Outcry in African countries over how Russia is conscripting their citizens and sending them to Ukraine
A Kenyan woman shows a photo of her son, killed in Ukraine Photo: Andrew Kasuku / AP / Profimedia
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa addressed on Tuesday – in a telephone conversation with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin – the issue of “the repatriation of South African citizens who are fighting alongside the Russian forces in Ukraine”, reports AFP, taken over by Agerpres. And Kenya advertises the enlistment of some of its citizens in the Russian army through deceptive procedures.
Pretoria announced in November that it had received calls for help from 17 South Africans who say they were duped and sent to the front in Ukraine, along with hundreds of men from the “black continent”.
The two heads of state “promised to support the repatriation process of South Africans fighting alongside the Russian forces in Ukraine”, according to a press release from the South African presidency. “Both parties' teams will continue their efforts to complete this process,” the text states.
These recruitments are far from limited to South Africa. Four Kenyans returned from Russia reported on Monday, in an AFP investigation, that they were tricked into fighting in Ukraine against their will.
At least 200 Kenyans are fighting for Russia
Kenyan authorities estimated in December that approximately 200 Kenyans were forcibly recruited, of whom 23 were repatriated. This number seems greatly underestimated, according to the four repatriated persons interviewed by AFP.
Kiev said in November that it had identified at least 1,436 citizens from 36 African countries among Russian forces fighting in Ukraine.
“Africans are tricked into going to fight, then they are treated as if their life or death is of no importance,” Ukraine's ambassador to Pretoria, Oleksandr Shcerba, told AFP. “This is a colonial war and to see Africans fighting a colonial war against a free country is senseless,” he said.
Accused by the families of those recruited of having participated in their recruitment, the daughter of former South African President Jacob Zuma, Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla, resigned from the South African parliament.
Relatives of the recruits told local media that the trip to Russia was presented to them as security training they had to undergo in order to get a job in the MK party, founded in 2023 by former president Jacob Zuma, who led the country from 2009 to 2018 and was considered close to Moscow.
Apart from the men sent to the front, many African women are attracted by the promise of lucrative contracts in Russia and end up working in drone factories, especially in the Tatarstan region (central Russia), according to several international media investigations.
According to a report by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC), one of these programs, Alabuga Start, “meets the criteria to qualify as a human trafficking case,” citing “repressive working conditions” and the “deceptive nature of recruitment,” often presented as an educational or training opportunity.
Even though it is far from the front line, the site has already been targeted by Ukrainian drones to cut off Russian supply chains, attacks that have left personnel injured.
A campaign by some influencers broadcast on social networks in August is currently the subject of an investigation by the South African authorities.
