Kyiv, Ukraine: Kyiv urged leaders in Africa on Tuesday to keep their citizens from being embroiled in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a day after Zambia said one of its own was killed.
In Lusaka, foreign minister Stanley Kakubo on Monday said a Zambian student who had been jailed in Russia died “at the battlefront” in Ukraine and demanded an explanation from the Kremlin.
Lemekhani Nathan Nyirenda, 23, who had been serving a prison sentence in Moscow, “passed away on 22nd September 2022, in Ukraine”, the minister said in a statement.
Ukraine foreign ministry spokesman Oleg Nikolenko urged African countries to press Russia not to use their citizens in its war in Ukraine.
“We call on African Union and all African states to demand that Russia stop press-ganging their nationals,” Nikolenko wrote on social media.
“Africans shouldn’t die for Putin’s sick imperial ambitions,” he said.
Russian said it was investigating the claims.
“We are clarifying this question,” Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov said, according to the RIA Novosti news agency.
“There were contacts in Lusaka at our embassy. We are of course clarifying all the circumstances,” he added.
Ukrainian officials say the Wagner mercenary group has been sending thousands of soldiers recruited in Russian prisons to the front line, with the promise of a salary and an amnesty.
Several Ukrainian soldiers on the front line in Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine told AFP last month that alleged ex-convicts were being used as bait to draw fire and reveal Ukrainian positions.
