More than 1,400 Africans lured into fighting Putin’s war in Ukraine with money and lies: ‘They are quickly killed’

Russia is exploiting Africa’s poor population to fight its deadly war in Ukraine – many tricked or forced to the front lines through money, lies or threats, officials warn.

At least 1,436 citizens from 36 African countries including Kenya, South Africa and Cameroon, are currently fighting alongside Russian troops, according to Kyiv government leaders.

“Foreign citizens in the Russian army have a sad fate,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha wrote on X Friday.

“Most of them are immediately sent to the so-called ‘meat assaults,’ where they are quickly killed.”

The men are lured in with false promises of well-paying jobs, duped by signing agreements in Russian that they can’ read which turn out to be military contracts. And sometimes they are made to sign under duress, Sybiha said.

“Signing a contract is equivalent to signing a death sentence,” he added, urging African governments to warn their citizens.

“There will be no accountability for the killed foreigner, so they are treated as second-rate, expendable human material.

“Most mercenaries do not survive more than a month.”

Evan Kibet, 36, an aspiring long-distance runner from Kenya, said a sports agent offered to fly him and three other Kenyans to St. Petersburg for races.

There, he was told to sign work papers in Russian, before being shoved in a car and driven seven hours to a military camp.

“Either you go to fight or we’ll kill you,” he recalled Russian men telling him, according to BBC.

He was given one week of training on an assault rifle, by instructors who only spoke Russian. He escaped on the way to his first combat mission and hid in the woods near Kharkiv, where he was captured and eventually freed by the Ukrainian military in September.

South Africa is currently investigating how 17 of its citizens ended up fighting in Russia, after the men made distressed calls for help, President Cyril Ramaphosa said this week.

The men, who are between 20 and 39, are caught up in Ukraine’s war-torn Donbas region, and were also lured through lucrative work contracts, according to the South African government.

“President Ramaphosa and the South African government strongly condemn the exploitation of young vulnerable people by individuals working with foreign military entities,” said a government spokesperson.

Last month, Kenya’s foreign ministry said “ruthless” Kremlin-linked recruiters tricked young men there to join Russian strongman Vladimir Putin’s war with false job promises.

“Agents masquerade as working with the Russian government and use unscrupulous methods including falsified information to lure innocent Kenyans into the battlefield,” slammed Kenya’s Foreign Minister Musalia Mudavadi.

In September, Kenyan authorities arrested a Russian Embassy employee in Nairobi and his Kenyan accomplice, accused of recruiting local men as mercenaries to ship them to the battlefield.

An investigation last year by independent Russian outlet Important Stories found the Kremlin was targeting young men from African countries with high unemployment and poverty rates, including Ghana, Cameroon, Senegal, Nigeria, Togo and Somalia.

Sybiha urged the mercenaries looking to escape Russia’s army to desert and become a prisoner of war.

“Ukrainian captivity provides a ticket to life and the possibility of returning to your home country,” he said.

Despite Russia’s mandatory conscription in place since the Soviet era, military recruitment has been the Putin’s main challenge since he invaded Ukraine in February 2022, experts have told The Post.

With the heavy battleground losses estimated to be more than one million since the start of the war, Moscow has enlisted thousands of North Korean troops and even conned their own, luring young Russian men with ads for cushy army jobs like drivers or cooks — then shipping them straight to the front lines.