Ukraine captured a Kenyan citizen fighting for Russia who claims to have been tricked into signing a contract with the Russian army, Ukrainian forces reported on Wednesday.
The man who identified himself only as Evans stated that he had never served in the military before and ended up in the Russian army by accident.
An athlete back in Kenya, Evans travelled to Russia as a tourist and by the end of his trip, he had been offered a way to “stay in Russia and get a good job” by his sports agent.
In a video shared by Ukraine’s 57th Motorised Brigade, Evans says his visa was expiring and he signed “some papers” in Russian without speaking the language.
“(The sports agent) asked if I wanted to stay here, and I said ‘yes.’ But the problem was that my visa was expiring. He said he could help and told me he had a job for me,” Evans explained.
“I asked what kind of job, but he didn’t tell me. That evening, he came with some papers written in Russian and showed me where to sign. I didn’t know it was a military service contract,” he emphasised.
Evans told Ukrainian soldiers, “After I signed, he took my passport and phone, saying he would return them. From that moment on, other people came for me. They told me to get in the car”.
He said that he was taken to a military camp for training on the same day.
Evans admits that once he realised he had been recruited into the Russian army, he tried to refuse, but was told he had no other choice. “They said I either go fight for them or I will be killed”.
According to him, the military training lasted one week and was limited to basic instruction on how to use an assault rifle.
Evans said he decided to escape as soon as he found himself in the combat zone.
“They threw me into the forest, and that’s when I ran away. I took off all their military gear and left. I wandered through the forest for two days, looking for Ukrainian soldiers to save my life”, he said, telling how he approached the Ukrainian positions and surrendered.
African soldiers in Russian army
Evans says most of the contract soldiers in his unit were Russians, though there were also a few Belarusians and Tajiks.
He is not the first African who has been recruited by the Russians – either through deception or promises of high salaries – into joining the army.
Previously, Ukrainian soldiers have captured mercenaries from African countries such as Togo, as well as citizens of Senegal and Sierra Leone.
Moscow has also been recruiting Africans to serve in the Russian army.
To address labour shortages, the Kremlin has been recruiting women aged 18-22 from countries such as Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, South Sudan, Sierra Leone, and Nigeria, as well as the South Asian nation of Sri Lanka.
The drive is expanding to other parts of Asia as well as Latin America.
In many cases, they have been recruited by ads on social media, promising them a free plane ticket and a solid income.
But instead of a work-study program in fields like hospitality and catering, some of them learned only after arriving in Russia that they would be making weapons and assembling Tehran-designed drones, which Russia uses to attack Ukraine.
According to an AP investigation last year, around 200 women from African countries are working alongside Russian vocational students as young as 16 years old at the plant in Tatarstan’s Alabuga Special Economic Zone, about 1,000 kilometres east of Moscow, producing weapons, mostly drones.
Alabuga is now one of Russia’s main plants for making the kamikaze exploding drones, according to the leaked documents and reports from the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security.
Additional sources • AP