Reuters reported that Uganda’s Embassy in Moscow sent its foreign ministry a letter identifying 27 Ugandans who joined Russian forces in Ukraine and are dead or presumed dead.
The document marks 11 as confirmed fatalities. For 16 others, it says their bodies could not be located. The embassy said it received the information in a letter from Russia’s Foreign Ministry. A Ugandan foreign ministry official confirmed the embassy letter’s authenticity, Reuters reported.
Reuters reported accounts in recent months of African men who went to Russia for promised jobs and later ended up fighting in Ukraine. Officials in Kenya, Ghana and South Africa have expressed outrage over those reports, Reuters said.
Ukraine said in 2025 that Russian forces in Ukraine included more than 1,400 people drawn from three dozen African countries; some, it said, had been recruited through deception. Russian authorities reject allegations that they unlawfully recruited African citizens for the war in Ukraine.
