Agony of Kenyan families' search for sons swallowed by Russia's war

(L) Martin Macharia and Peter Kimemia in Russia. [Courtesy]

“We are going on a mission. We will be out of network for some time. I’ll be unreachable for about a month after the training. Once we’re back, I’ll call you.”

Those were among the last words Barasa’s brother sent from Russia. He had just completed weeks of military training, learning how to fire assault rifles, throw grenades and operate rocket-propelled grenade launchers.

Shadrack Wafula Matofari, 27, left home in July 2025 believing he had secured a lucrative overseas job, and was now heading to the frontlines of the war between Russia and Ukraine.

The promised call never came and for more than a year now.

“That was the end of the communication between him and me. I’ve never heard from him again,” Barasa told The Standard

His family has lived in agonising uncertainty. They have been trapped between hope and grief, clinging to unanswered emails while desperately searching for answers that never arrive.

Matofari’s story is not unique. Across Kenya, families are searching for sons, brothers and husbands who quietly left the country after being promised jobs in Russia, only to disappear into a war that was never theirs.

Some have been officially declared dead, others are logged as missing. Many families have neither received bodies nor been told where their loved ones are buried.

Now, new worrying findings published by Ukraine’s “I Want to Live” project, an initiative associated with Ukrainian authorities, have added another troubling aspect to the mystery of Kenyans missing in Russia.

The project says it has identified 485 African nationals killed while fighting for the Russian military, including 59 Kenyans.

It further claims the actual death toll is likely much higher and alleges that many foreign fighters are buried or cremated in Russia without their families being notified.

The figures differ sharply from Kenya’s official position, which on June 25, 2026, announced that 19 Kenyans have died in Russia while another 32 remained unaccounted for and are formally classified as Missing in Action.

Matofari is one of the Kenyans who have been classified as Missing in Action, according to email correspondence between Barasa and the Russian government through the Kenyan Embassy in Moscow.

And now the family doesn’t know whether he is alive or dead.

In a recent announcement issued in July 2026, Diaspora Affairs Principal Secretary Roseline Njogu reported that a total of 289 Kenyans have been recruited into the Russian military, with at least 69 either confirmed dead or missing in action.

Before Russia came calling, Matofari was like thousands of unemployed Kenyan youth.

He had trained in firefighting and hoped to secure stable employment, but jobs remained elusive and he waited for new opportunities. Then came what appeared to be a breakthrough. Someone connected him to an overseas opportunity to work in the Russian military.

Barasa said his brother believed that was a breakthrough opportunity. He was getting a one-year contract and an irresistible monthly salary equivalent to Sh330, 000 and an additional Sh2 million after completing the contract.

He travelled from Nakuru to Nairobi for medical examinations, surrendered his passport and other travel documents and patiently waited as visa processing continued.

Like many families, his relatives questioned the decision but ultimately respected his determination to go to Russia to improve his life; after all, he had not managed to get a job at home.

“He came home and told me he had found a military job in Russia. I tried to advise him and talked to him to convince him not to go, but he was adamant and there was nothing I could do,” Barasa recalls.

According to him, the expenses, including medical examinations, travel arrangements, airfare, and accommodation, were paid by a recruiter linked to an agency known as Global Face, whose director was later arrested over allegations related to recruitment into Russia.

The deal was irresistible to Matofari.

In one of the messages sent to his brother, Matofari expressed excitement for the amount of money he was going to earn.

“I have confirmed the money is good,” Matofari told his brother.

He had been promised that after a successful one–year contract, he was to get around Sh2 million in addition to the monthly salary.

 In case of injury or death, there was an amount of compensation he was promised. There was also a promise of getting Russian citizenship upon completion, and the possibility of bringing family members to Russia and receiving government housing.

To an unemployed young Kenyan desperate for opportunity, it sounded like a chance to begin life afresh.

The communication between the two brothers continued even after Matofari arrived in Russia and everything appeared normal, until a time when Matofari was joining a team to the battlefields.

“We would talk in the evening after training. He told me he was doing well and that he learned how to use a gun, use grenades, RPGs and other military weapons,’ Barasa told The Standard.

They went for a mission after about four weeks of combat training, a journey that would take 2 hours. Their last conversation happened on the day they left for the mission.

“We are starting the travel headed to training camp tonight. Soon I’ll be unreachable for about a month after the training,” Matofari wrote.

“He told me they were going for a journey of around 12 hours, but they were going for a mission; he told me it is going to be out of network, out of reach for communication, but later on after the mission, they will communicate back. That was the last I heard from him,” Barasa recalled.

It became a journey into one of the world’s bloodiest conflicts.

Barasa has never heard from his brother. They never spoke again. Weeks became months, October arrived, then November, but still he had not heard anything from him. The recruiter and another contact person in Moscow offered little help to trace his brother.

He did not know about his safety or whereabouts until he turned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to help his family trace their kin in November 2025.

The embassy then requested Matofari’s photo to “assist in search efforts.”

Months later, communication from Moscow through the Embassy of Kenya would in March 2026 confirm that Matofari was Missing in Action.

“The State Department for Diaspora Affairs is in receipt of communication from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Russia through the   Embassy of Kenya in Moscow, Russia, informing that Shadrack Wafula Matofari was missing in action while on duty at the frontline of the Russian Special Military Operations,” reads the email from State Department for Diaspora Affairs in Nairobi.

To Barasa, the message was ambiguous and more devastating.

“In the military, Missing in Action could mean you are either dead and not confirmed, or you have escaped from war, or you’ve been captured as a prisoner of war,” Barasa said.

Soon afterwards, the family says Russian officials requested next-of-kin documents and details required for compensation processing. This request only deepened their fears.

“Russia's Ministry of Defence through their Ministry of Foreign Affairs contacted the Embassy and requested the details of the next of kin for processing and facilitating the payment of monetary compensation,” the email reads further.

Among the documents required by the Russian government are a letter of authorisation signed by all the relatives’ family members -appointing a specific family representative to follow up on the matter with the Department.

They also sent an official letter from the area chief confirming the family background and of Matofari and verifying the relationship between him and the family members identified as next of kin, and an affidavit serving as a legally binding declaration confirming the rightful next of kin and outlining how any compensation should be managed or distributed.

“The affidavit must be duly notarised to affirm its authenticity and legal validity,” the Ministry wrote to Barasa.

The family submitted everything in April 2026.

“We are worried there has been no communication since then. We just want to know the truth. What happened to him and where is he?”

“Some have been confirmed dead, and their families have been told that their relatives are dead, but they have not even received their bodies,” Barasa said

Since then, he has developed a painful routine. Before every month ends, he sends an email to the embassy hoping for a different answer, but it’s never forthcoming.

For Barasa’s family, uncertainty has become its own form of mourning. They cannot hold a funeral. They cannot pray over a grave.

They cannot even say with certainty whether the young man they watched board a plane is alive or dead.

Last month in June, the government announced that the Kenya Embassy in Moscow has received 38 requests from the Government of the Russian Federation requiring next of kin details of victims killed in the war, or missing in Action.

During the Prime Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi’s official visit to Russia in March this year, when he met his counterpart, the Minister for Foreign Affairs of Russia, they reached a mutual agreement for the two countries to expedite the compensation process to the affected families through diplomatic channels.

“This information is critical in facilitating and processing the compensation claims. The compensation will be disbursed directly by the Russian authorities to the duly appointed family representative(s),” reads the letter from the Diaspora Affairs office.

The department also confirmed that two individuals associated with the deregistered agency, Global Face Human Resource, who were implicated in facilitating the irregular recruitment of many Kenyans to Russia, have been apprehended and arraigned for prosecution.

By June 25, 2026, the government said the official verified number of Kenyans who have enlisted in the Special Military Operations in Russia stood at 308.

For months, Barasa believed his brother’s disappearance was an isolated tragedy. Family after family was telling the same story.

“We just want to know the truth,” Barasa insisted.

His fears of his brother’s whereabouts appear to be echoed in a newly published dossier by Ukraine’s “I Want to Live” project, an initiative linked to Ukrainian authorities that tracks foreign nationals recruited into Russia’s armed forces.

According to the project, Russian authorities routinely classify many foreign fighters as missing, bury some in Russian territory without notifying relatives and, in other cases, cremate bodies without obtaining consent from families or repatriating the remains.

The project says it has identified 2,984 African nationals from 40 countries who signed contracts with the Russian military.

Of those, it says 485 have been confirmed killed, a figure it describes as only the minimum number verified through available records and warns that the actual death toll could be higher.

Among the dead, according to the project, are 59 Kenyans, raising fresh questions about how many Kenyan families may still be waiting for news that may never come.

 “African nationals in the Russian Armed Forces are assigned to the lowest ranks and treated as expendable. Most do not speak Russian, which limits their effectiveness in combat - so rather than support roles, they are assigned to frontal assault operations with minimal survival rates,” reads the report.

“When they are killed, their deaths cause no political pressure inside Russia. There is no public grief, no media coverage, no domestic accountability. Bodies are typically logged as missing rather than confirmed dead. In cases where remains are recovered, they are cremated or buried in Russia. Families are not notified. Repatriation is not arranged,” it reads further.

The report paints a picture of a recruitment system stretching across African countries including Algeria, Zambia, Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Cameroon, Gabon, Botswana, Gambia, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, South Africa, Sudan, Uganda, Tanzania, Sierra Leone, Chad, Tunisia, Senegal, Central African Republic, among others.

The report lists hundreds of names, dates of birth, nationalities, contract dates and reported dates of death for all the Africans killed on the battlefield.

The report indicates that the heaviest losses are among citizens of Cameroon, Ghana, Egypt, and Kenya, “the same countries where Russian recruitment has been most intensive. The scale of deaths tracks directly with the scale of recruitment.”

The project alleges that numerous African recruits died within weeks of signing contracts, emphasising the extreme risks faced by those deployed to the frontlines.

Many of the young men who travelled to Russia were not experienced soldiers. Like Barasa’s brother, they were unemployed youth searching for economic opportunity.

Promises of salaries worth hundreds of thousands of shillings each month, generous compensation packages, Russian citizenship and housing offered hope to people who had struggled for years to find stable employment back home.

Barasa believes the Kenyan government has tried to intervene but says communication with affected families remains painfully slow.

“I'm told some of the guys who were injured in Russia and were injured in hospitals were repatriated. By now, some people have already completed their missions, but where are they? Where are their bodies? And even if we can't retrieve their bodies, what next?” Barasa posed.

"We don't just ask you to keep quiet; you need to make a follow-up. I'm sure the Russian counterpart will be able to respond,” he appealed.

The family of Martin Macharia, from Ruaka, Kiambu County, who was reportedly the first Kenyan casualty, has never received official reports on the whereabouts of his body

The Diaspora Affairs Department also reported that there is no official communication confirming his death.

“The Department initiated a formal verification protocol through the Embassy of the Republic of Kenya in Moscow, and it has since written to the Russian authorities requesting an official status update on Mr Macharia, and is awaiting feedback,” the department wrote.