Kenyan Foreign Minister Musalia Mudavadi will visit Russia this week to discuss the issue of Kenyans joining the Russian armed forces, he said, adding that the government is facing increasing pressure from the families of citizens who have been caught up in the war against Ukraine.
This is reported by RBC -Ukraine with reference to a Reuters publication.
Read also: The Kremlin changed its approach to recruiting Africans for war, creating “blacklists.”
In recent weeks, reports have emerged about the scale of recruitment of residents of African countries to participate in hostilities on the side of Russia.
People are often recruited through intermediaries with the promise of high-paying civilian jobs, which has raised concerns in a number of countries, including Kenya, Ghana and South Africa.
As Mudavadi noted, Kenyan authorities are receiving more and more appeals from relatives of citizens who have been involved in the conflict.
Families are demanding active action to return recruits home and end their participation in the war.
At the same time, the head of the foreign ministry stressed that Nairobi does not intend to act in a confrontational manner. According to him, Kenya seeks to discuss the problem pragmatically, given its long-standing diplomatic relations with Russia.
He added that it was an attempt to draw attention to the suffering of Kenyan families and find common solutions.
The Ukrainian side claims that more than 1,700 citizens of African countries are fighting on the side of Russia, but analysts suggest that the real numbers may be higher. According to Kenyan intelligence, there may be more than a thousand Kenyans among them.
In February, Ghanaian authorities reported that more than 50 of the country’s citizens had died in the war against Ukraine after being drawn into the fighting.
Ghanaian Foreign Minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa did not rule out that the actual losses could be higher.
Despite this, most African states are trying to act cautiously so as not to aggravate relations with Moscow.
South Africa has also begun investigating the circumstances under which its citizens may have gone to war. The country’s authorities are investigating whether intermediary structures were involved and whether former mercenary networks may have been involved.
Meanwhile, the human rights organisation Inpact reported that verified lists of recruits include more than 1,400 people from various African countries. Cameroon, Egypt, and Ghana are among the countries with the largest number of recruits.
Experts say the published data may only reflect part of a larger recruitment system. The organisation said that after the report was released, dozens of families contacted them to confirm similar recruitment schemes.
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