00:00You've seen the videos. An African mercenary with a landmine strapped to his chest. Racist slurs
00:07allegedly hurled at African fighters on the front lines of the Ukraine war. Disturbing images,
00:13tough questions, and yet Russia maintains there is no official recruitment drive of Africans.
00:19There is no government supported program to recruit Nigerians to fight in Ukraine.
00:31So the Russians have spoken. Where is the African Union? Welcome to the flip side.
00:37Russia's war against Ukraine is now entering its fourth year. And alongside the daily battlefield
00:42updates, another story has slowly emerged. Reports of Africans trafficked or misled into joining the
00:50conflict. For families, the crisis is deeply personal.
01:22In Nigeria alone, at least, three men fighting on the front lines have been confirmed dead.
01:29Research by All Eyes on Wagner, a French investigative NGO, has identified 1,417 fighters from 35 African
01:39countries who enlisted in the Russian army between 2023 and mid-2025, 316 of whom have died.
01:50Still, Russia's ambassador to Nigeria, Andrei Podelichev, insists Russian state plays no role.
01:58If there are some illegal organizations, some illegal people who violated the law, this is not connected
02:07with the Russian state. That may be the official line. But it avoids the central issue. Are Africans
02:14fighting for Russia in Ukraine? Lately, it seems as if the recruitment is happening more directly
02:23through, for instance, telegram channels or other social media, with people basically posing as
02:31recruiters and saying, come fight for us in Ukraine with salary packages and all the rest of the
02:39remunerations offered. Security analyst Fidel Amachi-Usu argues that once recruits sign up,
02:47possibilities for rescue are extremely limited. Once the person has signed that he's going to join the
02:53Russian army, he's seen as a soldier and desertion or trying to run away from the military has its own
02:59consequences. And so Russia may not give hosts that kind of leverage or that kind of enough room to be
03:09running where they ask questions about people who have been conscripted in the Russian army.
03:15Despite allegations of abuse and rising casualties, young Africans continue to make the journey.
03:22So why is this happening? And more importantly, why does the African Union appear to have so little
03:29to say? This week, the African Union leaders are meeting in Ethiopia. Civil society groups are urging
03:36the AU to issue a unified condemnation and make deceptive recruitment into foreign wars a continental priority.
03:45We must talk about the preventive measures. What we must put in place to stop these young men
03:51from wretched Europe in the face, please. Prevention means tackling misinformation. It means scrutinizing
03:57overseas job offers. And crucially, it requires coordinated action across the continent. Until stronger
04:05action is taken, vulnerable Africans will continue to be drawn into a war far from home, one that has
04:12little to do with them. Yet, everything to do with desperation, deception, and the urgent need for jobs.
04:20And that is the flip side.
04:23To be able to make a transition, remember this time, you dive in as you don't like your
04:23trust. It's very complicated.
04:28How can I take that transition?
04:31I'm very lucky enough to please continue the process of understanding.
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