Arash Darbandi, a 34-year-old photographer from Ahvaz in southern Iran, came to Russia in search of work and never imagined he would become part of a war.

Axar.az informs in an interview with UNITED24 Media, he describes how an ordinary attempt to earn a living spiraled into coercion, detention, and ultimately forced conscription into the Russian army:

- Tell us the story of how you got into the Russian army?

- It was either February 2 or February 3 when I was walking on the street and got into a fight with a police officer. After that, they detained me and took me to an administrative office, a military barracks in the city, in an area called Ligovsky Prospekt.

After that, they told me that I either had to go to prison for three to five years, or go to the war for one year. I told them that I would not go to war and that I had no interest in it. I said that I had made a mistake and got into a fight with a police officer, that a problem had occurred, and now I needed to resolve that problem. I told them that the maximum legal punishment for me, as a foreigner, should be deportation from their country.

But they told me that this was not Iran and not anywhere else in the world. They said, “This is Russia, and you must go to war.”

You can read the full interview here.