Russia Is Reportedly Tricking Africans to Join the Front Line in Ukraine

Welcome to Foreign Policy’s Africa Brief.

The highlights this week: Hundreds of Africans are reportedly tricked into joining Russian forces in Ukraine, Nigeria hires a U.S. lobbying firm to shore up its reputation, and Uganda’s opposition leader rejects the results of last week’s general elections.

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Recent weeks have shed a spotlight on the estimated hundreds of Africans with no military background who have been lured to Russia under false job promises and subsequently sent to the front line in Ukraine after receiving only a few days of basic training. Some are even reportedly being forced to become suicide bombers to target Ukrainian positions.

Last week, a video circulated online that showed a young African soldier, who identified himself as Francis, with an explosive strapped to his chest—thought to be a TM-62 anti-tank mine. He appeared to be forced at gunpoint to run toward a Ukrainian bunker.

In the video, a man speaking Russian uses racial slurs and tells a terrified Francis, “What the fuck are you scared of? Don’t shit yourself.” Francis can be heard shouting, “No, no, no.”

Reports of this kind are not unusual, Kateryna Stepanenko, a Russia research fellow at the Institute for the Study of War, told Foreign Policy. “We have seen numerous reports of misuse and mistreatment of foreign recruits,” she said.

“Most of the time, we do see Russians use foreigners in these frontal assaults … so more experienced [Russian] troops can step in and advance further,” Stepanenko added. “In the past, the Russians relied on prisoners to do this job.”

Stepanenko also noted that there are “racist” and “xenophobic” undertones to Russian troops’ treatment of the recruits.

Another video that went viral last week showed young African men in combat fatigues singing in the snow. A man behind the camera appeared to laugh at the troops, saying in Russian, “Look how many disposable ones there are here.”

Ukraine has estimated that more than 1,400 people from 36 African nations are fighting for Russia. (Some have voluntarily gone to the country as mercenaries.) In November, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha described the contracts that they must agree to—which are often in Russian—as “equivalent to signing a death sentence.”

Once in Russia, African recruits have their passports confiscated and serve as “cannon fodder” to break through fortified positions, according to a December report by the French Institute of International Relations.

Out of a group of 14 Ghanaians lured to Russia in August 2024 on the promise of security work and agricultural jobs, only three were known to be alive a month later.

“There might be all kinds of charm offensives on the African continent, but once an African person comes to this war, they just become meat for the meat grinder,” Ukraine’s ambassador to South Africa, Olexander Scherba, recently told the Telegraph.

Young Africans have become a prime target for Russia as the continent faces a severe unemployment crisis, with youth populations outpacing available jobs. More than 121 million young Africans are unemployed or not in school, according to Afrobarometer.

As Russia runs out of domestic and voluntary recruits, over the past year, it has found more elaborate ways to generate new soldiers, Stepanenko said. Moscow has eased citizenship laws in a bid to attract foreign recruits. Meanwhile, the Russian military has reportedly recruited Africans via gaming apps and social media platforms such as Discord.

Russia has also turned to the promise of high wages. Recruitment agencies and freelance headhunters have offered Africans fake civilian jobs with salaries of up to $2,000 per month—a figure that is much higher than the average monthly salary in most African nations.

“We have seen advertisements in certain Russian regions offering compensation to regular Russian citizens for recruiting a foreigner,” Stepanenko said. “They would offer 50,000 rubles if a person recruited was Russian and 150,000 rubles for a person who was a foreigner.”

Moscow’s recruitment efforts have spanned the continent. In December, five South Africans were charged with alleged involvement in the recruitment of 17 men after Pretoria received distress calls from the men trapped in Ukraine’s Donbas region. They had reportedly been promised education or jobs as bodyguards but were trafficked to Ukraine.

That month, Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla, the daughter of former South African President Jacob Zuma, resigned from parliament over charges that she tricked men from Botswana and South Africa into fighting in Russia. She denies the allegations.

In a November statement, the South African government “strongly” condemned “the exploitation of young vulnerable people by individuals working with foreign military entities.”

Meanwhile, Kenya’s government said in December that it was looking into reports of at least 200 men duped into enlisting after it received “multiple emails” from Kenyans “in distress in various military camps” in Russia.

In September, Kenyan police rescued 22 people who were about to be trafficked to Russia. The individuals had pledged to pay up to $18,000 each for visas, accommodation, and travel. One Kenyan athlete has also claimed that he was lured to Russia last summer with an offer of an all-expenses-paid trip to compete in a fake athletics festival.

African nations are not Russia’s only target; Moscow also recruits heavily from neighboring Central Asia as well as South Asia and Latin America.

These recruitments help to prolong the war in Ukraine. “[Putin’s] theory of victory is that Russia will just outlast Ukraine on the battlefield and outlast Western support,” Stepanenko said.

Thursday, Jan. 22: The U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee holds a hearing on advancing peace in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda.

Tuesday, Jan. 27, to Friday, Jan. 30: The Southern Africa Climate Outlook Forum is held in Mbabane, Eswatini.

Nigerian dealmaking. Abuja has reportedly hired U.S. lobbying firm DCI Group for $4.5 million to defend its reputation amid rampant U.S. claims of Christian persecution and to improve trade ties with Washington, as bilateral relations have soured in recent months.

“We are pleased to support the Nigerian government in communicating its ongoing and expanding efforts to protect Christians and people of all faiths from radical jihadist groups and other destabilizing elements,” a spokesperson for the firm told Reuters.

Meanwhile, Nigerian President Bola Tinubu is pursuing trade deals with Gulf nations. A new pact announced on Thursday will see the United Arab Emirates remove tariffs on more than 7,000 Nigerian products. As part of the deal, the two nations also plan to co-host the Investopia investment forum in Lagos in February.

Abuja is also seeking a deal with Saudi Arabia to support the establishment of gold refining and lithium processing plants in Nigeria.

Uganda’s elections. President Yoweri Museveni, who has ruled Uganda since 1986, ostensibly won a seventh term in office in last week’s general elections. According to official results, Museveni secured 71.6 percent of the vote, compared with opposition leader Bobi Wine’s 24.7 percent.

Wine rejected the result and claimed on X that there was “[m]assive ballot stuffing reported everywhere.” Election observers decried “reports of intimidation, arrest and abductions” toward opposition figures and civil society but did not find evidence of ballot stuffing.

Ugandan authorities cut off internet access throughout the country days before Thursday’s election and only restored it on Saturday.

This is the second presidential election in which Wine has finished second. The 2021 vote was also marred by allegations of fraud, violence, and state repression. Following the election, security forces surrounded Wine’s residence and put him under house arrest for 11 days. Uganda’s High Court eventually ruled that the move was unlawful.

U.S.-Egypt relations. On Saturday, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi welcomed U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent offer to mediate Egypt’s long-standing dispute with Ethiopia over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, which Cairo views as a threat to its water security.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has not commented on Trump’s offer. Addis Ababa previously rejected Trump’s mediation in 2020, when Trump suggested that Egypt would “blow up” the dam.

South Africa has pulled out of this year’s Venice Biennale after canceling artist Gabrielle Goliath’s exhibition, Elegy, which addresses violence in Gaza, among other issues.

Part of the work features words by Palestinian poet Hiba Abu Nada, who was killed in her home by an Israeli airstrike in 2023.

South African Culture Minister Gayton McKenzie said that the Gaza-related content was “highly divisive” and argued that South Africa’s pavilion should be used to tell the country’s own story. In a statement, he claimed that a foreign power (reported by the Daily Maverick to be Qatar Museums) was attempting to use South Africa’s pavilion to “push their own agendas.”

McKenzie heads South Africa’s Patriotic Alliance, a controversial right-wing political party formed in 2013, which joined the ruling government of national unity coalition after the African National Congress lost its absolute majority in the 2024 elections.

Controversial study. In the Washington Post, Tobi Raji reports on a controversial project—backed by U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—that would delay the administration of hepatitis B vaccines to 7,000 newborns in Guinea-Bissau to study vaccine dose timing.

The $1.6 million project has been widely criticized, including by the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. Africa faces a high burden of hepatitis B infections and mother-to-child transmissions due to lack of vaccine access.

“No ethical board in the U.S. would ever approve of something like this,” Jessica Malaty Rivera, a member of Defend Public Health, told Raji. “Of course they would go to a place where they can get away with it.”