Several African men say they were promised civilian jobs in Russia only to find themselves pushed toward the front lines of Moscow's war in Ukraine, according to a new report.
The New York Times detailed the story of James Kamau Ndungu, a 32-year-old unemployed Kenyan who told friends in mid-2025 that he had been promised a day-laborer job in Russia. In June, he sent a photo from Istanbul Airport, saying he was in transit.
Weeks later he sent another image. This time he was wearing military fatigues and holding a gun. By August, Ndungu told friends he was in a trench in Ukraine and that things were bad. No one in Kenya has heard from him since.
His family eventually held a mock burial after learning about reports that he had been killed in the Russia-Ukraine war.
More broadly, the article described men recruited through WhatsApp and Telegram with offers of construction, security, or other civilian work that ended up being lies.
Some said they signed contracts in Russian, a language they did not understand, before being sent into combat zones. Ukrainian officials and African governments have increasingly described the pattern as deception, while Russia has denied illegally recruiting African citizens to fight in Ukraine.
Ukraine said in February that more than 1,700 Africans from 36 countries were fighting for Russia. Ghana's foreign minister said more than 50 Ghanaians had been killed after being "lured into battle," while Kenya has faced its own widening scandal.
A Kenyan intelligence report presented to lawmakers said more than 1,000 Kenyans had been recruited to fight for Russia, far above earlier estimates. South Africa has also opened an investigation after 17 men, ages 20 to 39, were allegedly misled into joining forces in the Russia-Ukraine war.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa's government said the men had been drawn in under the guise of lucrative employment contracts and later sent distress calls from the Donbas region. The recruitment claims point to a broader wartime pressure on Moscow.
African recruits appear to be particularly vulnerable because offers often target unemployed men seeking work abroad. Kenya said Russia later agreed to stop recruiting its citizens after talks between Kenyan Foreign Minister Musalia Mudavadi and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Moscow. Russia maintains that foreigners can enlist voluntarily under its laws and denies illegal recruitment.
