The Ukrainian army has arrested a Kenyan who claims he was forced to join the Russian Army while visiting on holiday.
‘They told me that then I either go to fight or they would kill me,’ said the man in a video interview posted on Facebook by the Ukrainian 57th Motorised Infantry Brigade.
The Ukrainian army announced it captured the man, who identified himself only as Evans, in Vovchansk, in the Kharkiv region.
Evans claimed that he did not know what he was signing and was trapped by a promise to stay in Russia after his visa expired.
The man who allegedly signed him into the Russian army told Evans he may be able to help him with his visa expiration, claiming he could get him a job in the country.
‘I asked him, “What job?” But he didn’t tell me. In the evening, he came with papers written in Russian,’ explained Evans. ‘I didn’t know it was military work. So he told me to sign here. After I signed, he took my passport and my phone and said he would return them.’
According to Evans, he was picked up in a private car and ended up in a military camp, where he spent only a week before being given a machine gun and sent to the front line.
Ukrainian army arrested a Kenyan man who claimed to be forced into Russian Army and to the Ukrainian front lines.
The Kenyan athlete told the Ukrainian army there were other foreigners in his unit, including Belarusians, Tajiks and other Africans like him.
Evans does not understand Russian and claimed the commanders would grab him and scream orders at him.
‘Go, go. That’s what they did. They threw me into the forest. And after that, that’s when I ran away from there. I didn’t go to fight, I ran away,’ says Evans.
He then spent two nights in the forest looking for the Ukrainian army, hoping they would save him, as he was afraid the Russians would kill him for deserting.
Evans’ case is not unique. The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, said in a statement on August 4 that the Russian army in the Kharkiv region recruits soldiers from ‘China, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan and African countries’.
The Associated Press reported last year about social media posts that promise education and requalification to African women who are upon landing in Russia, used as workers in Russian factories to make weapons of war.
