{"id":1457589,"date":"2026-10-26T14:39:55","date_gmt":"2026-10-26T12:39:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/russia-recruited-hundreds-of-men-from-burundi-and-zimbabwe-for-war-against-ukraine\/"},"modified":"2026-10-26T14:39:55","modified_gmt":"2026-10-26T12:39:55","slug":"russia-recruited-hundreds-of-men-from-burundi-and-zimbabwe-for-war-against-ukraine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/russia-recruited-hundreds-of-men-from-burundi-and-zimbabwe-for-war-against-ukraine\/","title":{"rendered":"Russia recruited hundreds of men from Burundi and Zimbabwe for war against Ukraine"},"content":{"rendered":"

Russia is expanding its recruitment of citizens of African countries into its army amid heavy losses in the war against Ukraine. In the first 9 months of 2026, Moscow recruited 699 men from Burundi and 530 citizens of Zimbabwe.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is reported by Bloomberg<\/a> .<\/p>\n

According to journalists, Russia is focusing its recruitment campaign on countries with low levels of democracy, limited press freedom, and weak judicial systems. Among the countries where Moscow has intensified its recruitment of citizens for war are Zimbabwe, Burundi, and Sierra Leone.<\/p>\n

Between January 1 and September 30, 2026, Russia recruited 699<\/strong> men from Burundi. For comparison, 30<\/strong> citizens of this country signed contracts with the Russian army in all of 2025. The number of Zimbabwean citizens recruited increased to 530,<\/strong> compared to 65<\/strong> a year earlier.<\/p>\n

Significant increases in recruitment have also been recorded in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone, Sudan and Cameroon. The expansion of the campaign comes after Kenya and South Africa took steps to prevent their citizens from traveling to fight in the war against Ukraine.<\/p>\n

According to media reports, the recruitment is aimed at compensating for the significant losses of the Russian army and the lack of human resources for mobilization.<\/p>\n

At the same time, Moscow has not publicly acknowledged the involvement of foreigners in the fighting against Ukraine. The Kremlin has stated that Russia has enough military personnel to continue the war. Last month, Vladimir Putin dismissed suggestions that a new wave of mobilization was being prepared.<\/p>\n

Concerns are growing in a number of African countries about Russia’s attempts to recruit their citizens. According to the report, people can be lured with promises of civilian employment, including in catering and transportation, as well as offers of large lump sum payments for signing a contract, high salaries, and Russian citizenship.<\/p>\n

Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Kenya have previously been reported to be trying to repatriate their citizens who were reportedly tricked or coerced by Russia into joining the war against Ukraine.<\/a> In some cases, foreigners were promised civilian jobs but ended up in the Russian army.<\/p>\n

By the way, according to the \u201cI Want to Live\u201d project, among Russian prisoners of war in Ukraine there are citizens of 55 countries of the world<\/a> . Thus, approximately every tenth captured Russian soldier has foreign citizenship.<\/p>\n

Also follow \u201cPryamim\u201d<\/strong> on Facebook<\/a> , X<\/a> , Telegram<\/a> , and Instagram<\/a> .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Russia is expanding its recruitment of citizens of African countries into its army amid heavy losses in the war against Ukraine. In the first 9 months of 2026, Moscow recruited 699 men from Burundi and 530 citizens of Zimbabwe. This is reported by Bloomberg . According to journalists, Russia is focusing its recruitment campaign on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":54,"featured_media":1360929,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[76874,76871,76872],"class_list":["post-1457589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-war","category-news-2","category-news-feed"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1457589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/54"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1457589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1457589\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1360929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1457589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1457589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}