Is Russia turning to Nigerians to fight its war in Ukraine?

A Nigerian citizen, Kehinde Oluwagbemileke, reportedly fighting for the Russian military in the ongoing war in Ukraine, was captured by Ukrainian forces recently. Oluwagbemileke was apprehended by the Freedom of Russia Legion, a unit composed of Russian fighters supporting Ukraine, according to Ukraine’s “I Want to Live” project. The 29-year-old was captured in the Zaporizhzhia […]

A Nigerian citizen, Kehinde Oluwagbemileke, reportedly fighting for the Russian military in the ongoing war in Ukraine, was captured by Ukrainian forces recently.

Oluwagbemileke was apprehended by the Freedom of Russia Legion, a unit composed of Russian fighters supporting Ukraine, according to Ukraine’s “I Want to Live” project. The 29-year-old was captured in the Zaporizhzhia region after serving with Russian forces for five months.

Oluwagbemileke had been living in Russia for four years before his arrest on drug-related charges, the project said. He was said to have agreed to join Russia’s military campaign in exchange for a reduced sentence, rather than serving a prison term under Article 228 of the Russian Criminal Code.

“Kehinde is one of thousands of mercenaries from third world countries recruited by Russia’s Defence Ministry to fight in Ukraine,” the organisation stated.

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“We’ve already published data on nearly 7,000 foreign fighters from 14 countries, but that’s only a small part of the foreigners the Kremlin has sent to die in Ukraine.”

Kehinde, who said he was a translator, told his captors that his family back home didn’t know he went to war. In an interrogation video shared by the legion, transcribed by The Guardian using AI, the Nigerian stated that there were people from South America, Africa, and China in his team.

When asked about the number of Africans in the team, he said, “Africans, four people. With me, five—Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon”.

 

Previous claims of Russia enlisting Nigerians

Reuters reported in 2023 that the mercenary group Wagner had recruited several African citizens as part of a drive to enlist convicts from Russian prisons for its forces in Ukraine. The news agency traced the story of three men from Tanzania, Zambia and the Ivory Coast.

In June 2024, reports emerged that Moscow was enlisting convicts from its prisons, while some Africans in Russia on work visas have been detained and forced to choose between deportation or fighting.

A Bloomberg report alleged that Russia has been forcing African students to join the fight against Ukraine before getting a renewal for their visas.

There are 35,000-37,000 African students currently in Russia, according to Yevgeny Primakov, head of Rossotrudnichestvo, an organisation devoted to spreading knowledge about Russia abroad.

The report by the international news agency suggested Moscow is sending thousands of migrants and foreign students, including Nigerians, to fight alongside its troops in the war against Ukraine.

“Some Africans in Russia on work visas have been detained and forced to decide between deportation or fighting,” the Bloomberg report quoted a European official as saying.

One European official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said some of those people had been able to bribe officials to stay in the country and still avoid military service.

Russia’s practice of sending migrants and students into battle under duress dates back to earlier in the war, another European official said. Those troops suffer especially high casualty rates because they are increasingly deployed in risky offensive manoeuvres to protect more highly trained units, the official added.

According to reports citing Ukrainian intelligence, Russia has engaged in a global recruitment drive to enlist foreign mercenaries in at least 21 countries, including several nations in Africa. Army recruitment campaigns offer lucrative signing bonuses and salaries for those who will join up as contract soldiers.

Recruiters have also targeted migrants and students who previously looked for employment in Russia, and in some cases have lured others over with promises of lucrative work before forcing them to train and deploy to the front.

 

No information on the claims yet – FG

Kimiebi Imomotimi Ebienfa, spokesperson, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, declined to speak on the issue, saying he is yet to get an official communication from the Nigerian mission in Moscow.

He said he doesn’t want to respond in error, urging our correspondent to let him get official communication from the Nigerian Mission in Moscow first.

“I reached out to our Mission in Moscow when I got your message, but I have not received any official communication from them to allow me to speak authoritatively on the allegations against Russia,” he said.

While noting that there have always been allegations of Nigerians fighting for either Ukraine or Russia in their ongoing war, he said the country has not been able to confirm any of those claims till now.

“Some reports even claimed that the Nigerian government collected money from Russia to send its youths to go and die in their war, which is false,” Ebienfa said.

In 2024, when the allegation of Russia using Nigerians to fight its war first started, the Federal Government dismissed it, stating that it was in communication with Nigerians in the European country.

“The attention of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has been drawn to news articles published by several Nigerian media outlets on Monday 10th June 2024 informing the public that the Russian Government is engaging Nigerian and other African students to participate in the ongoing war with Ukraine with the promise of visa renewals,” the statement read.

“The Ministry wishes to inform that the Nigerian Embassy in Moscow is in close communication with the executives of the Nigerian Students Association in Moscow, Russia, and there has not been any reported case of conscription of Nigerian students, nor indeed of other African students to fight in the aforementioned war. The newspaper reports are therefore false and misleading and should therefore be disregarded.

“The Ministry wishes to seize this occasion to appeal to media outlets to exercise due diligence in the line of duty by verifying information at their disposal before releasing it to the public.”

Messages on Sunday to Daria, the press secretary at the Embassy of Russia in Nigeria, were not replied to and calls to her known phone number were not picked up.

However, when this issue first came up last year, the Russian Embassy in Nigeria denied the reports.

The Embassy released a statement, saying, “The Embassy of the Russian Federation is compelled to emphasise that such news is not only false but also damages Russian-Nigerian educational cooperation by misleading numerous scholarship and grant applicants as well as their partners, who could be extremely concerned by such fakes”.

It added that “Nigerian students face no difficulties in extending their visas.”

 

It’s wrong to force foreigners into war – ex ambassadors

Ambassador Suleiman Dahiru, a retired diplomat, criticised Russia for allegedly conscripting foreigners, especially Nigerians, into its war with Ukraine.

While speaking in a telephone interview with our correspondent on the discovery of a Nigerian forced to fight in the war by Russia for a reduced jail term, he said “It is totally wrong for Russia to force any foreigner to join the war, whether it is to make things easy for them or not, they don’t have that right”.

While acknowledging that many Nigerians in the diaspora were in custody over one offence or the other, he posited that they should rather be deported than be forced to execute a war.

“I have experienced a lot of things that Nigerians have done abroad, and it is not even good for me to start narrating what they have done,” he said.

While responding to the allegation that some Nigerians whose visas had expired were being forced to join the war in exchange for visa renewal, the experienced envoy said, “They have every right to refuse to do any military service, even if it means deporting them”.

“It is better for them to be deported than to do what they don’t want to do. But whatever it is, Russia cannot, even though it is a totalitarian regime, force people to join the military.”

On his part, Nigeria’s former envoy to Singapore, Ambassador Ogbole Amedu-Ode, said only a thorough investigation could ascertain the situation, adding that, “it’s highly likely also that yes, it happens and that the guy (Oluwagbemileke) must have been conscripted and then that would lead to a reduced prison sentence”.

When asked what the federal government should do if the allegation is true, the diplomat said, “Well, I wouldn’t know the rules and regulations that guide, you know, for forced conscription or conditional conscription for a prison inmate.

“But if it happens, then it’s unfortunate. It reflects some level of desperation on the part of the country that has been mentioned to have so conscripted a foreigner in jail in their country.”