Two hundred and seventy-two Ghanaians and around 1,700 citizens of other African countries are fighting alongside Russia, according to kyiv
In its statement issued after the meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Ghanaian Foreign Minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa on Wednesday, kyiv stressed that “272 Ghanaian citizens and approximately 1,700 citizens of other African countries are currently fighting on the side of Russia.”
The head of Ghanaian diplomacy assured that Africans joining the Russian army were not “not mandated by African governments”. Ghanaians gone to war “are victims of manipulation, disinformation” from “criminal networks of traffickers” who promise them “decent work” in Russia, he assured. “They have no security background, no military background. They were not trained and they were simply lured, then deceived and sent to the front lines of the battlefield. »
In recent months, several African countries, notably Kenya and Uganda, have begun to discover the fate of their nationals enlisted in the Russian army, who often end up killed or captured in Ukraine. Journalists from Agence France-Presse (AFP) met with Kenyan, Togolese, Cameroonian and Nigerian prisoners of war during a late 2025 visit to a Ukrainian prison.
Several Kenyans interviewed by AFP after having managed to return to their country described meeting dozens of Africans in training camps in Russia or on the front, coming from Nigeria, Cameroon, Egypt or South Africa. The men claimed they were deceived by promises of well-paid civilian jobs in Russia, only to find themselves forcibly conscripted into the Russian army and sent to fight in Ukraine.
Nearly 20,000 foreign fighters are taking part in the invasion of Ukraine, not counting the North Koreans, engaged following an agreement between the two states. Nationals of the countries of the former USSR, in Central Asia in particular, provide part of the contingent, but the Russian army also goes in search of soldiers much further afield: in Africa, Latin America and other regions of Asia.