A Kenyan man who travelled to Russia in mid-2025 expecting to work in a shop has recounted his experience on the Russia-Ukraine war front.
In an interview with former Citizen TV journalist Yvonne Okwara, Vincent Odhiambo described being sent to the front line of the war in Ukraine, where a drone strike left him wounded and without medical care for weeks.
He recounted a recruiter first approached him and a friend on Biashara Street in Nairobi while they were looking for employment in the Gulf.
The recruiter offered shop work paying between 240,000 (KSh 388,000) and 320,000 (KSh 517,000) roubles a month, with a bonus of approximately 258,000 (KSh 417,600).
“The good thing with our agency, you don’t pay anything. The Russian government and the Kenyan government are collaborating, they will be paying everything for you,” Odhiambo recalled the recruiter saying.
An agency he identified as Global Face, which he said maintained an office on Koinange Street, arranged a medical examination.
He later paid KSh 10,000 as an airport fee and departed Nairobi on July 13, 2025.
Passports Seized, Contracts Signed
Upon arriving in St Petersburg, Odhiambo said a man collected their passports, return tickets and visas before taking the group to a bank to sign documents written entirely in Russian.
“We had not signed any contract. We didn’t even know which company we were going to work in. Others were told they would work in military camps as cleaners. I was told I would work as a shopkeeper in one of the camps” he said.
When they questioned the documents, they were told not to ask. They signed everything. The group was then driven roughly three hours to a derelict forest property and informed they would serve as soldiers.
Odhiambo said he refused, at which point a handler told him he would need to pay 3.4 million roubles (KSh 5.5 million) to return home.
He was later forced to sign a military contract to the effect of comitting the millions if he would want to return home.
“We didn’t know we were signing even the standing order. That means the money, the salary, everything was not ours. That was theirs. They could access our accounts anytime they wished. They knew none of us would survive and hence took charge of our accounts, getting notifications of any money getting in,” he said, adding that his account was later emptied and then blocked.
At the military camp, he encountered soldiers already bearing serious injuries, including an Egyptian man who questioned why he had signed up.
“Almost 90%, they are not walking. People with no leg, others with no arm, others who can’t see. We found an Egyptian who wondered why we signed to take ourselves there. He cautioned us that we would not succeed,” Odhiambo said.
Training in Rostov, southwestern Russia, lasted five days and focused almost entirely on shooting, with recruits firing between 100 and 160 rounds daily. No other aspect other than shooting was tought to them.
Before deployment, a priest administered sacrament and recruits were encouraged to dance, told it could be their final day.
“A father would come and give us sacrament, and then we pray. Anyone with a word is asked to speak it, because it seems like the last time we are meeting alive. We would then dance and talk, a last-supper-like scenario,” he said.
Odhiambo was deployed near Shebekino, close to the Ukrainian border. He said 27 people set out together and he witnessed more than 100 bodies. A drone hit him as he was running.
He took shelter in a trench where, he said, bodies were being used as camouflage.
“There is no first aid at the front. You are just in pain, and they don’t care.” He said he spent roughly 15 days making his way back, the wound left untreated throughout.
After nearly a month of treatment in Moscow, he was ordered to return to the front around September 27.
Odhiambo says he contested returning to the field yet he was not yet healed. His contestation would, however, not move his seniors, who insisted on him going back, albeit with days off for his full recovery.
On losing his argument to them, he insisted on having his money to send it home before he could go back to the front line. There was no money to send, and with his account blocked.
After persistent push for the monies, Odhiambo says he was told to reach out to the Kenyan embassy for further help. They allowed him a phone and internet, which he used to plan his visit to the embassy.
He said a medic on duty in one of the camps facilitated his travel to the emvassy. He was supposed to return to the camp after his appointment at the embassy.
“The embassy was my only lifeline. Had I not found them, I would have gone back to the front line. I got a way to the embassy after a lady medic on duty facilitated me because I did not have any money on me. The person I spoke to at the embassy understood Russia, he therefore communicated with the lady,” he said.
On reaching at the embassy, Odhiambo says he made the resolve not to go back to the fied come what may.
The embassy ultimately obtained a temporary passport for him and, he said, embassy staff paid for his return ticket from their own money. He flew home via Dubai.
