More than 1,000 Kenyans have been lured to fight for Russia in its war with Ukraine, according to an intelligence report to the Kenyan parliament that highlights the scale of a Russian operation taking African men to the frontline.
The majority leader of Kenya’s national assembly, Kimani Ichung’wah, said “rogue recruitment agencies and individuals in Kenya” were continuing to send Kenyan nationals to fight in the conflict, as he read MPs the summary of an investigation by Kenya’s National Intelligence Service.
The figure of more than 1,000 individuals is a significant increase on the number given in a statement by Kenya’s foreign affairs ministry in November, which said that more than 200 Kenyans had travelled to fight in the war.
A growing number of people from African countries – including Kenya, Uganda and South Africa – and elsewhere have been lured to the frontline as Russia seeks manpower to sustain its invasion. Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, said in November that more than 1,400 people from 36 African countries were fighting for Russia in Ukraine. Many are being held by Ukraine as prisoners of war.
According to the intelligence report, Ichung’wah said, employment agencies were targeting former military personnel and police officers and civilians from their mid-20s to 50 years old “who are desperate for job opportunities abroad”.
The employment agencies were enticing Kenyans by promising them monthly salaries of about 350,000 shillings (£2,000), bonuses of between 900,000 shillings and 1.2m shillings and eventual Russian citizenship, the report said.
It also accused the employment agencies of colluding with staff from several government agencies – the Directorate of Immigration Services, the Directorate of Criminal Investigations and its Anti-Narcotics Unit, and the National Employment Authority – to prevent interception at Nairobi’s international airport, Ichung’wah said.
It further claimed that the agencies worked with staff at the Russian embassy in Kenya and the Kenyan embassy in Moscow to get the recruits Russian visitor visas, he said.
On Thursday, Russia’s embassy in Kenya denied it had been involved in recruiting Kenyans to fight in Ukraine, describing the accusation as part of “a dangerous and misleading propaganda campaign”.
“The embassy refutes such allegations in the strongest possible terms,” it said in a statement on X. “The government authorities of Russia have never engaged in illegal recruitment of Kenyan citizens in the armed forces of the Russian Federation.”
The report noted that because of increased interception of recruits at the airport, they were now travelling through Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Africa, Ichung’wah said.
As of February, 39 Kenyans had been hospitalised, 30 had been repatriated, 28 were missing in action, 35 were in military camps or bases, 89 were on the frontline, one had been detained and one had completed their contract, according to the report.
Kenya’s foreign minister, Musalia Mudavadi, is expected to visit Russia next month to discuss the “unacceptable and clandestine” recruitment of Kenyan nationals.
On Wednesday, four South Africans returned to South Africa from Russia. They were part of a group of 17 South African and two Botswanan men who were allegedly tricked into fighting for Russia by Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla, a daughter of the former South African president Jacob Zuma.
South Africa’s foreign minister, Ronald Lamola, told the national broadcaster SABC: “It was a challenging process. It remains a challenging one for the ones who are still in the frontline, because they are alleged to have been lured by a private security contractor to the Russian government. So that really complicates the situation because they were not, according to the Russian government, recruited directly to the Russian army.”
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