When Ramaya Anjarana, a 29-year-old steel fitter from India, decided to go to Russia for a job in construction, he wasn’t particularly worried that the country was at war.
His brother had worked there and assured him that everything seemed safe and normal. The wages, more than double what he could make back home, would help pay down debt that his family had taken on for a house and weddings. And thousands of Indians were going to Russia, part of a broader wave of workers drawn by a labor shortage.
But then Russia’s war in Ukraine hit home for him.
In May, Mr. Anjarana was killed during a Ukrainian attack on the oil refinery in southern Moscow where he was employed, according to Vasudev Reddy, the chief executive of Mycon Engineering, the Indian staffing firm that recruited Mr. Anjarana for the job. As workers gathered near the entrance after their shift, a blast threw Mr. Anjarana backward, causing a fatal head injury, Mr. Reddy said. A number of Indian laborers were injured.
They and many other foreigners have ended up in the cross hairs as Ukraine has used its growing arsenal of drones and missiles to strike Russia’s oil refineries and e-commerce warehouses, sometimes hitting targets thousands of miles from the front.
Ukraine, under pressure from President Trump, has not struck refineries for the past two days but has said it will agree to an extended cease-fire only if Russia stops attacking Ukrainian energy infrastructure.
“There was never any fear before this,” said Devendra Patana, an Indian welder who worked alongside Mr. Anjarana in Russia. Now, Mr. Patana said, “my wife and mother keep telling me to be careful.”
Russian strikes in Ukraine have killed far more civilians, but the toll in reverse, among Russians and foreign workers, has grown as Ukraine has struck deep inside Russia nearly every day for months.
Eight citizens of Uzbekistan and a citizen of Tajikistan were killed during an August drone attack on an oil refinery and industrial area in the Tatarstan region, some 550 miles east of Moscow. In July, a Tajik citizen was killed outside Moscow during a strike on a warehouse belonging to Wildberries, Russia’s answer to Amazon.
Even before Ukraine stepped up its long-range strike campaign, foreign workers from poorer nations were recruited into risky Russian positions. In 2024, when Ukraine attacked one of Russia’s main drone production centers, citizens of Kyrgyzstan, Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Congo, Kenya, Nigeria and South Sudan were among those wounded, Russian media reported.
Four workers at Wildberries warehouses told The New York Times that North Korean women had been working for months at the facilities, which are now subject to regular evacuations because of Ukrainian strikes. They are part of a broader influx of North Korean workers, a violation of United Nations sanctions.
Ukrainian strikes aren’t the only risks to foreigners. The Indian government published an advisory on Sept. 30 warning its citizens about being recruited into the Russian military. Central Asian migrants have also ended up at the front.
Because of a demographic crisis, Russia has relied on migrant workers for decades, but the war has exacerbated the labor shortage. Hundreds of thousands of Russians fled the country in 2022 after the invasion and a subsequent draft. Men left civilian jobs when they went to the front.
A recent economic slowdown has eased the labor shortage slightly. But the unemployment rate is still close to a record low, 2.2 percent in September.
The makeup of Russia’s foreign labor force is changing as Moscow looks to assert greater control over its migrant population.
More Indian, Chinese and North Korean workers have arrived, while many migrants from Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan have left. After Tajiks associated with the Islamic State attacked Moscow’s Crocus City Hall in 2024, killing 151 people, stricter rules and an anti-migrant backlash prompted Central Asians to leave.
Even so, workers from Central Asian nations that were once part of the Soviet Union remain the biggest migrant group.
Delnoz Yusupova and her husband, Umedjon Yusupov, moved from Tajikistan about five years ago to Sofino, a town about 20 miles outside Moscow, with their children, Ezoza, now 15, and Behriz, 19. The parents found work at warehouses and logistics centers that serve the capital.
Ms. Yusupova was working at a warehouse belonging to Yandex, the Russian online services company, when a barrage of Ukrainian drones flew toward the town on Sept. 20, the final day of Russia’s parliamentary election, according to her brother-in-law, who declined to provide his name because he feared for his safety if he spoke to a reporter.
After the warehouse employees evacuated, Ms. Yusupova headed home to her husband and children and went to a makeshift ground-floor shelter in their apartment building.
At one point, the family went outside to get some air when a projectile slammed into the third floor, sending bricks, shrapnel and metal flying. According to her brother-in-law, Ms. Yusupova died immediately, her husband died in the hospital, and both children were wounded, with Ezoza needing three operations to save her life.
It had been the parents’ 22nd wedding anniversary, he noted as he cleared out the family’s apartment in Sofino, which was covered in a thick layer of brick-red dust.
“My brother and his wife were born on the same day, in the same year,” he said. “And they died on the same day, together.”
Oleg Matsnev, Anastasia Kuts and Milana Mazaeva contributed to this report.
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