As Russia’s war on Ukraine staggers into its fifth year, the Kremlin is turning to increasingly deceptive and unusual recruiting methods.
While playing a first-person military simulation game called Arma 3, two young South African men met a recruiter named @Dash on the social platform Discord. After several conversations, they met in Cape Town before visiting the Russian consulate, according to documents viewed by Bloomberg news service.
“There have been quite a few examples of Russia recruiting people from around the African continent, but this is the first time we’ve come across them using gamers,” Bloomberg senior writer Antony Sguazzin told Cape Talk radio.
The men were promised lucrative contracts, educational opportunities and the possibility of qualifying for Russian citizenship if they joined the military. They left for Russia on July 29, 2024. Within weeks of meeting @Dash and signing their contracts near St. Petersburg, one of the men died in Ukraine, according to a medical certificate.
A copy of his contract showed that he went to the front line, where he was a marksman’s assistant to the grenade launcher. He contacted his family on October 6, 2024, for the last time, and his friend told them on December 17, 2024, that he had been killed in action.
The other South African man’s whereabouts are unknown.
Since invading Ukraine in February 2022, Russia has lost hundreds of thousands of fighters, leaving the Kremlin desperate to find recruits elsewhere. As of November 2024, as many as 200 Kenyans were fighting for Russia, according to Kenya’s foreign minister. There also have been reports of Russia recruiting in Botswana, Burkina Faso and Cameroon.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha on November 7, 2025, said 1,426 people from 36 African countries were fighting for Russia, but he cautioned that the actual number could be higher. He urged governments to warn their citizens against joining the conflict and accused Moscow of enticing and tricking Africans into joining the war.
“Foreign citizens in the Russian army have a sad fate,” he wrote in a post on X. “Most of them are immediately sent to the so-called ‘meat assaults,’ where they are quickly killed. Most mercenaries do not survive more than a month.”
Videos have spread on social media showing Russian troops using racist language, joking about African deaths and even forcing one recruit at gunpoint to strap a land mine to his chest and blow himself up in a Ukrainian bunker.
“Russia recruits nationals of African countries using a variety of methods,” Sybiha wrote. “Some are offered money, while others are duped and do not realize what they are signing up for or are forced to do so under duress. Signing a contract is equivalent to signing a death sentence.”
In late 2025, Russian recruiting schemes became a scandal in South Africa, where fighting for or assisting the military of another country has been illegal since 1998.
On November 20, 2024, a daughter of former President Jacob Zuma reportedly was involved in recruiting 19 men from Botswana and South Africa for the Russian military. The men thought they were signing documents for a bodyguard training course, some of their relatives told Bloomberg.
“As we speak now, we are packing and preparing to move to the war zone,” one of the men wrote in a WhatsApp message to Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla, according to Bloomberg. He asked why his phone and bank cards were taken.
“It’s not the frontline. They are just scaring you,” she responded. “What I know is that you will watch Russian soldiers go in and out of the red zone and you may just patrol or be put on cooking duties or gun cleaning.”
Zuma-Sambudla told some of the men that she had been on the same bodyguard training course, saying, they “will taunt you like they did with me. But I trust and believe all will be well.” As South African police launched an investigation, she resigned as a member of the National Assembly.
Amid so many cautionary cases, Ukrainian Ambassador to South Africa Olexander Scherba said Russia “looks at Africa through imperial eyes” and “does not value Africans.”
“There might be all kinds of charm offensives on the African continent, but once an African person comes to this war, they just become meat for the meat grinder,” he told British newspaper The Telegraph.