Kenya said on Monday that it had agreed with Russia \u200bthat Kenyans would no longer be eligible for signing up to fight in the war with Ukraine \u200cafter the scale of Russian recruitment\u00a0triggered anger\u00a0in some African countries.<\/p>\n
Kenya says that more than 1,000 Kenyans have been recruited to fight, attracted by monthly salaries of several thousand dollars and bonuses of more than $6,000 for contract soldiers.<\/p>\n
After meeting Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in \u200bMoscow, Kenyan Foreign Minister Musalia Mudavadi praised the relationship with Moscow, including Soviet recognition of Kenyan independence \u200bfrom Britain in 1963.<\/p>\n
On the issue of Kenyans fighting in what the Kremlin calls its “special \u2060military operation” in Ukraine, Mudavadi said agreement had been reached to no longer allow Kenyans to sign up to \u200bfight.<\/p>\n
“His excellency has conversed with us on the issue of the welfare of Kenyans who are in Russia and more \u200bspecifically those who are involved in the special operation,” Mudavadi said at a joint news briefing with Lavrov.<\/p>\n
“And I want to make it clear that we have now agreed that Kenyans shall not be enlisted through the (Russian) Ministry of Defence – they will no longer be \u200beligible to be enlisted,” he said. “There will no further enlisting.”<\/p>\n
He added that consular services would be organised through proper \u200bdiplomatic channels for those Kenyans who had already signed up and required assistance.<\/p>\n
Lavrov said that Kenyan citizens had voluntarily signed contracts to \u200cfight alongside \u2060the Russian army.<\/p>\n
It is unclear exactly how many Africans have gone to fight in Ukraine but Kyiv says over 1,700 Africans fighting on the Russian side. The Russian defence ministry did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
MINISTER CITES ECONOMIC TIES<\/strong><\/p>\n Before the trip to Moscow, Mudavadi told Reuters that he hoped to stop Kenyans enlisting to fight.<\/p>\n “We want Kenyans \u200bstopped – they should not be \u200benlisted at all,” Mudavadi \u2060said. \u201cWe are getting a lot of pressure from some of the affected families who are now gathering more courage to come forward and speak to the issue.\u201d<\/p>\n A Kenyan intelligence report \u200bpresented to lawmakers in February said that more than 1,000 Kenyans\u00a0had been recruited\u00a0to \u200bfight on Russia’s \u2060side in the war in Ukraine, five times more than authorities had previously estimated.<\/p>\n Kenyan politicians have described what they say is a network of rogue state officials who have colluded with human trafficking syndicates to recruit Kenyans to fight for Russia \u2060in Ukraine.<\/p>\n Mudavadi \u200bsaid Kenya and Russia could boost cooperation in energy, tourism, and \u200bagriculture.<\/p>\n “We do not want for any reason our partnership with Russia to be defined from the lenses of the special operation (in Ukraine) agenda only,” he \u200bsaid. “The relationship between Kenya and Russia is much more broad than that.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Kenya said on Monday that it had agreed with Russia \u200bthat Kenyans would no longer be eligible for signing up to fight in the war with Ukraine \u200cafter the scale of Russian recruitment\u00a0triggered anger\u00a0in some African countries. Kenya says that more than 1,000 Kenyans have been recruited to fight, attracted by monthly salaries of several […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18591,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":4,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,2362,1129],"tags":[111,373],"class_list":["post-20183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-east-africa","category-featured","category-security","tag-kenya","tag-russia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20183"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20183\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20184,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20183\/revisions\/20184"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}