Kenya leads Africa in combatants' supply to Russia, many duped into army service

As thousands of African citizens fall victim to Russia’s predatory recruitment in its effort to replenish dwindling numbers on its war frontlines, Kenyans could be leading other African countries in contributing thousands of jobless youth as fighters to Russia’s war against Ukraine.

At a time Kenya’s Foreign office has been giving self-effacing numbers, claiming that only 252 men are confirmed to be serving on the frontlines, last week it emerged that of the 4000 men from the African continent recruited in the Russian army, Kenya could have contributed more than a quarter of that number-1500. Some were enlisted knowingly while others were duped in an ongoing predatory recruitment, according to a report by three rights groups under the umbrella of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), released in Ukraine’s capital Kyiv on April 29.

The report put together through interviews with Prisoners of War, army deserters’ testimonies, Ukrainian prisoners of war department records, incorporating efforts of  Ukraine based Truth Hounds (TH), and the Kazakhstan International Bureau for Human Rights and Rule of Law (KIBHR), gives an unflattering account of a network of human trafficking that corroborate testimonies by returnees that have been speaking to The Standard since October last year.

“Kenyans fighting in that war are many”. Said Javan Okoth (not his real name), one of the returnees last week, “Our WhatsApp group alone when we went in May 2025, had 100 members, all of them left Kenya on different dates in the same month. Others had left earlier, while others came after us. I saw hundreds of Kenyans there before I managed to escape.”

Coming more than a month after Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov responded to questions by Kenyan journalists in Moscow, in the presence of Kenya’s Foreign Minister Musalia Mudavadi, thus;

“All the Kenyan nationals and other nationals taking part in the special military operation are doing so voluntarily in accordance with the Russian law. And under this law, they can terminate their contracts before it expires.”

The report is an indictment of Kenya’s inability to stand for its citizens fighting and dying in a war that is not of their own.

A transcript of the March 16 meeting, made available to The Standard, reveals a systematic public relations game played on Kenya’s delegation that was led by Mudavadi. The transcript reads: “…We understand this concern for the citizens of Kenya. Like any other normal country, all governments must take care of their nationals, of their citizens and all the requests, all the inquiries that we receive from the Kenyan Embassy in Moscow regarding every Kenyan that is taking part in the special military operation. We immediately relay to the Defence Ministry. So all these matters can be discussed and resolved with the Defence Ministry…….”

Appropriately titled Combatants, Mercenaries of Victims Trafficking? Russia’s exploitation of Foreign Fighters in its war against Ukraine the report draws from testimonies of prisoners of war (POWs), interviews with military and human rights experts, as well as open-source research, concluding that over 10,000 recruits from Central Asia, approximately 1,800 from South Asia, between 1,700 and an estimated 1,000 to 8,000 from Latin America, have joined the Russian Armed Forces, with actual figures likely to be much higher. The number of foreign fighters increased by more than 30 per cent between September 2025 and February 2026, and Ukrainian intelligence has identified plans to recruit an additional 18,500 foreign nationals by the end of 2026.

THE report assessed the legal status of foreign fighters serving on Russia’s side and their treatment by the states concerned. It identified avenues for state and individual responsibility under international law. Specifically, it mapped regional recruitment patterns in Central Asia, South Asia, South West Asia and North Africa (SWANA), Africa, and Latin America, providing an in-depth legal analysis of the conduct of Russia as the recruiting state alongside as North Korea, Cuba, Kazakhstan, Kenya, and Nepal, which emerged as leading states of origin

Liubov Abravitora, Director of Africa and the regional African Organisations Directorate at the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said at the launch that Kenya has turned out to be the leading country in supplying its youthful population to Russia’s predatory recruitment schemes

“……I remember the first cases, as ambassador to South Africa, the first cases were from Zambia, who came back in coffins, and that was the first alert, and it provoked African governments themselves to start talking with the Russian government. We are today conducting an awareness campaign, our ambassador in Kenya, a country that is facing a huge number of people who signed contracts with Russia, we have wanted to hear from them what mechanism they are using to minimise that recruitment”

Roman Romano, a Human Rights and Justice Program Director at the IRF (International Renaissance Foundation), told the sitting about the double standards that Russia has been playing on countries of the Global South, where it treats Asians much better than Africans

“We have seen a clear sign of double standards on the side of the Russian Federation. For instance, the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, visited Mr Putin and asked him to bring back all the Indians, and President Putin agreed. And then recently we had the same mission by the Kenyan Foreign Minister asking about absolutely the same, and yet Russia did not agree to it”. Said the researcher

 He said that for Russia populations from the Global South offer numbers to the Russian army as expendables. “The Africans are much easier, much cheaper from the side of the Russian budget. When you analyse those contracts, and I had a chance to look at some of them, first of all, those contracts are only in Russian, so many people did not even understand all the content. And I don’t know whether Russia did not have a budget to produce a translation of the contracts into English or other foreign languages, why is that?

He said a contract signed by one Kenyan, which he looked through, had one question in English despite the rest being in Russian. On responding to the question as to why he was seeking a job in Russia, he had given an explanation that was crossed out and, in its place, written ‘to support Russia’.

“So, it is clear that people were instructed what to put in this contract to allow Mr Lavrov to put these words publicly and say ‘oh, these people came to support Russia in its war with Ukraine”.

In the days preceding Mudavadi’s trip to Moscow, parliament had seized the matter, pushing authorities to find a solution to the running problem with MPs, among them Julius Sunkuli of Kilgoris, seeking answers from the departmental committee on Defence and foreign relations.

Said Sunkuli, “Several people from my constituency, namely Caleb Lebunge Koringo, Nixon Kebenei, Kelvin Lemashon, Billy Ledama, Teresa ole Kaparo, Ledama Lopez, Danson M Keiwa, Benson and David Kibet were taken to Russia under false pretence……Can we get a Statement from the Cabinet Secretary for Interior and National Administration on how we will ensure the safety of our people when they are recruited by these agencies to go to other countries?”

In mid-February, the Majority Leader at the National Assembly, Kimani Ichung'wa, tabled a report by the National Intelligence Service.

“So far, over 1,000 Kenyans have been recruited and have departed to fight in the Russia-Ukraine war,” Ichungwah told the house on the afternoon of Wednesday, February 18

“Kenyans leave the country on tourist visas to join the Russian Army through Istanbul, Turkey, as well as Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (UAE). However, due to increased interception of these travellers at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA), the recruits have changed tactics. They are travelling through Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and South Africa to avoid detection”. 

Ichungwa said ongoing investigations had “established the existence of an organised transnational trafficking syndicate recruiting Kenyan citizens under false pretences and deploying them to active conflict zones in Russia. “While significant progress has been made, investigations remain active, particularly regarding arrest of additional suspects, forensic analysis of digital evidence, rescue of victims already trafficked and resolution of legal barriers affecting evidence collection”.

Since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, hundreds of reports have documented the presence of foreign nationals fighting alongside Russian forces on Ukrainian territory. From Cuba to India to Cameroon, individuals from across the world have appeared on the battlefield, participating in a conflict far from their countries of origin.

As early as 2022, the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defence assessed that Russia was suffering significant personnel losses that would need to be replaced by the Russian Armed Forces (RAF) and “other sources”. For Russia’s political leadership, the recruitment of foreign nationals has indeed emerged as a means to replenish the vast losses sustained by the RAF, while avoiding another highly unpopular mobilisation and continuing to pursue a battlefield strategy of overwhelming Ukrainian defences with expendable personnel.

In the years that followed, the developing world increasingly appeared to serve as a major recruitment ground for these additional foreign fighters. While the involvement of foreign mercenaries or volunteers had already been observed since the beginning of the war in 2014, the inflow of foreign nationals into Russia’s military forces reached an unprecedented scale after February 2022.

According to the Ukrainian Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of the Prisoners of War, since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion, at least 27,000 foreign nationals from more than 130 countries and unrecognised territories have joined the pro-Russian forces. They are recruited from both their countries of origin and from within Russian territory. It is extremely difficult to establish the exact number in each category, as all recruits eventually pass through Russian territory for the formalisation, training and dispatching phases of the recruitment process.

Recruitment and transfer operations targeting foreign nationals outside Russia have relied on a combination of transnational networks, the report said. It involves both state and non-state actors. These networks operate through online platforms such as Telegram and Facebook, and private intermediaries.

Many potential fighters have been lured through misleading representations, such as promises of civilian employment in Russia, non-combat military roles or facilitated access to Europe. In several cases, the involvement of Russian security services, the Federal Security Service (FSB), personnel from diplomatic missions and other state agencies, such as so-called “Russian Houses”, indicate a level of state control or oversight of these processes.

Furthermore, Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has implicitly approved the practice by issuing tourist visas.

Regardless of how recruits arrived in Russia, all were directed to military recruitment centres or bases. At the point of signature, contracts were presented in Russian to individuals who did not read or understand the language, often without any explanation and in circumstances that made refusal impossible. Recruits were repeatedly assured by intermediaries and recruiters, both public officials and private actors, that they would not be sent into combat.