“The Black Vagner”, “Putin Archers” or African mercenaries, numerous names and intended one, they are the Africans fighters alongside the Russian army in Ukraine.
Multiple Western media reports have talked about a large corps of Africans that the Russians are thrown into the front fronts to fight in Ukraine after intense recruitment campaigns that included all parts of Africa, and used large material incentives of attractive salaries and Russian passports.
However, many of them are interrupted by their news as soon as they leave their countries, and some of them announce their death, and some of them fall in captivity among the Ukrainians, and some of them are still missing.
Many and multiple stories of the Africans were thrown by volunteers or hated on the lines of fire between Russia Ukraine, and this report reviews examples of it, as it deals with the Russian position on these stories.
Voluntary and forced recruitment
In its recruitment of African mercenaries, Moscow depends on providing huge salary temptations and granting citizenship, and the situation ends with many – who traveled from their African countries to Russia with the aim of working or studying – on the fronts of fighting, according to identical reports, and for its part, Russia denies the recruitment of students forcibly.
An investigation of France 24 correspondents – in both Senegal, Ghana and Cameroon – confirmed that many of these Africans voluntarily joined the ranks of the Russian army during the past three years under the temptations of huge salaries, or even the possibility of obtaining citizenship, but a group of these were subjected to forced recruitment.
The investigation spoke about young African countries (Nigeria, Zambia, Ghana, Tanzania, Togo, the Central African Republic, Cameroon and Senegal) who traveled to Russia in the hope of finding job opportunities, before they ended up the front lines of the fighting.
The investigation added that these Africans – who are sent to fight without appropriate training, and often serve in the front rows – killed some of them, while others ended in prison or comment on the confrontation lines between Russia and Ukraine are pleading with their governments to return them to their homelands.
An example of this, France International Radio reported that 14 Ghanaian stuck amid the fighting in Donetsk (eastern Ukraine) had launched an appeal for help, in a video broadcast by National TV, and they claimed that they were seduced and deceived by one of their citizens, a former soccer player.
The investigation talked about the suffering of a family in Senegal due to the loss of her son who left to study in Russia and is now a prisoner in Ukraine, after he fought in the ranks of the Russian army.
Russian preference to recruit Africans
Russia has advantages in Africa that facilitate the recruitment of African mercenaries, as it has a wide military and economic presence in several countries on the continent, in addition to mercenary activity Wagner The center and north of the continent, and this phenomenon turned into what was called recently African Legion.
A report by the British Independent newspaper, entitled “Salary, Passport … This is how Russia is trying to recruit Africans” has been quoted by British and Ukrainian intelligence reports that Russia is tempting the Africans to fight in Ukraine, where they are offered attractive salaries and prepare them by granting them passports.
According to the report, to compensate for its heavy losses on the front, which is estimated at more than 500,000 soldiers since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, Russia has decided to recruit large numbers of fighters, and focuses for this purpose on Africa, specifically on 4 countries in the center of the continent, namely Rwanda, Burundi, Congo and Uganda.
The Independent indicated that Russia has great influence in some regions of Africa thanks to its investments in the mining sector and the presence of its soldiers on the ground.
According to his British BBC, in a report, Russia has influence in Africa that facilitates these recruitment operations, as it has a military presence on the ground that justifies it with the help of countries such as the Central African Republic, Libya, Mali and Sudan in fighting the rebels or “Islamists”.
This report talked about the spread of a video on the Internet claiming that it shows soldiers from the Central African Republic pledged to join their “Russian brothers”, as well as at the beginning of the war in Ukraine, a demonstration supporting Russia in Bangui, the Central African capital.
Lieutenant before recruitment
In one of the stories of African immigrants who were recruited with the Russian army, an investigation was narrated to the British newspaper Telegraph, a Cameroonian story called Jean Onana who was unemployed in the capital Yaondi, and is struggling to support his wife and 3 young children, and suddenly he was briefed on an announcement of a job in a Russian factory, he seized the opportunity to obtain a good salary, as the Ukrainian investigators later told.
After a strenuous effort, the 36 -year -old got the price of a ticket and traveled to Moscow last March, and instead of giving him this trip a solution to his financial suffering, caused him to suffer more severely that almost killed his life on the fighting front in eastern Ukraine.
As soon as UNana arrived in Russia, he was held with 10 others from Cameroon, Zimbabwe and Ghana, and they were all informed that they will not work, and that they will instead sign a year for a year to join the Russian army to fight in the war on Ukraine.
Onana was prepared with a large wage and was pressured to sign the contract, according to his confessions, and he underwent training for 5 weeks in Rostov and Lugansk. During the training, he managed to call his home, but on his way to the front, his phones and documents were confiscated.
Onana’s military march ended almost as soon as it started, as he and 8 others were asked to occupy a center on the front in early May, and as soon as they were stationed in the place until it was bombed and everyone was killed except for Unnaa who fell wounded and hid between the rubble for days, and as soon as he was able to leave it was captured.
According to the Telegraph report, Russia compels the Africans – and other residents of developing countries who migrate to them in search of work – to military service to meet its need for huge numbers of recruits in order to compensate for its great losses in the continuing war for more than 3 years.
According to the newspaper, the Cameroon government is very concerned about the numbers of soldiers believed to flee its army and travel to Russia, to the extent that in March, it stressed restrictions on the departure of the military state in the West Africa. Social media estimates indicate the killing of about 60 Cameron in the Russian -Russian war.
Student recruitment
It tells the achievement of the Senegalese story Malik JubWho was recently captured by the Ukrainian forces, at the age of 25, and he was studying in Russia when he met two soldiers in a commercial center they told him that he could register to wash dishes in Logansk, away from the front, for $ 5700 per month. But after only one week, Job was given a weapon, hand grenades and helmet, then he was taken to the front near Toritsk.
Speaking with Ukrainian military axes, Job says, “We started to see bodies in the woods, and many bodies in different buildings, this really affected me.” As soon as he watched these scenes, he hid from view and got rid of his military uniforms and weapons, and fled, and after two days of walking, he was captured by the Ukrainians.
A report of the newspaper “John Afric” last May spoke of thousands of “deluded recruits” who were lost in the Russian -Ukrainian war, and he mentioned among them Jean -Claude Sanjua, a Congolese student in Logansk, in the East Ukraine region occupied by Russia since 2014.
In Zambia, a previous report on France International Radio spoke about the arrival of a student of a student killed in Ukraine called Limkhani Nathan Naeranda, which was recruited by a Wagner group of Russian prison.
The killing of the student – who was studying nuclear engineering in Russia – sparked widespread controversy in Zambia amid demands for the government to investigate how he was killed, and how a student of knowledge went and ended up with the front lines in a war that does not mean Zambia in anything.
In the same context, the Togoist press published in mid -April a report on a citizen named “Dosse Colico” went to study medicine in Russia before being sent without training to the front lines to fall as a prisoner and injure the Ukrainians.
The head of the “Russianotrudechsto” organization, Yigenini Primakov, a organization with knowledge of Russia abroad, estimates the presence of between 35 thousand and 37 thousand African students in Russia, coinciding with the outbreak of the war in Ukraine.
Recruitment of prisoners
John Africs – in a report on Nigerian journalist Philip Obagi – reported that with the beginning of the war in Ukraine, about 200 former rebels from the Central African Republic were sent to Russia after they changed their loyalty and received training at the hands of the Russian company Wagner.
Obagi also claimed that the detainees from Central Africa, including the convicts of serious crimes, were subsequently sent to serve the Ukrainian front, similar to the mass recruitment group in Russian prisons.
In another testimony that John Africa quoted from a citizen of the Central African Republic, he managed to escape from the war front in Ukraine to the Republic of Latvia, where he said that he was directly recruited in Bangui by Wagner’s mercenaries while detention at a police station.
This witness claimed that one of the militia members took hundreds of thousands of African francs from him in exchange for signing a contract to join a Russian “security company” to travel in December to Russia with other former detainees from the Central African Republic, as part of a group consisting of 300 to 400 people from sub -Saharan countries.
Russian exile
European officials claimed that the Kremlin threatens not to extend the visas of African students and young workers unless they agree to join the army, which Moscow has always denied.
The Russian Foreign Ministry also denied more than once the allegations of forcing the Africans – especially students – to participate in the war in Ukraine in exchange for extending their visas, stressing the possible damage that these reports may cause to African -Russian relations.
On the other hand, other reports circulated about Ukrainian attempts to recruit African fighting against Russia, including a statement circulated in Senegal talking about efforts by the Ukrainian embassy to urge Senegalese to fight against Russia, which was condemned by the Senegalese government before the embassy denies the existence of such efforts.