As they left the airport in Durban under the glare of camera crews and reporters, some of the men hid their faces. One was pushed in a wheelchair. The 11 South African men, victims of an elaborate recruiting scheme that brought them to the Russian Army, returned home on February 25 having survived the brutal fighting in Ukraine.
They were part of a group of 17 men who said they were tricked into traveling to Russia for supposed training to be security guards and lucrative jobs when they returned. The next day, after meeting with the men and their families, South Africa’s Foreign Minister Ronald Lamola said the government is deeply concerned by the “suspicious circumstances” and predatory recruitment tactics used to lure citizens into fighting in the Russian Army.
“Everyone who is involved in this scheme must be held accountable,” he said in an impromptu news conference. “If a job offer abroad sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”
Who is targeted?
Experts say that to acquire manpower for its war machine, Russia has developed an exploitative system of recruiting Africa’s most vulnerable populations by using false promises of easy money and job or educational opportunities. At the start of the war, Russia used tactics such as threats of deportation and imprisonment to recruit Africans who were already working or studying there, researcher Thierry Vircoulon said.
“Far from sufficient, Moscow has activated recruitment networks on the African continent,” he wrote in a December 2025 report for the French Institute of International Relations. In studying Russia’s complex, opaque networks, Vircoulon estimated that between 3,000 and 4,000 Africans were among 18,000 to 20,000 foreign fighters in the Russian Army.
Led by the Russian government, recruiting networks systematically have been targeting young male Africans who are struggling with unemployment, poverty and the rising cost of living. They represent a vast and easily accessible pool of recruits with a strong desire to emigrate. In most cases, the men or the families they left behind say that they were tricked into fighting.
“These recruits were not ideologically motivated fighters but were drawn in primarily through misleading job offers,” the Robert Lansing Institute wrote in a February 23 report. “This recruitment has been driven by economic incentives, exploitation of vulnerable populations and networks involving private intermediaries with varying levels of complicity from state and non-state actors.”
Scams target African men with claims of lucrative jobs in construction, factory work, drivers, security and logistics in Russia. The job offers often are touted as scarce and time sensitive to apply pressure. None mentions frontline military service.
How are they recruited?
Russia’s recruiting efforts exploit vulnerable young men and women with fake and misleading job offers and wages far higher than the average compensation at home. Once they are in Russia the “bait and switch” scheme becomes apparent, as passports are taken and victims are coerced or tricked into signing military contracts before being sent to the frontlines in Ukraine.
African Digital Democracy Observatory (ADDO), a coalition of forensic research organizations, said a “layered ecosystem” of Russian and African networks conduct recruiting campaigns through intermediaries, fake travel agencies and other shell companies. This approach deliberately obfuscates any attempt to tie the networks directly to the Kremlin.
“Freelance African diaspora fixers in Moscow work with local travel agencies assisted by Africa Corps across West Africa and the Sahel, alongside Russian embassy-supported affinity groups and African non-state armed groups, to quietly recruit and transport men,” ADDO said in a February 20 report.
In September 2025, police in Nairobi arrested a Russian businessman who allegedly was connected to a recruitment scheme. He was expelled from the country. Local media reported that he had been an employee of the Russian Embassy, a claim the embassy denied.
Another scheme called the Alabuga Start program was designed to target 18- to 22‑year‑old African women with promises of jobs in the hospitality and automotive industries. Instead, they were placed in a drone-assembly factory in a massive military industrial complex in central Russia’s Tatarstan Republic.
“This recruitment is far more public and institutional, running directly through Russian embassies, African education ministries, universities, businesspeople, women’s and youth organizations and pro‑Russia civil society groups that market the scheme as scholarships and career opportunities,” ADDO said. “Some African businesswomen have signed memoranda of understanding to deliver thousands of workers, later claiming they themselves were ‘manipulated’.”
In his report, Vircoulon described the two sides of these recruitment networks. In Russia, networks for the army rely on Africa Corps and Wagner Group mercenaries, diplomatic representatives and cultural entities such as Russia Houses. On the African side are individual intermediaries, local employment agencies and youth and women’s organizations.
“These abusive and deceptive recruitment practices are akin to a form of human trafficking, the most tragic consequence of which is the sending of amateur mercenaries to the front lines as ‘cannon fodder’,” he wrote. “For some, this migratory adventure in a foreign war is a one-way trip, and for many, the war is a trap that closes in on them.”
