Russia Is Tricking Africans Into Ukraine Fight
It's a particularly insidious effort.
Fearless reporting, a behind-the-curtains look at how journalism is made — and an unabashed point of view. Welcome to Chills.
In my multiple reporting trips to Italy (Lampedusa, Sicily, Rome) — and Greece (Samos, Athens), I met many sub-Saharan Africans who had made the remarkably risky decision to attempt the crossing to Europe. I’m not exaggerating when I say that every single man and woman I spoke to at detention centers had been violently assaulted or raped in their journey, particularly as they traversed Libya.
Side note: The tiny, decrepit boats used to move migrants to Europe are manned by smugglers, many of whom subject their passengers to inhuman conditions. As a rule, they allow lighter-skin Arabs to travel above deck while forcing Black Africans to remain below, where the heat becomes unbearable, where diesel fuel leaks and burns skin. Even among the most miserable and impoverished, the men who take the migrants’ money still stratify people by their skin color.
All the men and women I met in my work had hoped for was a life of freedom and opportunity, and a way to make money to support their families back home.
In reading around on the war in Ukraine, I came upon a particularly insidious effort being carried out among desperate people in Africa. Men are being offered false hope that a free and fair life in Europe is attainable. And — surprise! — the deception is being perpetrated by the Russians.
You may have heard that Russia has been making a play for favor in multiple African countries in the last several years. Between the mercenary Wagner Group’s dangerous and pillaging military presence in countries in turmoil — like the Central African Republic, Libya and Mali — and the Russian government’s attempt to increase trade partnerships with others, Russia has become a larger player on the continent than it has been since the Cold War, when it cultivated relationships with newly independent countries.
But what you may not have heard about are the thousands of African men being pulled and tricked into serving in the Russian war on Ukraine. Some men — from countries like Nigeria, Ghana, Morocco and Egypt — are already in Russia on work visas as migrant workers and are forced to join the army or be deported. Others are taken from Russian prisons, according to Reuters. Some, however, are being deceived into joining the military while still home in their native countries. Russian officials have been offering them $2,000 to sign contracts written in Cyrillic, which few African men can read. It’s a concerted effort to populate the depleted Russian army, said the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense.
“The recruitment of Africans for their participation in ‘meat assaults’ on Ukrainian territory is carried out by a special unit of the Russian Defense Ministry,” said the Ukrainian ministry.
The Russians have used the term “meat grinder” to refer to the waves of soldiers they throw into battle first. Such sacrifices offer a way of revealing where the Ukrainians are firing from.
One Somali man told The Kyiv Independent that he thought he was signing up for a “security job” in Russia. He said that he was never told that he’d be going to the front line of the fighting with Ukraine.
“This was my chance to go to European land,” the man said in a video interview.
He explained that he’d signed a document that he believed would allow him to work in Russia at a factory that makes winter clothes, but what he really signed was a pledge to join the military — never having been told that he was “going to kill.” He said he’d just wanted to give his family an education and a good life.
After only four days at the front fighting for his life, he was captured by Ukrainian soldiers.
“Going back to Somalia,” he told the Independent, “means going back to zero.”
Another man, from Sierra Leone, told the newspaper that he too was tricked: When he went to Russia under false pretenses, he was taken directly to a military camp in Rostov and told that in one year, he’d be free and only then have legal documents to stay in the country. He blames himself for signing a document without knowing the language.
“I totally regret about everything,” he said.
The Russian government has resorted to some of the lowest lows in its tyrannical effort to occupy Ukraine, but this “recruitment” madness is a different kind of low. It is a little-known effort to prey upon some of the most desperate people in the world. People who merely want what so many of us already have: a chance to make money and live in peace. What they are met with is a perversion of expectations and an unsought role in one of the most horrendous wars being fought in the world.
Chills is self-funded, without ads. If you want to be a part of this effort, of revealing how difficult reporting is made — of sending me to places like Ukraine to report for you — I hope you will consider subscribing for $50/year or $7/month.
No words. Putin is just pure evil. May he rot in hell.