‘I didn’t know how to shoot’: how African men have been tricked into fighting for Russia

Stephen Oduor was looking forward to starting his new job as a plumber in Russia to support his family after months of unemployment. But soon after landing in St Petersburg from Nairobi with six other Kenyans one afternoon last August, he started feeling something was off.

The man who received them at the airport drove them to a house where their luggage was taken away and they were given black clothes and shoes to wear. Afterwards, they were taken to a police station where they were fingerprinted and forced to sign documents written in Russian, a language they did not understand.

When they were taken the next day to a large military facility in the city for processing of military IDs, it began to dawn on the 24-year-old that he had unknowingly enlisted in the Russian armed forces.

His fear was confirmed when he asked one of the Russians why they were processing the cards. He recalled the Russian telling him: “You travelled all the way from Kenya and didn’t know what you were coming to do?”

Oduor – not his real name – is one of more than 200 Kenyans and hundreds of other Africans who have been trafficked to Russia with promises of ordinary jobs, only to end up on the frontline in its war with Ukraine.

View image in fullscreen The Kenyan national Evans Kibet was captured while fighting for Russian forces on the Ukrainian front and is now a PoW.