Russia’s ‘fishing’ for troops in Africa to fill the front in Ukraine has run into a problem for the interests of Vladimir Putin. The Government of Kenya has announced that Moscow has agreed to stop incorporating Kenyan citizens to take them to the battlefield. .
It was the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Kenya, Musalia Mudavadi, who confirmed the news. “We have agreed that Kenyans should not be recruited,” he told the press this Monday after meeting with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, in Moscow.
Kenya’s ‘no’ comes after four long years of war and a incessant campaign of ‘recruitment’ of soldiers in dozens of African countriesmany of them strategic allies of Russia.
Ukrainian Intelligence sources have already identified more than 1,780 African soldiers integrated into the Russian Army, coming from up to 36 countries on the continent.
In this campaign he has played a key role and, during the first years of war, extension of the Russian State where it did not want to reach in person.
However, many of these recruitments did not arrive as volunteers or as war mercenaries. Human rights associations have denounced the repeated violations by Russia by bringing deceived people to the front.
Since , there are reports of African citizens convinced to travel to Russia with the promise of well-paying civilian jobs. However, that offer never materialized and many found themselves forced into military training with subsequent shipment to the Ukrainian front.
These complaints have reached the heart of Kenya, whose official data reveal a increase in the number of dead national soldiers in the Russian ranks, especially since the beginning of 2026. As a consequence, the German media details Daily Mirrorauthorities have closed several recruitment centers and charged one of the recruiters.
