Yekaterinburg student endures Myanmar captivity
Volunteer Svetlana Sherstoboyeva, who helped free 21-year-old Madina from Yekaterinburg, shared details of her detention in Myanmar. The girl went abroad for work in June 2025 and ended up in a fraudulent call center, where she was illegally held and forced to work.
«Madina arrived in Thailand on the invitation of an «employer,» after which she was forcibly transported by boat to Myanmar and forced to work in a call center,» Sherstoboyeva said. «She saw so much that it makes your hair stand on end. In the last three months, since Belarusian Vera Kravtsova died and repressions began, she only had cold water to wash, she ate only rice and water, and she was beaten.»
Currently, the freed student has been sent to a migration center in Myawaddy (a town on the Myanmar-Thailand border). A plane ticket to Russia has already been purchased for Madina, and tomorrow she is expected to return to Yekaterinburg.
The girl«s family lives in a Ural village about 100 kilometers from Yekaterinburg. Madina»s father died in 2018, leaving her mother with four children. She has a younger sister and two brothers.
In Southeast Asian countries, a transnational criminal network operates that recruits Russians and citizens of the CIS under the pretext of employment in Thailand. Some were invited to Bangkok after an «online interview,» had plane tickets bought without a visa, and were transported bypassing official border control.
Madina has not told her family about her experiences in Myanmar. Earlier, her mother gave an interview sharing details about her daughter.
