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Police in Bangladesh have arrested two men accused of running a trafficking ring that lured at least 30 Bangladeshis to Russia with promises of construction jobs, only to hand them over to the Russian military. At least 20 of them have been killed.

Getting into it: Bangladesh’s Special Response Battalion said Wednesday it arrested alleged ringleader Mizanur Rahman and Abu Taher, and is hunting for three others: another local member of the ring, a Russian man and a woman believed to be involved. The victims, mostly from poor families across nine districts, each spent roughly $8,000 to land the promised jobs, with some taking out huge loans.

They arrived in Russia on May 7 and were stripped of their passports and phones. After only three weeks of training, they were deployed to the front. Police say drones killed 17 of them on their first day in combat, and three others died later. Of the survivors, two are hospitalized in Moscow, two have made it home and six remain at the front. One returnee, Rajon, was paralyzed from the waist down in a drone strike and crawled almost 2.5 miles on his stomach to get back to camp. Many families learned their relatives were dead but never got the bodies back.

“Bangladeshis were used as bait to locate enemy positions,” battalion commander Mohammad Asaduzzaman said. “Russian forces determined their next course of action after the Bangladeshis fell victim to drone attacks.”

Asaduzzaman said the men “had no physical preparation, military training or tactical skills for warfare,” and that investigators have found early signs the same scheme pulled in recruits from other countries.

Around 28,000 foreign nationals from 136 countries are believed to be serving in Russia’s army, and Amnesty International has accused Moscow of using “deceptive, coercive and exploitative practices” to recruit them, which Russia denies. A Code for Africa report last month found a network of at least 135 websites and channels targeting young people in poorer nations with fake job listings that leave out the war entirely, with much of the network running on Western servers.

This all comes as governments across Africa and Asia crack down on Russian recruitment schemes, with six Zimbabwean men pleading guilty in South Africa last week to planning to make their way to Russia and enlist, and Kenya pushing to bring home citizens taken prisoner on the Russian side.