US Congress puts Kenya on notice over Russia war recruits

Denis Bagaka and Simon Gititu were lured into the war while working in Qatar for private security firms. [Ukraine’s Defence Intelligence]

The reluctance of the government to take drastic measures to repatriate Kenyans recruited by deception into fighting for Russia, as well as put an end to covert recruitment, has placed the country in the gun sights of United States lawmakers.

Two Congressmen, South Carolina’s Joe Wilson, of the 2nd congressional district and Jonathan Jackson of the 1st Congressional District of Illinois, have tabled a Bill whose detail treats Kenya and two other countries in Africa as case studies of unscrupulous agencies working for the Russian army in its deceptive recruitment of unemployed youth from Africa and the Global South. The other countries are South Africa and Cameroon.

Titled Countering Russia’s Forced Recruitment and Kidnapping in Africa Act, the Bill seeks to impose sanctions on foreign persons and governments participating in or facilitating the recruitment of foreign nationals from African countries for the purpose of fighting in the war in Ukraine.

In some of its clauses, the Bill is eyeing senior government officials suspected of helping agencies effect illegal recruitment of unemployed youth in Kenya who are then sent to the war frontlines in Ukraine

“It is unacceptable that some African government officials have knowingly participated in or benefited from these recruitment operations at the expense of their citizens” The bill states

Three months after the enactment of the law. The US Secretary of State will list names of entities, including government officials from affected countries, helping Russian agencies to recruit men for the Russian army, where they are used as war expendables on the frontlines. The listed suspects will then be lobbed with sanctions by the US government.

Among the sanctions include freeze on assets and property owned by the entities and are on US soil or in territories that come under the control of the US. There is also a freeze on financial transactions with the Export-Import Bank of the US, a freeze on loans from US Financial institutions, freeze on loans from international institutions. No deal can be signed between such countries, entities or persons listed as working with Russian agencies to run illegal recruitment.

The bill now being assessed by the Committee on Foreign Relations of the US Senate comes at a time when international rights groups and security research firms have listed Kenya among African countries that are in the forefront of contributing large numbers of unemployed youths to fight for Russia against Ukraine.

Kenya plays in the league of Egypt, Cameroon and the Ivory Coast as African countries where Russian agencies are netting the majority of their recruits by deception. Nearly all of them learn that they have signed contracts to join the Russian Army when they are ordered to proceed to the frontline to fight for Russia, the African Centre for Strategic Studies states in its latest report published in May. Other African countries coming second in contributing big numbers in the predatory recruitments are South Africa, Algeria, Mali, Sudan, Nigeria and Burundi.

Through a shadowy network of online recruiters, Russia has quietly assembled a pipeline funnelling thousands of Africans from nearly every country on the continent into the front lines and factories supporting Moscow’s war effort in Ukraine, the report titled Russia’s Deceptive War Recruitment Scheme Ensnares Thousands of Young Africans states.

These were not the destinations the young Africans thought they had signed up for, the report says. Many were looking for jobs, training, or opportunities abroad. Drawn by promises of life-changing salaries, they instead found themselves trapped in a war far from their home countries.  Misled by Moscow’s recruiters, some have been pressed into military service and forced at gunpoint toward the front lines where casualty rates are exceptionally high.

Ukrainian officials estimate that nearly 30,000 foreign nationals are currently fighting for Russia. With the full extent of these deceptive recruitment networks still unknown, some African governments, such as Ghana and South Africa and families of victims have demanded more expansive investigations, an immediate end to the schemes, and accountability for those responsible.

In its findings, which stand as justification for a new law to further empower the US state organs to put an end to Russia’s deceptive recruitment in Africa, the congressmen list events and other happenings in Kenya as solid case studies that draw concern. They state that a group of more than twenty Kenyan men were rescued from a suspected human trafficking ring in September 2025 following a raid on a residential complex in Nairobi (Athi-River). The men had reportedly been promised jobs in Russia but were set to be sent to fight in Ukraine.

The name of a Kenyan prisoner of war, Evans Kibet, pops up in the bill. He is described as a long-distance runner, who received an offer from a sports agent to be flown to Russia’s second City St Petersberg accompanied by three other Kenyans for races. There, he was told to sign work papers in Russian and told that if he did not, he would be killed. He was then sent to a military camp.

Kenya’s foreign ministry is also cited in the Bill. It has described the situation as ‘‘ruthless’’ Kremlin-linked recruiters tricking young men to join the war with false job promises. According to Kenya’s Foreign Minister, Musalia Mudavadi, agents masquerading as working with the Russian government and use unscrupulous methods, including falsified information, to lure innocent Kenyans into the battlefield, argues the congressmen.

Referring to Mikhail Lyapin’s arrest and subsequent deportation, the bill reads, “In September 2025, Kenyan authorities arrested a Russian Embassy employee in Nairobi and a Kenyan accomplice, accused of recruiting local men as mercenaries to fight for Russia”

According to Congress, Russia’s illegal, full-scale invasion of Ukraine has strained the Russian military, generating a need for additional personnel to supplement the ranks of Russia’s armed forces and leading to the deceptive and coerced recruitment of Africans. The bill postulates that abduction and forced recruitment of African nationals to support the Russian war machine in Ukraine likely constitute human rights violations.

In their latest report released on April 29 in Kyiv, two rights groups, Truth Hounds and Kazakhstan International Bureau for Human Rights and Rule of Law, working with the Paris based International Federation for Human Rights said that after suffering massive battlefield losses during the first year of its 2022 aggression against Ukraine, the Russian leadership faced a strategic dilemma which was how to maintain its military campaign without resorting to another highly unpopular “partial mobilisation”

A November 2023 mobilisation had already driven hundreds of thousands of Russian citizens to leave the country to avoid conscription. The response required reconciling the use of so-called “meat assaults” – waves of high-risk frontal attacks on Ukrainian positions – with the political cost of using ordinary Russian citizens as disposable infantry.

The Russian leadership opted for an institutionalised recruitment system that combines the enlistment of volunteers with predatory recruitment of socio-economically vulnerable foreign nationals into the Russian Armed Forces (RAF) on temporary contracts.

Truth Hounds reports that Ukrainian authorities say that since February 2022, Russia has recruited at least 27,000 foreign nationals from more than 130 countries.