Russia's aggression: Kenyans entangled in war that is not theirs

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

Kenyans and other Africans have been dying in Russia’s war against Ukraine at an alarming rate, yet their governments have not moved to save citizens from the Russian dragnet. 

Three days ago, a South African Member of Parliament resigned following allegations that she tricked 17 men to fight for Russia as mercenaries in Ukraine. She had to leave because the constitution of the country does not allow South African nationals to serve the military of another country

Duduzile Zuma –Sambudha, who became a Member of Parliament for the main opposition party uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) last year, said in an affidavit that she thought the men were going to Russia for “lawful” training, BBC reported. 

Unknown to her, as is to many on the African continent, the MP was a victim of an ongoing tactful recruitment of individuals from the Global South and sending them on the frontlines of Russia’s war against Ukraine, which has significantly reduced the risk of war to Russian citizens. 

Senior Ukrainian security officials and international military and security research analysts have told The Standard that the loss of lives by Africans and other recruits from the Global South is a deliberate Russian strategy devised three years into the war after Russia’s President Vladimir Putin faced pressure to recruit at-least between 30,000 individuals per month to sustain his war against Ukraine. 

Oleksandr Bevz, an advisor at the office of the President of Ukraine, says using people from among poor masses to wage war has been a Russia strategy for many years.

“Kenyans dying on the frontlines in this war is a sure cold and unfeeling thing coming from Moscow. African countries must find ways of stoping their people from getting jobs in Russia. You do not know the job you are being recruited for,”  Bevz told The Standard.

Munira Mustaffa, the chief executive officer at Chasseur Group, a Malaysian military and security analyst firm, says in her latest report of the global human trafficking that in July 2025, Putin signed a decree allowing foreigners to serve during mobilisation periods, a significant expansion of Russia’s existing foreign recruitment laws.

“What the decree did not specify was how those foreigners would be recruited.” 

“Unable to risk another unpopular domestic mobilization programme after a disastrous campaign led to people leaving Russia, growing evidence reveals that Putin instead built a global trafficking pipeline that sends casualties of his war to Central Asia, Africa, South America and West Indies,” Chasseur Group reports. 

Russia has been concealing its missing manpower crisis by recruiting from its poorest provinces and ethnic minorities in such republics as Buryatia, Ingushetia and Chechnya, which are today part of the Russian Federation.That has helped Putin to keep the war’s true cost distant from Moscow.

The turn to external recruitment was not improvisation born of desperation but strategic evolution. Recruiting from third countries is, in fact, not at all unusual in warfare, and many foreign fighters have joined both sides.

Ukraine’s International Legion operates through transparent government channels; though it has faced mismanagement, vetting failures and allegations of poor conditions and limited accountability.

But Russia’s model relies on systematic deception, human trafficking, and exploiting populations with no agency in the conflict’s causes or outcomes.