Putin Is Luring Africa's Young Men to Die in Ukraine — Misled, Manipulated and Disposable

Russia is buying African lives to feed its war machine, and it is doing it because it is running out of Russians.

Think about that. A man who left his village in Zimbabwe, Burundi or Sierra Leone with a promise of work, a salary and a future may end up in a Ukrainian trench, thousands of kilometres from his mother, fighting for a Kremlin that has never acknowledged his existence. Russia has never publicly admitted using foreigners in its war against Ukraine. It does not need to admit it. It only needs to keep the recruiters working in the places where young people have the fewest options and the weakest protection.

According to a presentation obtained by Bloomberg, which people familiar with Ukraine's intelligence service described, Moscow stepped up recruitment across the continent in the first nine months of this year. The document says the programme exists to offset "massive losses and a shortage of people to mobilise." Those are the words of a war machine that has chewed through its own manpower and now needs a new supply of bodies. Africa is simply where the supply is cheapest.

Look at the pattern. When Kenya and South Africa moved to stop their citizens from leaving to fight, Russia did not stop. It went looking for governments with weaker institutions, thinner press freedom and courts that bend to whoever holds power. Zimbabwe, Burundi and Sierra Leone are all nations where the state too often serves itself before its citizens. Russia read that map correctly. Predators always do.

Kenya and Ghana did something that deserves respect. Their governments directly asked Moscow to stop the activity. That is what sovereignty looks like when it is exercised rather than merely recited in speeches at the United Nations. Ghana's request matters because it came from a country that has spent decades building a reputation for stable democratic transfers of power. It showed that a government can protect its people from foreign recruitment when it chooses to act.

But a request is not a policy. Asking nicely is not the same as enforcing the law. Where are the labour inspectors checking which recruitment agencies are operating in our cities? Where are the prosecutions of the brokers who sell a young man's future for a fee? Where are the parliamentary hearings demanding to know how many of our citizens are missing on the Ukrainian front? If the answer is silence, then the silence is a choice, and it will be paid for in coffins shipped home without explanations.

This is not an isolated Russian operation. It is part of the same playbook Moscow has run across our continent for years. Wagner Group mercenaries were deployed in the Central African Republic, Libya, Mali and Sudan, where they were tied to gold extraction and to regimes that offered protection in exchange for access. When Mali's junta expelled French forces, it brought in Russian personnel who now operate under the banner of Africa Corps. Every time the arrangement is sold as partnership. Every time the bill comes due in mineral concessions, political loyalty and young men sent to fight wars that have nothing to do with Africa.

Let us be clear about who the victims are. They are not Russia's enemies in any meaningful sense. They are the unemployed graduate in Freetown, the farmhand in Bujumbura, the young man in Harare who has no job and no hope of one. Russia does not recruit from the wealthy suburbs. It recruits from the places where a government has already failed to deliver. The lesson is brutal: weak institutions are not just a domestic problem. They are an export opportunity for every foreign power that wants soldiers, minerals or votes.

The solution is not complicated, but it demands courage. Governments across our region must pass and enforce laws that regulate overseas labour recruitment, requiring licensing, transparent contracts, mandatory verification of employers and criminal penalties for brokers who trap citizens in foreign conflicts. Embassies should be required to publish the identities of any recruitment agencies operating in their territory. Parliaments should demand regular reports on citizens who have gone abroad for work and have not come back.

Botswana and Mauritius show what is possible when institutions are built to last. Botswana has maintained multiparty elections and an independent judiciary for decades, and its citizens have a reasonable expectation that the state will protect them. Mauritius has built one of the continent's most prosperous economies on rule of law, transparent governance and open markets. Free markets and accountable governments do not guarantee perfection, but they give young people a reason to stay home and build something. A young Batswana or Mauritian has a real economic future. A young Zimbabwean, Burundian or Sierra Leonean is too often told to gamble his life on a stranger's promise.

Civil society has a role to play too. Journalists must keep documenting recruitment networks, families of missing men must be given legal and political support, and regional bodies such as the African Union and ECOWAS must stop treating this as a bilateral embarrassment. The AU has repeatedly spoken about sovereignty and non-interference. Sovereignty means nothing if a foreign army can quietly harvest your citizens while your government checks its phone.

So here is what we demand. We demand that every African government name the recruitment agencies operating on its soil and shut down the ones trafficking human beings. We demand that the AU Peace and Security Council put foreign recruitment of African citizens on its formal agenda. We demand that parliaments hold public hearings on how many of their citizens have died or disappeared fighting in Ukraine, and that the numbers be published. We demand that Russia answer for the men it has taken, the families it has left waiting, and the lies it tells about them.

And we demand it from ourselves. Share this. Ask your MP where the missing men are. Ask your government what it is doing to stop the brokers. Ask your newspapers why this story is not on the front page every day. Russia is betting that we will look away because the victims are poor, young and far from home. Prove it wrong. Our sons are not for sale, and Africa is done letting strangers spend them.

Based on reporting by ACSS-EMAIL