Russia will no longer be able to enlist Kenyans to fight in Ukraine, foreign minister says

Kenya’s foreign minister, Musalia Mudavadi, said that Russia had agreed to stop recruiting Kenyan citizens to fight in the “special operation” in Ukraine, according to a Reuters report citing the official. The announcement followed a meeting between Mudavadi and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov earlier today.

“His excellency has conversed with us on the issue of the welfare of Kenyans who are in Russia and more ​specifically those who are involved in the special operation. And I want to make it clear that we have now agreed that Kenyans shall not be enlisted through the (Russian) Ministry of Defence — they will no longer be ​eligible to be enlisted. There will [be] no further enlisting,” Mudavadi said at a joint news briefing with Lavrov, adding that Kenyans who are already in the Russian army and require assistance will receive appropriate consular services through diplomatic channels.

Before meeting Lavrov, Kenya’s foreign minister told Reuters that the government in Nairobi is “under pressure” from the families of recruited Kenyans.

“We want Kenyans ​stopped — they should not be ​enlisted at all,” Mudavadi ⁠said. “We are getting a lot of pressure from some of the affected families who are now gathering more courage to come forward and speak to the issue.”

At the same time, Mudavadi’s tone toward Russia was fairly cordial, with Reuters saying the official “praised the relationship with Moscow.” He stressed that the two countries have maintained good relations since the Soviet Union recognized Kenya’s independence from Britain in 1963, and he expressed a desire to strengthen their cooperation in energy, tourism, and agriculture.

“We do not want for any reason our partnership with Russia to be defined from the lenses of the special operation [in Ukraine] agenda only,” he ​said. “The relationship between Kenya and Russia is much more broad than that.”

However, fallout from Russia’s recruitment of Kenyans for deployment to the front had damaged that relationship in recent months. This past December, the Kenyan government reported that 18 citizens who recruited in Russia to take part in the war had returned home. Those individuals were among more than 80 Kenyans who appealed to the embassy in Moscow for help. According to local media, some of them had suffered serious injuries.

In response, the government in Nairobi revoked the licenses of more than 600 employment agencies suspected of sending Kenyan citizens to Russia under the guise of work. The authorities also announced that they are negotiating with Ukraine over the release of Kenyans who ended up in captivity. According to a report by Kenyan intelligence presented to government officials in February, more than 1,000 Kenyans have been recruited into the Russian army, five times more than the authorities in Nairobi had previously estimated.

At the end of February, Kenyan authorities arrested Festus Omwamba, the founder of the recruiting agency Global Face Human Resources, accusing him of sending Kenyan citizens to fight in Ukraine on the Russian side.