Overview
- Footage widely shared online appears to show a black recruit with a landmine strapped to his chest being driven toward Ukrainian positions at gunpoint, with Russian soldiers using racist slurs and calling African fighters disposable.
- Ukraine’s ambassador to South Africa, Olexander Scherba, warned that Africans drawn into the war become “meat for the meat grinder,” a view echoed by Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha, who described them as cannon fodder.
- Kyiv says it has identified 1,426 fighters from 36 African countries serving with Russian forces and warns the real number could be higher.
- A South African case under diplomatic scrutiny involves 17 men who say they were misled into bodyguard training linked to Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla before signing military contracts and being sent to the front.
- Kenya is reviewing reports of citizens recruited under false pretences, including runner Evans Kibet, who says he was coerced into service and later became a Ukrainian prisoner of war, with authorities having identified at least 82 nationals tied to the conflict.