Waiting for Moses: Africa’s sons in Russia’s war
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- Mama Regina has waited over a year in Douala, Cameroon, for the body of her son Moses, who was shot running toward trenches while fighting alongside Russian forces in Ukraine — without a body, she says, there can be no funeral, grave, or final prayer.
- Ukrainian officials say nearly 3,000 Africans from 35 countries are fighting alongside Russian forces, which Kyiv attributes to active recruitment networks across the continent.
- Former Russian officer Sergey Elidonov, speaking in Dakar, denies any recruitment networks exist and says Cameroonian fighters come for pay on their own — a pattern he ties to Soviet-era student exchanges and economic desperation rather than clandestine operations.
- Professor Aicha Pemboura, who researches the phenomenon, frames it as "a new type of migration" — experienced Cameroonian soldiers battle-hardened against Boko Haram and separatist groups are joined by students and unemployed graduates, some of whom sign military contracts believing they are traveling for work or education.
- Pemboura warns the Ukraine war is quietly draining African countries of soldiers, students, and skilled workers: "All of that represents a loss for Africa."
- The piece draws a historical parallel to the Senegalese Tirailleurs who fought for France in WWII, asking whose faces will be missing from the photographs when this war is remembered — and noting that "history has a habit of bleaching its heroes."
Why it matters: Russia's war in Ukraine is now pulling nearly 3,000 Africans from 35 countries into combat, with African families like Mama Regina's absorbing the cost — she has waited over a year without her son's body. The drain extends beyond soldiers to students and skilled workers, deepening a colonial-era pattern of Africans dying in European wars without recognition or repatriation.
