Ghana’s Foreign Affairs Minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa took a firm stance on the deceptive recruiting practices that have led dozens of young Ghanaians to die for Russia on battlefields in Ukraine.
He first raised the issue in February, saying that 272 Ghanaians had fought on Russia’s side of the war. But he brought updated numbers to an August 17 meeting in Moscow with his counterpart Sergei Lavrov — seven more Ghanaians had been killed in the fighting, bringing the total to 62, and 15 were missing.
Ablakwa emerged from the meeting and held a news conference with Russian media, reporting that Lavrov “pledged that we can work together to stop these illegal recruitments.”
“This is not our war, and it should not be claiming Ghanaian lives,” Ablakwa wrote in an August 18 social media post. “The Government of Ghana will continue to lead advocacy on this matter and ensure that our youth are protected from harm’s way.”
Many Ghanaians are angry now that they know the extent of the Kremlin’s recruiting tactics and the deaths of their countrymen on the front lines of Russia’s war. They reject Lavrov’s claim that all of Russia’s military contracts are legal and voluntary.
“While Moscow speaks of free choice, accounts emerging from many African countries paint a different picture: young people lured by promises of jobs or training, only to find themselves on the front lines,” intelligence analyst Mustapha Bature Sallama wrote in an August 25 article for news website Modern Ghana. “Ghana, this time, refuses to settle for that. It demands action.”
In a 2025 report for the French Institute of International Relations, researcher Thierry Vircoulon described how recruitment networks originate in Russia and rely on Africa Corps mercenaries, diplomatic representatives and cultural entities such as Russia Houses.
In 2025, a Russian diplomat announced that Moscow was preparing to open a Russia House in Ghana’s capital, Accra. Foreign Policy Research Institute fellow Olena Snigyr in 2024 characterized the Kremlin’s cultural outreach through Russia Houses “a humanitarian front for the activities of the former Wagner Group.”
Vircoulon has documented Russia’s sprawling recruitment networks on the continent and estimates that between 3,000 and 4,000 Africans are among 18,000 to 20,000 foreign fighters in the Russian Army.
“These abusive and deceptive recruitment practices are akin to a form of human trafficking, the most tragic consequence of which is the sending of amateur mercenaries to the front lines as ‘cannon fodder’,” he wrote. “For some, this migratory adventure in a foreign war is a one-way trip, and for many, the war is a trap that closes in on them.”
The numbers have become too large to ignore. This year, research organization INPACT identified 1,417 African recruits, including 361 Egyptians, 335 Cameroonians and 234 Ghanaians.
“These recruits have been integrated into assault waves designed to overwhelm Ukrainian defensive lines, contributing to a strategy of attrition,” the report stated. “From the recruits’ perspective, recruitment is driven by a desire for social and geographic mobility, within a context marked by structural poverty, political instability, and recurring crises on the African continent.”