Russia recruits Africans to fight in Ukraine, families seek answers

In front of Tunisia's Foreign Ministry, families have gathered from around the country to demand news of their adult children who went missing in Russia after being recruited to fight in the Ukraine war. My son was working in Russia. He married a Russian. After four years working there, he enlisted in the army. Within a month, he was on the war's front line near the Ukrainian border. I've been operating in Russia. His family received a death certificate seven months after his deployment, but can't get more information from the foreign ministry or Russia's embassy in Tunisia. Take it easy. I keep going back and forth and they tell me nothing. I want to know how my son died, and if he's dead, that they bring his body back. We'll In the family house 60 kilometers from Tunis, Hamadi regularly communicates through voice notes with his son's wife who's still in Russia. be right He reportedly enlisted after being promised Russian nationality. Amnesty International claims that this recruitment method is coercive and targets irregular immigrants. back. All we have are his last photos and his service number, and then communication was cut off. The worst for us is to have no information, to not know what happened. I don't know what to say. Another family has a more complex story. Ayman Dawadi went to Russia in 2021 to study and work at the same time to send money to his family. He was arrested in 2022 in a drug trafficking case linked to the delivery company he was working for. They put him in prison for nine months. We paid a lawyer. We did everything. The lawyer told us there was no evidence against him and that he hadn't done anything wrong. And then all of a sudden we learned he had been conscripted into the army. While imprisoned, Russian authorities allegedly put pressure on him to join the army. The Russian Defense Ministry began this method of recruitment in 2024. In May 2025, Eamon told his family that he had signed a military contract in exchange for suspending his prison time. He was deployed a few months later. His mother shared the last voice note she received from him. To this day, she doesn't know where her son is, whether he's alive or dead. On the occasion of the Africa-Russia summit, Amnesty International issued a letter to African heads of state expressing deep concern over Russia's coerced and deceptive recruitment of nationals of African states into its military forces to fight against Ukraine.