start of the war, with an estimated 30,000 troops being recruited a month, including drives in Armenia, Cuba, Nepal, and Kazakhstan.
Others have described a lack of basic facilities on the front line, and extremely a brief training period before being sent into combat, with the claim that Russia was using them as cannon fodder in the war.
Suman Tamang told CNN, “It’s the Nepalis and other foreign fighters that are actually fighting in the front of war zones. The Russians position themselves a few hundred meters back as support.”
He also described a lack of modern fighting machinery in his unit for their losses, compared to Ukraine’s use of drones.
Families and rights advocates have continued to urge the government to engage with Russia diplomatically to stop recruiting Nepali citizens, ensure their safety, and facilitate the return of the bodies of those killed in the war to their families. It appears that progress has been slow, and it has not been determined yet what the legal consequences for those who defy the ban to travel to Russia for work or participate in the war against Ukraine will be.
It appears that Tamang, whose tragic story has so renewed questions over the ever-increasing number of Nepalis fighting against Ukraine, was unfortunately killed on the evening of February 10 while stationed at the frontline post between Soledar and Siversk in Russian-occupied Ukraine.
Burdened by debts in his poultry farm business, Tamang had left for Russia in 2023 in search of paying off his loans and making enough money to support his wife and young daughter. Plans had been made for his family to join him in Russia, when the news came through of his death.
Official instructions are that soldiers are not allowed to leave until the end of the conflict. The desperate search of hundreds of vulnerable families for their missing loved ones indicates a fundamental failure in state accountability and foreign-labour protection system in Nepal.
Image credit: Reuters
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and may not reflect the opinions of The St Andrews Economist.