Inside death benefit claims in Russian blood money

The job advert looks ordinary. A construction job, a security contract or even a film role. A Kenyan, Ghanaian or Zimbabwean job seeker clicks on a Facebook advert, submits passport details through a professional-looking website and is soon moved to WhatsApp by a recruiter.

The pitch rarely mentions war. Only after the visa is issued and the flight booked does the reality emerge: the promised job is a route into Russia’s war in Ukraine.

A new forensic investigation published today by Code for Africa’s iLAB has now put a price on the machinery behind that recruitment. One operator pays sub-recruiters up to US$4,760 for every candidate delivered, while another advertises a US$60,000 payment to a recruit’s family in the event of death.

But there is a problem with that promise: investigators found no evidence that any family has received it.

Of the 272 Ghanaians the BBC believes have gone to Russia, 55 are reported dead. Across three independent counts examined by iLAB, about one in five identified African recruits has been killed.

The report, titled “Death Benefits: the industry selling Russia’s war as a job”, was published for the African Digital Democracy Observatory (ADDO). It maps what investigators describe as a covert, competitive and profitable recruitment industry that has previously emerged only in fragments.

The investigation identifies 289 digital assets – 197 websites and web pages, 19 social media accounts and 73 messaging routes across WhatsApp, Telegram, VK and Russia’s state-backed MAX app – operated by 33 competing recruitment groups.

“Recruiting foreigners to fight in Russia’s war is no longer only a state campaign,” the report states. “It is a covert, competitive and profitable industry.”

The investigation’s most striking finding is the money attached to each recruit. One operator offers sub-recruiters up to 400,000 roubles, or about US$4,760, for every candidate delivered. Paid Facebook adverts running since September 16 in Côte d’Ivoire and Sierra Leone promise “WE PAY $1,000” to anyone who delivers a man with a ticket to Russia.

“The Russian state is the only buyer,” the report says, describing a market in which suppliers compete to be paid for every recruit they deliver.

For Kenya, the numbers are already significant. A classified National Intelligence Service report presented to Parliament in February found that more than 1,000 Kenyans had been recruited into Russia’s war effort. Of these, 89 were reported to be on the front lines, 39 hospitalised, 28 missing in action and at least one confirmed dead.

Victims rescued from an apartment complex in Athi River had signed contracts committing them to pay up to US$18,000 for visas, travel and accommodation.

Kenyan recruitment was also documented in a February 2026 dossier by Code for Africa’s ADDO, which named Global Face Human Resources Ltd and Ecopillars Manpower Ltd as central players in what authorities described as a “well-coordinated recruitment scam”.

The dossier described recruits being “locked in rooms”, having their phones seized and being forced to sign contracts in Russian without interpreters or lawyers. Some were allegedly driven at night to military bases, given less than two weeks of basic combat training and deployed to infantry positions where survivors described themselves as “cannon fodder”.

The recruitment routes stretched well beyond Kenya, with recruits moved through the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Africa, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Uganda, often travelling on tourist visas.

READ: How UK ban saved Kenyans from notorious Russian recruiters

Agents promised salaries of up to Sh449, 000, or US$3,500, a month and signing bonuses as high as KSh1.67 million, or US$13,000.

The untested embassy promise

The new iLAB investigation, however, identifies a claim that may be even more consequential for families of recruits.

IRC Russian Bear, described as the network’s flagship brand, advertises approximately US$15,000 to sign, US$3,000 a month in wages, between US$8,000 and US$32,000 for injuries and US$60,000 in the event of death.

The website says the death benefit is “paid to relatives via the RF embassy”. That is a specific claim involving a specific payer, a specific payment route and identifiable beneficiaries. Yet iLAB says it found no evidence that any family has received the promised compensation.

The report describes the death benefit as a particularly powerful recruitment tool because it addresses one of the most obvious objections to joining a foreign war: what happens to the family if the recruit dies?

It also leaves governments with a question that can be answered.

The report challenges the foreign ministries of Kenya, Cameroon, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal and Zimbabwe to ask Moscow in writing whether death benefits have been paid through Russian embassies to families of nationals killed while serving Russia.

The implications, iLAB argues, run in both directions. Evidence of payments would raise questions about the role of the Russian state in the recruitment transaction. A denial would raise questions about the truthfulness of the promise being used to persuade recruits.

Kenya’s Foreign Affairs Ministry has already acknowledged that the compensation question remains unresolved.

In a confidential briefing in February, Principal Secretary Musalia Mudavadi wrote, “The Ministry has not confirmed whether any Kenyan national has received the full compensation provided for in the contract”.

The Russian embassy in Nairobi has denied encouraging Kenyans to fight or issuing visas to people seeking to participate in what Moscow calls the “Special Military Operation”.

The iLAB investigation portrays the recruitment operation as a fragmented market rather than one centrally controlled network.

At the top are franchisers selling recruitment as a business model. Beneath them are four branded agencies – Military Staff Agency, Work in Russia, IRC Russian Bear and Work Crew Agency – recruiting abroad. A third tier consists of smaller start-ups and individual freelancers.

“The most accurate description of the network is several operators running the same playbook and competing for the same recruits, rather than one conspiracy with a head office,” the report states.

That fragmentation creates a significant enforcement problem. Closing one recruiter or website may remove a single route into the system without disrupting the wider market.

The infrastructure supporting the recruitment operation also extends into Western technology.

IRC Russian Bear served recruitment pages from a server in Amsterdam, while six Military Staff Agency sites moved to an Amsterdam-registered address on September 18. Swedish AI and US website builders were used to generate pages, while forms created with an Austrian software product transmitted applicants’ personal information to Russia.

“Built with Western tools,” the report says, describing an outer layer made largely from consumer software sold by companies headquartered in NATO and European Union member states.

The investigation identified 16 Meta advertising pixels concentrated in a single file, together with Google Ads, Search Console and TikTok identifiers that could potentially help platforms trace accounts and advertisers.

ALSO READ: Government agency fails to clear the air on jobs in Russia advertisements

For Code for Africa editor-in-chief Justin Arenstein, that infrastructure represents a more significant enforcement opportunity than simply taking down individual websites.

“Removing web pages is a week’s inconvenience,” he said. “Closing the ad accounts, payment channels and hosting behind them is what makes recruitment by deception unprofitable.”

From drone factories to the front line

The recruitment of Kenyans into Russia’s war effort extends beyond battlefield roles. An Associated Press investigation published in October 2024 found that young Kenyan women were among more than 200 recruits from East and West Africa enlisted to assemble weapons in wartime Russia.

They were taken to the Alabuga Special Economic Zone in Tatarstan, about 1,000 kilometres east of Moscow, where they worked on Shahed-136 exploding drone warheads.

The women, aged between 16 and 22, had been recruited through social media adverts promising free flights, cash, accommodation and “the thrill of a European adventure”.

Entry requirements were minimal, including completing a computer game or passing a brief Russian vocabulary test. Once in Russia, the women found themselves isolated, under strict surveillance and with restricted freedom.

The AP investigation found that recruitment efforts primarily targeted young women from countries including South Sudan, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Nigeria.

Alabuga SEZ aimed to produce 6,000 drones annually by 2025, according to leaked documents, with approximately 90 per cent of women recruited through the Alabuga Start programme engaged in assembling drone components.

Kenya has begun pursuing some of the people allegedly behind the recruitment pipeline. In February 2026, prosecutors charged Festus Arasa Omwamba, the 33-year-old head of Global Face Human Resources, with trafficking 22 Kenyans “for exploitation by means of deception”.

The victims had been rescued from an apartment complex in Athi River before they could travel to Russia. Three others had already left Kenya, reaching the front line before returning home with injuries. Omwamba pleaded not guilty.

Five months earlier, prosecutors had charged Global Face employee Edward Gituku, alleging that he arranged the recruitment of former Kenyan soldiers into Russian military units.

Both men deny the charges, and the cases remain before the courts.

The prosecutions expose a part of the recruitment business that digital investigations cannot always see: the physical recruiter, the rented premises and the face-to-face transaction after the online trail has disappeared.

The Global Face domain no longer resolves, and its registration has lapsed.

That illustrates the enforcement gap. Removing websites may disrupt the digital front end, while prosecuting individual recruiters may address a physical node without dismantling the wider recruitment market.

iLAB argues that the conduct should be treated principally as fraud and potentially human trafficking rather than simply as “disinformation”.

That distinction matters because existing legal tools could apply, including ordinary fraud laws, anti-trafficking legislation under the UN Palermo Protocol, laws in the Netherlands and Austria against recruiting for foreign armies, European data-protection rules and the EU Digital Services Act.

“Fraud is the floor, and it is the easiest thing in this file to prove,” the report states.

A website that advertises construction work to a Ghanaian bricklayer or a film audition to a Zimbabwean man but ultimately routes the applicant into a contract with a foreign army, it argues, is making a false representation to obtain a gain.

For Kenya, the immediate question is not simply how many citizens have been recruited. It is whether the government will test the promises being made to those recruits and their families.

The iLAB report calls on Kenya’s Foreign Affairs Ministry to ask Moscow in writing whether death benefits have ever been paid through Russian embassies to families of Kenyan nationals killed while serving Russia.

Kenya ratified the UN Palermo Protocol in 2005 and has domestic anti-trafficking legislation. The prosecution of Omwamba shows that Kenyan authorities have begun using those legal tools. But  iLAB investigation suggests that individual prosecutions alone will not dismantle the market.