14ymedio interviews a Cuban captured by Ukraine on the war front
14ymedio, Xavier Carbonell, Salamanca, 6 April 2024 — When Ukrainian troops captured Frank Darío Jarrosay Manfugás, a 35-year-old musician from Guantánamo, he had neither helmet nor weapons. It was night. He had left a bunker with a Russian soldier with the mission of moving a battery to another base. Trying to track down the Russian, who had abandoned him, the enemy surprised him.
Now he is imprisoned somewhere in Ukraine, but at least, he acknowledges, he is alive. Three months – from his trip to Russia last January to his capture in March – were enough to disrupt his life, which he tells 14ymedio in great detail. It is the first time that a prisoner of war from the Island speaks with a Cuban or Latin American media, an exclusive conversation that the Ukrainian authorities provided to this newspaper.
Jarrosay and his companions now await the outcome of the conflict, about which they avoid commenting. According to the Ukrainian Army, neither Havana nor Moscow “want to take them” or answer for them. “In my mind there is no guilt. I haven’t killed anyone. I never touched a gun. I am not a mercenary even if they consider me one,” Jarrosay states bluntly.
In Guantanamo, Jarrosay graduated as a Geography and Mathematics teacher, a profession he abandoned to dedicate himself to music. In Cuba he left his parents, his grandmother and a brother. It had cost him work and a lot of money to buy the cell phone on which, one day, he saw a publication that promised him a work trip to Russia. “For a Cuban, going to another country to work is more than an achievement. My goal was to help my family move forward,” he alleges.
According to the Ukrainian Army, neither Havana nor Moscow “want to take them” or answer for them
Jarrosay says he does not remember the name of the Facebook profile where he saw the ad, to which he responded by stating that he had “experience in carpentry and masonry.” He also cannot say whether a Cuban or foreign person wrote to him. “I gave them my phone number and they sent me a message on WhatsApp. There was a form and a request to send copies of my license and passport. The blanks: name, sex, age, illnesses and abilities. The document was in Spanish and promised a salary: more than 200,000 rubles per month – just over $2,000 – to be transferred to a bank account in Russia.
“Shortly afterwards they told me where I had to leave from: the Varadero airport.” He didn’t hesitate. He sold his phone to pay for the trip from Guantánamo to Matanzas by car. “There were five Cubans on the plane. “We didn’t confide in each other.” When he arrived in Moscow, he was met by a person who spoke Spanish and who had a copy of his passport.
He was immediately transferred to a military base in Rostov, one of the Russian cities on the war front against Ukraine – where the Wagner Group was briefly based during its uprising against the Kremlin in June 2023. Jarrosay describes the place as “a warehouse.” There were other Cubans there, although he refuses to say the estimated num
