Struggle to find answers for woman whose husband died fighting for Russia

It is not a state any human being would want to find themselves in.

She has been living in it for nearly three months now.

A dead husband whose body she cannot access because it is thousands of miles away in a war zone. Without a breadwinner, uncertainty over second-term school fees for her four children has tripled her worries, after well-wishers helped her cover term-one fees this year.  The kiosk she was running in Ruaka collapsed because of the many days she had to be away after she learned of her own bereavement.

As 35 families that have lost loved ones last week sent petitions to Prime Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi, Labour CS Alfred Mutua and parliament seeking urgent parliamentary oversight, comprehensive status reporting, enhanced consular access, and accelerated repatriation efforts for relatives caught in Russia’s war, for 39 year old Grace Gathoni, compensation for the death of her husband is top on her list.

“I cannot support the family alone," she tells The Standard.

From the day she received news that Martin Macharia, her husband, a former matatu driver, had been killed in the Russian war frontlines, she has not remembered how many times she has been to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs seeking answers to the many questions that run in her children’s minds and her own.

It was December 1, 2025, when her youngest son ran towards her excitedly shouting “mum….mum….KTN is saying that daddy has been killed..”  That was the evening that The Standard Group broke the story of the first Kenyan to be officially announced to have died in Ukraine fighting for Russia.

The following day, The Standard crew was at her door after her relatives contacted the team soon after the story broke.

That was when Gathoni’s teary image appeared on the front page of The Standard on December 2, 2025.

For many Kenyans, it was the usual news which changes as days go by, for her, however, it was the beginning of emotional ups and downs and a whirlwind of trips from one office to another.

On one of the trips within the month of December, she stopped at The Standard Group because that was where news of her husband’s death had come from and spread across the country.

Accompanied by a lawyer, Chris Wainaina, of Ruaka-based Chacha and Company Advocates, she believed she could get answers on how she would get the body of her husband back home for burial.

“The widow needs to get a death certificate to be able to secure the future of her children,” Wainaina, the lawyer, had said “We have been to several offices and are wondering if you could have more information on how we can get the body. ”

Our sources in the Ukrainian Army had told us that Macharia had been killed together with another fresh recruit, a man from Nigeria, during intense fighting in what they described as ‘kill zone’ war front of Donesk, and his body would not be retrieved.

That trip opened her eyes to the fact that the authorities that had the answers were two: Kenya’s Foreign Office and Russia’s mission in Nairobi.

After she hit several dead ends at the Russian embassy, Wainaina’s law firm, Chacha and Company advocates wrote a formal letter to the Russian embassy in Nairobi.

The response came more than a month later, on January 24 2026, via a letter signed by the head of the Consular Section of the Russian embassy- a man named Alexey Zamilatskiy. The letter read in part.

 “The embassy of the Russian Federation in Nairobi……hereby communicates that the citizen of Kenya, Mburu Martin Machari, born 28/8/1987, signed the contract for serving in the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation on 25/10/2025”  The crisp, short letter said and added.

 “On 1/12/2025, he was declared missing in action”.

The letter further said, “In view of the above, the embassy kindly requests Chacha and Company advocates, as a legal representative of the family of Mr Mburu, to transmit this information to his relatives.”

Coming towards the end of January, the one paragraph letter was the first official communication from the authorities and cleared the air after she had received conflicting information from men claiming to be agents in Russia who said that her husband was still alive.

“A man sent a message to my sister-in-law’s number, claiming that Martin was alive and busy fighting on the frontlines” Gathoni tells The Standard “The man had been introduced to us by Martin, the day he landed in Russia.”

The letter from the embassy caused fresh anxiety in her heart -to squeeze out some truth from the department of diaspora affairs, at Kenya’s MFA, on the whereabouts of her husband’s body.  At first, officials there had no idea what the woman was looking for.
“Husband killed in Russia?” one wondered aloud. “Lady, what do you mean your husband was killed fighting for Russia against Ukraine?” They asked.

Today, two months down the line, Gathoni has become a familiar face at the country’s department of diaspora affairs. When she went there almost three weeks ago the officials, who change all the time as is usual with public offices, were warmer. They referred to her by name because of the many times she has been there.

That was also the time they informed her that Prime Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi would be travelling to Moscow next month (March) as the government seeks a permanent solution to the running problem.

A week later, Interior Cabinet Secretary Kipchumba Murkomen on February 12, informed a parliamentary session that Kenyans getting trapped in Russia’s war against Ukraine have grown in number and the issue is a major challenge to his department’s mandate to secure Kenyans.

Murkomen informed the house about intensified investigations against agencies duping hundreds of Kenyans with false promises for jobs on construction sites, hospitality and driving but after they land in Russia, they are coerced into joining the war frontlines against their wish.

“And so that’s why the Prime Cabinet Secretary is going there to have diplomatic engagement with the government of Russia on this particular subject because it is very painful. I know of a story where a family went there three sons and two were killed instantly. The agencies that are involved are being investigated.”

In one of the letters that Macharia, Gathoni’s husband, managed to send back to his family before he was dispatched into the heat of battle and killed there, he raised the issue of being duped. The letter addressed to Kenya’s embassy in Russia said he travelled to Russia through a recruitment arrangement facilitated by the Military Personnel Agency, represented by Mr. Alexander Loskutov, whose contact is he gives….The letter said that In Kenya, the agency’s representative was Mr Nikolay Vitalievich Nicolat. He cites the passport number and attaches a copy. Macharia further says in the letter

“According to the contract I was offered before my departure, the type of work I was to perform was in security services, cooking, or driving. However, upon arrival, I discovered that the actual assignment involved being issued a firearm and deployed toward the warfront in Ukraine, which was not stated in my contract and not the kind of work I agreed to undertake.”

He emphasised that he had no military or police background, “and I did not travel to Russia to participate in any armed conflict. I am extremely worried for my safety and wellbeing, as I find myself in a situation I neither consented to nor am qualified for. I therefore humbly request the urgent intervention of the Kenyan Embassy”.

As The Standard found out, Macharia’s letter was one of the many that several Kenyan men duped into Russia’s war as fighters and trapped on the battlefront had written to Kenya’s mission to Moscow. While some were lucky to be helped and made it back home, Macharia was not lucky. He was killed in war a few days after he got the letter to his family.

As Mudavadi travels to Moscow in mid-March, Macharia’s widow Gathoni has one call to him, “Help me get compensation for Macharia’s children to grow and get an education.