An Iranian photographer who travelled to Russia in search of work says he was coerced into joining the Russian army and sent to fight in Ukraine, pro-Kyiv media outlet UNITED24 Media reported, citing an interview with the 34-year-old man.
Arash Darbandi, a photographer from Ahvaz in southwestern Iran, told the Ukrainian outlet that he arrived in St. Petersburg on a tourist visa and supported himself by taking photographs of passersby.
“I took photos of anyone who was dressed in colorful clothes. If they liked the photo, they paid me 1,000 rubles ($10-11),” he said.
Although trained as a petroleum engineer, Darbandi said photography had been his main livelihood.
He acknowledged knowing that Russia was at war with Ukraine but said the conflict initially felt distant. That changed after an encounter with police that led to his detention.
According to Darbandi, he was arrested following an altercation with a police officer and taken to a military facility on Ligovsky Prospekt.
He said authorities gave him a stark ultimatum: prison or the battlefield.
“They told me that I either had to go to prison for three to five years, or go to the war for one year,” he said.
When he objected and argued that deportation should be the maximum punishment for a foreigner, he said officers replied: “This is Russia, and you must go to war.”
Iran emerged as one of Russia’s key military backers since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Tehran has been accused of supplying Russia with hundreds of Shahed-series attack drones, which have been widely used against Ukrainian cities and infrastructure.
Western governments and Kyiv say Iranian-made drones have played a central role in Russia’s aerial campaign, a charge Iran has repeatedly denied or downplayed.
Self-harm to avoid war
Darbandi said he was held in barracks for months before being sent to a training center near Belgorod.
Fearing deployment, he said he deliberately injured himself, breaking his arm, but was still not exempted from service despite Russian law.
“I had never even held a knife,” he said, stressing he had no military background.
He described training as minimal and coercive, saying recruits were treated as expendable.
“They didn’t treat us as humans; they only saw us as expendable and just wanted to send us to the front so that the Russians could live safely,” he said.
Darbandi said foreign nationals—including Iranians, Africans, Arabs, Kenyans, and Colombians—were segregated from Russian soldiers.
“Foreigners have no rights at all; at any moment, they can take whatever they have,” he said.
He said he was later wounded during a Ukrainian drone strike and captured after being left without assistance for days.
Reflecting on his situation, Darbandi said he feels guilt over his forced participation and urged others not to cooperate with governments he accused of exploitation.
“Never help countries like Russia, Iran, and countries that support terrorists. Please stop the war.”
The account has not been independently verified. Iranian, Russian, and Ukrainian officials have not publicly commented on the case.
Recruitment drive in Tehran
Earlier this month, flyers circulated near the Russian Embassy in Tehran that invited men to enlist in the Russian army for promises of dollar payments and contracts “directly under the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation.”
The Russian embassy denied any connection to the leaflets.
The flyers targeted men aged 18 to 45 and offered starting bonuses of $15,000 to $18,000 and monthly salaries of $2,500 to $2,800, along with free housing, medical care, and military uniforms.
Tehran-based outlet Rouydad24 said the leaflets directed readers to a Telegram channel that had published multilingual posts in Persian, Russian, Arabic, and English, describing the campaign as a “state-supported initiative.”
The Iranian report compared the flyers to similar alleged recruitment efforts in India, Nepal, Sri Lanka and several African countries, which foreign media have described as part of Moscow’s drive to attract foreign fighters amid heavy losses in Ukraine.
On Wednesday, former Afghan police general Ikramuddin Sari was shot dead by masked assailants near his home in Tehran, according to sources close to him.
He was attacked alongside an associate near their residence in southern Tehran and died while being transferred to hospital, the sources told Afghanistan International.
Sari, a former police commander in Baghlan and Takhar provinces, fled to Iran after the Taliban returned to power in 2021. Reports in recent months had suggested Iranian police had detained and questioned him, though no official explanation was given.
Taliban's 'extraterritorial assassinations'
The killing follows the September shooting of Maroof Ghulami, a political and military figure close to veteran anti-Taliban leader Ismail Khan. He was killed by gunfire in the religious city of Mashhad.
People close to both men have blamed the Taliban for their deaths, according to Afghanistan International.
The attacks, an Afghan military source said, signal the start of what he described as Taliban “extraterritorial assassinations,” adding that the group has repeatedly threatened to target opponents abroad.
Senior Taliban official Mohammad Nabi Omari has previously said the group could kill opponents outside Afghanistan “with as little as 500 Pakistani rupees,” while Saeed Khosti, a former spokesperson for the de facto Taliban Ministry of Interior, warned two years ago that hundreds of volunteers were ready to target critics overseas.
Iranian authorities have remained publicly silent on Sari’s killing. Tehran has also provided no detailed update on the investigation into Ghulami’s death.
Iranian police said in September they arrested three suspects in that case but later released two, offering no clarity on affiliations.
A source familiar with the investigation told Afghanistan International that the remaining suspect was a Taliban operative, a comment not confirmed by Iranian authorities.
Calls for accountability
Sari, originally from Kapisa province, was regarded as a professional officer who served as police commander in Nuristan, Baghlan and Takhar, and as an adviser to Afghanistan’s interior ministry.
In Iran, he acted as an informal representative for former Afghan soldiers, advocating for their rights, opposing deportations and openly criticizing the Taliban.
The National Resistance Front of Afghanistan (NRF), led by Ahmad Massoud, called on Iran to conduct a “transparent, serious and independent” investigation, describing Sari’s killing as a “targeted terrorist act.”
The Jamiat-e Islami Afghanistan, led by Salahuddin Rabbani, also condemned the killing and urged Iranian authorities to identify those responsible.
Iran, which has handed Afghanistan’s embassy in Tehran and the consulate in Mashhad to the Taliban, has faced growing criticism for failing to protect Afghan dissidents on its soil even as it seeks closer ties with the Taliban-led administration.
“Israel does not have the capacity for an intense war of attrition or for confronting a major power like Iran, and it is clear that another war would not end in 12 days as the previous one did,” Javan wrote in an analysis on Wednesday.
The 12-day war between Iran and Israel in June 2025 was a brief but intense conflict. It began with extensive Israeli airstrikes on Iranian military and nuclear facilities.
The United States became militarily involved mid‑conflict. On June 22, US Air Force and Navy forces carried out coordinated strikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities – Natanz, Fordow and Isfahan – in an operation codenamed Operation Midnight Hammer, using B‑2 bombers and submarine‑launched missiles, marking the first US offensive against Iranian territory in decades. Iranian forces fired missiles at US assets in Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, after those strikes.
The conflict ended with a US and Qatari-mediated ceasefire, but it caused significant casualties, infrastructure damage.
Israeli rhetoric, the paper said, has shifted from threats of decisive victory to language of caution and warnings about the costs of renewed conflict.
Air strikes, according to Javan, failed to halt what it called Iran’s “distributed and self-sufficient” military production. The paper also argued that the previous fighting severely strained Israel’s multilayer missile defense systems.
“Israeli officials are now openly speaking of the ‘real threat’ posed by Iran’s missiles and warning that without preventive action Iran could reach annual production of thousands of missiles,” the paper said.
Focus shifts from battlefield to society
Javan framed the change in tone as evidence that the military option has lost credibility, writing that the inability to control the consequences of war has weakened Israel’s long-standing doctrine of absolute military superiority.
“War in the contemporary world is not merely a military confrontation, but a test of social capacity, political cohesion and national resilience,” the paper wrote, arguing that internal divisions, political strains and reliance on external support limit Israel’s ability to endure a prolonged conflict.
The article concluded that future confrontation will be shaped as much by narratives and domestic resilience as by missiles and air defenses.
“Our sources in Tehran now tell us that, in October, Khamenei decided to give the green light to the development of compact warheads for ballistic missiles,” the report said.
The report said Khamenei had previously blocked any move to enrich uranium to weapons-grade levels or to develop deliverable nuclear warheads, despite pressure from within Iran’s security establishment, particularly the Revolutionary Guards.
It said the June conflict with Israel marked a turning point, exposing weaknesses in Iran’s air defenses and allied forces, while highlighting the limits of its missile arsenal in a prolonged conflict.
“The only true deterrent that could save the Iranian regime in the event of a conflict against Israel and its US allies would be nuclear weapons,” the report said.
Enrichment still capped, for now
“At the same time, however, Khamenei would still not have authorised uranium enrichment beyond 60%,” the report said, adding that rumors persist of an undisclosed enrichment effort at a covert site not declared to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
It said Iran appears to be prioritizing warhead design over enrichment to reduce the risk of exposure to military strikes.
The report said that even if Iran chose to move quickly on enrichment, developing a deliverable warhead would take far longer.
“While enrichment to 90% would require only a few weeks if there were still enough working centrifuges, compact warheads remain a far more complex challenge,” it said, citing Pakistan’s experience in the 1990s, when years of testing and design work were needed before a viable compact warhead was achieved.
Missiles at core of deterrence
Iran’s focus on compact warheads is tied to its medium- and long-range missile force, which the report said proved decisive in forcing a ceasefire with Israel in June, even as Israel destroyed a significant number of Iranian missiles and launchers.
Recent contradictory reports over possible missile activity in Iran, later denied by state television, underscore the sensitivity around the country’s missile program and its role in deterrence.
The report said Iran could seek external assistance to shorten the timeline for developing compact warheads, noting persistent rumors within the Revolutionary Guards of cooperation with North Korea.
“Even access to previously tested warhead schematics would represent a major shortcut,” it said, while adding that cooperation beyond missile technology remains impossible to verify.
Iran has long said its nuclear program is peaceful and defensive, while Western governments accuse Tehran of keeping open the option of developing nuclear weapons.