Cameroon said Russian authorities have confirmed the deaths of 16 Cameroonians fighting against Ukraine, the first time \u200bthe Central African country has spoken about the involvement \u200cof its nationals in the ongoing war.<\/p>\n
In a statement broadcast on state media on Monday evening, the foreign ministry called on the families \u200bof the dead to make contact with ministry officials in \u200bthe capital city of Yaounde.<\/p>\n
A Cameroonian diplomatic note, also dated \u2060Monday and seen by Reuters, referred to the deceased \u200bas “military contractors of Cameroonian nationality” operating in a special military operation \u200bzone, a term Russia uses to describe the war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n
Neither the statement nor the diplomatic note specified how the 16 men ended up \u200bfighting for Russia, nor did they provide details on \u200bthe location, timing and circumstances of their deaths.<\/p>\n
The Russian embassy in Yaounde did \u200cnot \u2060immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.<\/p>\n
Ukraine said\u00a0in February that more than 1,700 Africans were fighting for Russia, though analysts say the true figure is likely higher.<\/p>\n
Russian authorities have \u200bdenied illegally recruiting \u200bAfrican citizens \u2060to fight in Ukraine.<\/p>\n
In an internal memo issued in March 2025 and seen by Reuters, Cameroon’s \u200bdefence minister expressed concern that soldiers were \u200bleaving the \u2060country to join the war in Ukraine and instructed commanding officers to closely monitor their units.<\/p>\n
Cameroon has said it does not \u2060officially \u200bdeploy troops abroad outside of international \u200bor regional mandates and has warned citizens against taking part in foreign conflicts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Cameroon said Russian authorities have confirmed the deaths of 16 Cameroonians fighting against Ukraine, the first time \u200bthe Central African country has spoken about the involvement \u200cof its nationals in the ongoing war. In a statement broadcast on state media on Monday evening, the foreign ministry called on the families \u200bof the dead to make […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":19873,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":8,"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":[28,2362,1129],"tags":[193,373,404],"class_list":["post-20440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-central-africa","category-featured","category-security","tag-cameroon","tag-russia","tag-ukraine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20440","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\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20440"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20440\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20441,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20440\/revisions\/20441"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}