JOHANNESBURG — African leaders are increasingly condemning what they describe as a cynical campaign to recruit African men to fight and die in a foreign war as Russia’s battlefield losses mount after four long, bloody years in Ukraine.
Officials are pushing Moscow to end recruiting practices that some Africans consider deliberately misleading or even outright falsehoods.
“We have seen loss of lives, and I am planning to make a visit to Moscow so that we can emphasize that this is something that needs to be arrested,” Kenyan Foreign Minister Musalia Mudavadi said in a statement this month.
Kenya is not alone.
African leaders are increasingly sounding the alarm about Russian efforts to recruit their citizens. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to help repatriate South African citizens fighting alongside Russian forces in Ukraine, according to the readout of a bilateral phone call published by the South African government.
Ukrainian authorities say at least 1,400 Africans have joined the Russian war effort.
Some, particularly men from Cameroon, are seasoned military veterans recruited specifically for their battlefield skills. Others are untrained and often unsuspecting young men who have been press-ganged into military service on behalf of Moscow. They include graduate students who had been studying in Russia and irregular migrants who had merely hoped to pass through Russia on their way to Europe.
A Feb. 6 report from the organization Investigations With Impact revealed the names of more than 1,000 Africans from across the continent — ranging from an 18-year-old Ghanaian to a 57-year-old Egyptian national — who have joined Mr. Putin’s army. Egyptians and Cameroonians made up the largest contingents of recruits.
Although circumstances differed, the report noted three recurring factors in Russia’s Africa-focused recruiting efforts.
“The use of travel agencies operating as logistical intermediaries, the involvement of local pro-Russian individuals and organizations, and recruitment networks based on co-optation, in which former recruits become recruiters themselves. These schemes rely heavily on bogus job offers, promises of education or administrative regularization, and irregular immigration channels,” the report said.
In the spring, the Foreign Ministry of Togo took the unusual step of advising its nationals to closely examine any alleged “scholarships” offered by organizations in Russia.
An April 30 statement from the ministry urged students “to verify the authenticity of scholarship offers before making any commitments and to contact its relevant services … to obtain reliable and secure information before departing for any trip abroad, especially to Russia.”
In other cases, no duplicity is needed. Some of Russia’s African soldiers are offered a monthly salary of $2,500 and Russian citizenship after serving part of a one-year contract. In-demand African contract soldiers can make even more, with signing bonuses of $2,000 to $30,000. Military specialists such as snipers earn the most.
Investigations With Impact said Gambian volunteers have had the bloodiest experience of any African contingent: 23 of its 56 contracted soldiers have died in Ukraine.
Multiple Gambian government sources disputed this figure to The Washington Times. They said they could confirm the deaths of only nine Gambian citizens thus far in the conflict.
“Russia has always been a valued partner for the Gambia and Africa. I have no doubt our Russian allies would never condone such exploitation of our people,” Abdoulie Njai, a member of parliament in Gambia, told The Times.
“This is the work of illegal trafficking networks or the sort that exploit desperate young men everywhere,” he said. “The Gambian government is handling this matter with the seriousness it deserves and in working cooperation with Russia in bringing these criminal networks to justice and ensuring the safe return of any stranded Gambians.”
Cameroon’s military has seen more combat than many of its African peers in recent years. Its soldiers have battled the Boko Haram terrorist group and have been dragged into the Central African Republic’s civil war. They also have faced pirates in the Gulf of Guinea and ongoing conflict in the English-speaking southern region of Cameroon, which has experienced a rise in insurgency from various rebel groups seeking independence since 2017.
Since at least 2010, Cameroonian’s battle-tested soldiers have journeyed abroad seeking better pay in the United Arab Emirates and beyond.
According to the Investigations With Impact report, 94 of an estimated 335 Cameroonian soldiers have died in Ukraine. Only Egypt has sent more fighters to Russia.
Cameroon’s defense minister last year temporarily suspended overseas deployments and foreign travel for Cameroonian soldiers because of concerns that military personnel were using missions abroad as exit ramps from the regime.
President Paul Biya, who has ruled the country since 1982, appears untroubled by Cameroonian soccer stars such as Samuel Eto’o and Vincent Aboubakar shooting goals for foreign clubs. Allowing Cameroonian soldiers to seek fortune abroad for their marksmanship is another matter entirely, one that the aging strongman’s government is keen to end.
Cameroonians fighting for Russia may have an unusual historical precedent. The Russian imperial court once included Abram Gannibal, an African — likely from what is today Cameroon or perhaps Ethiopia — who was brought to the court of Peter the Great as a child slave. Gannibal rose through the ranks to become a leading general and military engineer in the czar’s imperial army.
Last year, South Africa dismantled a network that was routing South African men to the Russian military.
The network was said to include a prominent local radio personality and Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla, the daughter of former South African President Jacob Zuma. She resigned from parliament in January over allegations of her involvement in the recruitment ring.
South African political analysts suggest the issue is politically useful for the African National Congress party, which has ruled the country since the end of apartheid in 1994. The Russia scandal has been used to discredit the family of Mr. Zuma, who, after resigning from the presidency in 2018, has revived his political fortunes atop a rival party.
More surprising is how few South Africans have joined Russia’s war in Ukraine, given the growing ties between Johannesburg and Moscow and the large number of men with weapons training in South Africa.
In addition to some 300,000 personnel across its official military and security services, the country has an estimated 3 million working in the private security industry. The pay offered for mercenary work in Russia far exceeds typical earnings for security work in South Africa, where the violent crime rate is on the rise.
“Russian recruitment efforts haven’t targeted Afrikaners, and it hasn’t targeted skilled operators from other groups. There are some Xhosa or Zulu operators who can shoot like this,” said a South African government source, cupping his hands to suggest a tight grouping of bullets on a gun range.
“Recruiters have instead targeted recent immigrants and desperate people. The pay looks good, but if the contracts were legitimate, private security firms would be hemorrhaging staff,” he said. “Instead, word has spread that a Russian contract is a bad deal.”
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