In the latest episode of Ukraine This Week, Anna Belokur examines Russia’s growing recruitment of fighters from African countries — and the tactics used to lure vulnerable people into military service.
As Russia struggles to sustain high battlefield losses in Ukraine, Moscow has intensified efforts to recruit abroad, targeting countries with high youth unemployment and limited economic opportunities.
Watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1u7aXWt5_18
Source: KI_official
9 Comments
Вітаємо u/KI_official ! We ask our community to follow [r/Ukraine Rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/about/rules), and be mindful as Ukraine is a nation fighting a war..
Help with political action: [r/ActionForUkraine](https://reddit.com/r/ActionForUkraine)
Help with donations: [Vetted Charities List](https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/wiki/charities)
**Slava AFU!**
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukraine) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I couldn’t ever imagine wanting to join ruZZia in any sense….being lured to your impending death….growing up I used to hate ruZZia, I still do, but I used to too
Слава Україні! 🇺🇦
27,000 is the Cargo 200 count from one month, and the Russians will be putting these guys in places where they’re scared to go themselves, to soak up bombs and bullets.
[deleted]
They were doing this in Kyrgyzstan. They would post listing for “IT Professional speaks Russian in Moscow with good pay!” Kyrgyz men take the job, go to Moscow, get their passports taken, and are sent to the front line.
The recruitment pattern we’ve been tracking at panopsik.com shows Russia working through countries where Wagner (now Africa Corps) already had a footprint mostly the Sahel states and countries with existing Russian military cooperation agreements. The pitch usually starts as private security or logistics work, not frontline combat.
What’s notable is the timing. This African recruitment push intensified around mid-2024, right when the Central Asian pipeline (Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan) started hitting political friction and Nepal banned recruitment after enough families started asking where their sons went. Russia’s been cycling through recruitment sources as each one gets politically messy or dries up. Cuba, India, Nepal, Central Asia, now parts of Africa.
The economic desperation angle is real, but there’s also a layer most coverage misses: some of these countries have governments that don’t mind the arrangement. Russia offers debt relief, grain deals, military equipment a few hundred recruits is a small price, and Moscow isn’t asking for official military cooperation, so it doesn’t trigger the same international backlash.
And the daughter of a former South African president is smack dab, right in the middle of it.
She’s literally making profit, selling her own countrymen to Russia.
Despicable.
I understand that desperate financial straits can lead to desperate choices, but you’d think that people would reconsider *any* job offer from Russia at this point, no matter how benign it sounds. You can’t exactly benefit from earning extra money (assuming the Russians aren’t lying about that as well) if you’re dead.
I actually chuckled when I saw pictures of training. Aren’t they sent directly to the front lines for the next meat wave?