A TELEPHONE rings in a rural household, and for a moment, there is relief; a son is alive on the line. But his words tumble out in panic: there is no work, no money, and his passport has been confiscated. Strangers in uniform pushed a Russian-language contract across a table, then handed him a rifle. The family, having borrowed and begged to finance his journey, listens in horror, powerless as the line goes dead. Sometimes it never rings again.

These young men were no clandestine migrants. They did not flee in fear of law, they passed openly. Every step appeared lawful, every stamp official. They obtained clearances from the Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training. They held smart cards, training certificates, visas issued by Russia and contracts bearing the name 'Sinopec Engineering Group Russia LLC'. Their families bade them farewell at Dhaka airport, reassured that formal documentation offered protection. Instead, that documentation became the snare.

THE ruse begins at home. Recruiters, invoking the name 'Sinopec,' appeal in villages, promising lucrative oil-and-gas construction jobs, dollar salaries, safety. The cost is ruinous for rural households: four to seven lakh taka (or more). Land is sold, jewellery pawned, loans secured. The travel plans look immaculate, all stamped, all sealed. Mothers weep blessings as their sons step onto planes.

In Russia, the façade crumbles. The promised worksites are closed, delayed, or fictitious. Workers are herded into cramped flats, told to wait. Their passports are taken 'for processing.' No wages materialise. Days stretch into weeks of hunger and dread. This engineered despair is the opening traffickers exploit. A fixer emerges, offering a better job, a new site, quicker permits. But the 'meeting' is never an office. It is a subway platform, a car park, a country road. Phones and papers vanish. Men in uniform arrive. From then on, coercion takes over.

Some workers are coerced into signing enlistment contracts they cannot read. Others are beaten until they relent. Some are told enlistment is their sole escape from detention. A few receive cursory training; others are sent straight to the frontline. The next images their families glimpse show sons in full combat gear, weapons slung across shoulders, faces ashen and bewildered. Some never send any images at all. They simply vanish.

THE proof is stark. Russian visas explicitly list 'Sinopec Engineering Group Russia LLC' as employer. A Sinopec site identity card appears in one case file. A Russian enlistment contract signed by a Bangladeshi labourer sits in another. Dog tags shown by families bear serials from the same batch, evidence the men were processed en masse. Approval memoranda from Bangladesh's own ministry confirm that over 1,100 workers were cleared under Sinopec's name. The system was not bypassed, it was complicit.

HERE the tale broadens. Sinopec is no obscure broker. It is China's largest oil refiner, a state-owned industrial colossus. And this is not solely a Bangladeshi problem. In October 2023, Ukraine's National Agency on Corruption Prevention officially designated Sinopec, alongside counterparts CNPC and CNOOC, as 'international sponsors of war,' citing joint ventures with Russian firms that funnel tax revenue to Moscow's military-industrial complex.

These were not fringe accusations but government designations by a state at war. At minimum, Sinopec's name was weaponised; at worst, its operations may have enabled diversion. Either way, Bangladesh had a heightened duty of care when approving mass recruitment of workers under Sinopec in Russia, a duty unmet.

THE names make this real. Ayan Mondol is believed to have died in Ukraine; his mother still keeps his sandals by the doorway. The last photos of Amit Barua show him in uniform before he disappeared. Nine families gathered at a Dhaka migration centre clutching Sinopec visas and Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training clearances, pleading for intervention from the Foreign Ministry. Dozens more linger in limbo, haunted by the fear that the last call they received will remain the last. These men did not ask for riches, only the dignity of safe overseas work. Instead, many were sent to their deaths.

THIS is not smuggling. It is trafficking in its purest form: deception, exploitation of vulnerability, coercion. The legality of the papers acted as a mask. It lulled families into trust. It invested traffickers with credibility. It converted approval stamps into instruments of harm. When the very State's documents became part of the trap, betrayal deepened.

Bangladesh cannot evade responsibility. Why did Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training issue scale approvals to a company already under international suspicion? What due diligence did our mission in Russia perform before attesting employer letters? Why has the Foreign Ministry not acted decisively on rescue petitions from distraught families? Every payment to each agent leaves a trail. Every recruiter number is traceable. Silence faced with this weight of evidence is not bureaucratic delay, it is complicity.

THE global pattern shows this is not isolated. Migrants from Central Asia and Africa have been coerced into Russia's forces under analogous schemes. Russia has constructed a shadow army of foreign fighters and convicts. But for Bangladesh, the wound is graver; the deception carried the State's own seal. The system meant to guard citizens became the conduit delivering them to war.

THE remedy is not abstract. Rescue must come first. This demands swift coordination between the Foreign Ministry, embassies, humanitarian actors to extract Bangladeshis trapped in conflict. Families deserve a single point of contact and honest, timely updates; even when the truth is unbearable. Accountability must follow. Recruitment to high-risk employers must be suspended and re-verified. Agencies entwined in diversion must lose licences and face trafficking prosecutions. Airport and immigration officials should be trained to flag cohorts destined for Russia linked to suspect employers. These are not radical demands but the bare minimum of responsibility.

Sinopec too must answer. Were the invitation letters truly issued by it? Who handled recruitment? What oversight existed? If its name was abused, what actions has it taken to halt that abuse and assist the victims? Families now clutch Sinopec paperwork in one hand and their sons' dog tags in the other. That contradiction must be resolved.

BEYOND policy and recrimination lies a balance of human loss. A wife replays a video clip so she can hear her husband's laugh. A father rereads a final text promising money that never came. A mother answers every unknown number, praying to hear her son's voice rather than artillery in the background.

This is not migration. It is betrayal, carried out under official seals. Until truth is told, until sons return, until responsibility is confronted, these are not isolated tragedies. They are the product of a system. And that system is ours to dismantle.

Licensed to work, forced to fight