A report issued by Kenyan intelligence on Wednesday found that over a thousand Kenyans were recruited with false promises of good jobs in Russia, but then sent to fight on the bloody battlefields of Ukraine.
Parliamentary leader Kimani Ichung’wah accused officials with the Russian embassy of colluding with the scheme, providing tourist visas so the victims could visit Russia in pursuit of phantom jobs. Ichung’wah said “rogue recruitment agencies and individuals in Kenya” were still feeding Kenyans into Russia’s war machine to this day.
“The rogue agencies are targeting ex-military, ex-police officers, as well as civilians… who are desperate for job opportunities abroad,” he said. He also implicated “rogue airport staff” and immigration officials in the recruiting scheme.
According to the report from Kenya’s National Intelligence Service, 89 Kenyans are currently fighting on the front lines in Ukraine, 39 have been hospitalized, 28 are reportedly missing in action, and one is confirmed dead.
On Thursday, the families of 35 Kenyans tricked into fighting for Russia demanded their government take action to bring the missing men home. The families assembled for a protest in Nairobi holding placards with photos of their missing loved ones.
“We hope to get any information about my brother — dead, or alive, or injured,” said protester Winnie Rose Wambui, who said her brother Samuel Maina was lured to Russia with the promise of a job as a security guard at a shopping mall.
Wambui said the last communication received from her brother was a “distress voice note” sent from somewhere in a forest on October 31.
“The ministry of foreign affairs is not helping us. They told us if we have questions we have go to the Kenyan embassy in Moscow,” she said.
“It is very bad when unscrupulous agents are taking advantage of the state of joblessness in Kenya to exploit our brothers. We are demanding for the government to act and ensure our children are brought back because we cannot go to Russia,” said protest leader Peter Kamau, whose brother is among the missing.
Allegations of Kenyans tricked into fighting for Russia first surfaced in the fall of 2025, but the number of missing men was much lower at the time. The Kenyan Foreign Minister initially estimated that “over two hundred Kenyans may have joined the Russian military,” but the new intelligence report says the full number is over five times that high.
In September 2025, Nairobi police raided a human trafficking operation that was accused of luring Kenyans to Russia with false job offers. The Kenyan Directorate of Criminal Investigations said 21 Kenyan men who were “awaiting processing to Russia” were rescued in the operation.
“We were preparing to leave the country for Russia when the detectives came knocking on our doors. We were actually signing documents,” said one of the rescued Kenyans, who thought he was applying for a “well-paying job in Russia” with a salary of over $1,900 per month.
One of the alleged members of the ring detained by police was an employee of the Russian Embassy in Nairobi named Mikhail Lyapin. The Russian Embassy claimed he was a private businessman rather than a government employee. Lyapin was expelled from Kenya and was supposedly taken back to “stand trial in Russia.”
Last week, Kenyan Foreign Minister Musalia Mudavadi denounced Russia’s recruiting effort as “unacceptable and clandestine,” and said he planned to demand a signed promise from Moscow that it would stop conscripting Kenyan soldiers when he visits Russia next month.
“Kenya and Russia have had long relations since independence, literally. So this, in my view, becomes a very unfortunate episode of otherwise very positive and cordial relations between our two countries,” he said.
According to Mudavadi, Kenyan officials have shuttered over 600 recruiting agencies accused of luring Kenyans overseas with false job offers.
Ichung’wah said Kenyan officials tried to shut down the recruiting scams with increased scrutiny at airports, but the recruiters began asking their victims to travel to other African countries so they could depart undetected. The victims typically flew through Istanbul or Abu Dhabi on tourist visas before ending up in Russia.
The Russian embassy in Nairobi denied all of the recruiting allegations, and claimed it has never issues visas for any potential foreign recruits to fight in Ukraine, although it admitted that the Russian Federation “does not preclude citizens of foreign countries from voluntarily enlisting in the armed forces.”
Kenya’s accusations are very similar to those made by India, Uganda, South Africa, Cuba, and other nations. In July 2024, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi reportedly obtained a promise from Russian President Vladimir Putin to stop using Indians as cannon fodder in Ukraine, after illegal recruiting efforts became a major scandal in India.
South Africa’s Russian recruiting scandal became a major story in December after the scheme was linked to Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla, the daughter of former president Jacob Zuma. Zuma-Sambudla claimed she herself was duped by unscrupulous Russian recruiters, and she genuinely believed she was enlisting South Africans in an overseas jobs program.
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