Mama Regina lives in Douala, Cameroon, wedged between the container port and the city’s slums. Her son Moses was fighting alongside Russian forces in Ukraine when he was shot running toward the trenches. She has been waiting for more than a year, not for her son to come home, but for his body.
“He left this world the same way he entered it,” she told Al Jazeera. “Suffering, without saying a word.”
Moses is one of thousands of African men who have been drawn into Russia’s war in Ukraine. Ukrainian officials put the number at nearly 3,000 from at least 35 countries. The actual figure is likely higher.
The recruitment pattern is consistent across the continent. Young men are promised jobs, truck driving, plant operation, work in the Gulf, by agents who arrange visas and plane tickets. When they arrive in Russia, their civilian clothes are burned. They receive a week of training and are sent to the front.
Dancan Chege, a 30-year-old father of one from Kimende, Kenya, was promised a truck-driving job in Russia. Within three days in October 2025, an agent in Nairobi had arranged his visa and ticket via Istanbul. Upon arrival, he was told: “This is the Russian military, and once you are in, you either fight or die.” He escaped by feigning a mental breakdown, firing aimlessly into the woods, eating spent cartridges, talking to himself. He later faked his family’s death to get permission to leave.
Charles Waithaka was promised a plant operator job. He was killed on December 27 after stepping on a landmine alongside five other troops. Only one survived, missing a hand. His family buried an empty coffin in Mukurweini, Nyeri County. “My son is gone, and I will never see him,” his mother Bibiana Wangari said.
Kenya’s National Intelligence Service estimates more than 1,000 Kenyans have been recruited, with 89 currently on the front line, 39 hospitalized and 28 missing in action. Kenya has repatriated 27 of its nationals from the war zone.
Russia confirmed in April that 16 Cameroonian soldiers had been killed in Ukraine, the first time it acknowledged the deaths. A Cameroonian diplomatic note referred to them as “military contractors of Cameroonian nationality.” Cameroon’s defense minister had issued an internal memo in March 2025 ordering commanders to prevent further soldier defections.
Professor Aicha Pemboura, a researcher studying the phenomenon, describes it as “a new type of migration” that is “quietly draining African countries of soldiers, students and skilled workers.” The recruits include battle-hardened soldiers who fought Boko Haram and separatist groups, as well as unemployed graduates and truck drivers.
Russia denies running state-level recruitment networks in Africa. Sergey Elidonov, a former Russian army officer, told Al Jazeera the stories “don’t exist.” He blamed poverty and desperation: “People want to support their families.”
Ghana’s Foreign Minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa put it differently: “They have no security background. They have no military background. They have not been trained. They were just lured and deceived and then put on the front lines.”
South Africa has repatriated 11 nationals who were “lured” into fighting. Ghana has appealed to Zelenskyy for the release of two Ghanaians captured as prisoners of war. But for thousands of families across the continent, there is no repatriation, no information, no body. Like Mama Regina in Douala, they are still waiting.