"We don't know": Mudavadi admits number of Kenyans in Russia military unknown
National
By
Edwin Nyarangi
| May 08, 2026
Prime Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi has confessed that the government is unable to confirm the number of Kenyans recruited into Russian military operations.
Mudavadi, who heads the Foreign and Diaspora Affairs ministry, claimed some had travelled without notifying the authorities or even their families.
Appearing before the Senate Labour Committee on Thursday, the PCS said the figures available remain unverified because information is still emerging from what he described as a difficult war environment.
“We had 252 reported cases of Kenyans who enlisted in the Russian special forces while 47 had been repatriated while 10 deaths had been reported by families, though not officially verified,” he told the team.
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Mudavadi defended the government’s handling of the matter, stating that the authorities were not competing with the media over casualty or recruitment figures.
According to the ministry, the recruitment of Kenyans into the Russian military formed part of a wider pattern of transnational trafficking and fraudulent overseas recruitment schemes, and that former servicemen were particularly sought after.
Mudavadi told Senators that Kenya had engaged Russian authorities.
“During my meeting with the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, one of the key issues was that since these Kenyans were caught up on the frontline, we also want the Russian Federation to include them when there is a prisoner exchange,” he said.
Diaspora Affairs Principal Secretary Roseline Njogu told the committee that many victims were bypassing official migration channels and falling prey to traffickers operating through informal recruitment networks. Njogu said the government had intensified public sensitisation campaigns in technical colleges, universities, job fairs, and counties to warn the youth.
The PS said there were 87 active court cases against suspected traffickers and illegal recruiters.
The report paints a grim picture of the expanding geography of labour trafficking and risky migration routes.
According to the ministry, traffickers are increasingly targeting high-risk destinations in southeast Asia, the Gulf, and conflict zones, exploiting desperate job seekers through sophisticated transnational recruitment networks.
Among the destinations flagged in the report are Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand, which the ministry described as hubs for cybercrime-linked labour exploitation.
In Cambodia alone, 393 Kenyans were reportedly trapped between January and April, with 304 already repatriated while others await evacuation.
Laos recorded 29 repatriated Kenyans, while Thailand was identified both as a destination for sexual exploitation and as a transit corridor used to funnel victims into Myanmar, Laos, and Cambodia.
The report further states that 162 Kenyans were smuggled into Qatar by unregistered agencies, while India emerged as another trafficking destination where Kenyans recruited under the guise of hospitality and beauty industry jobs but ended up in forced labour conditions. The ministry has brought back 263 Kenyan from India.