June 22, 2026
Kenya's Labour Minister Personally Promoted Recruitment of Men Now Dead in Ukraine - Three Senior Officials Accuse Him of Complicity
A major AFP investigation published June 22, 2026 has placed Kenya's Labour Minister Alfred Mutua at the centre of the country's Russian military recruitment scandal — with three senior Kenyan sources, a civil servant, a security official, and a lawyer, all telling AFP that Mutua was personally and politically involved in the scheme that sent hundreds of Kenyans to their deaths in Ukraine.
Erastus Mundia
Erastus Mundia was a 38-year-old father of three when he left Kenya in June 2025, one of hundreds of Kenyans promised well-paid civilian jobs in Russia. He was forced to sign a contract with the Russian army. He received minimal military training. He died on the front line in Ukraine in January 2026.
On June 26, 2025 — the day Mundia and approximately 20 others departed for Russia — Labour Minister Mutua shared photos of himself with the group on social media, describing their destination as a "life-changing opportunity" that would earn them 115,000 shillings ($900) a month working in a food-packing factory.
VOCAL Africa, a Kenyan rights group, believes most of the workers in those photos are now dead.
"Since I got the news, I hardly eat. I find myself in a different world," Mundia's mother Josephine Ngoya told AFP. "I feel like the Kenyan government and Alfred Mutua have betrayed us."
The numbers
Kenya's official government estimate puts the number of citizens who have been victims of Russia's "irregular military recruitment" at 291, including 19 dead and 32 missing. But a Kenyan intelligence services report seen by AFP puts the figure at over 1,000 — and states that officials were complicit. VOCAL Africa has dealt with more than 500 cases of Kenyans forced into the Russian army, of which approximately 350 families have confirmed their relative is dead.
The accusations
Three senior Kenyan sources told AFP that Mutua was "personally and politically involved" in the scam. VOCAL Africa describes him as "the main culprit." "He signed all these agreements," VOCAL Africa's Odhiambo Ojiro told AFP. "Many people died a painful death because Alfred Mutua and his accomplices are interested in making money at the expense of the lives of poor ordinary citizens."
In May 2025, Mutua appeared before parliament alongside Festus Omwamba, head of recruitment agency Global Face Human Resources. Omwamba has since been arrested and charged with human trafficking over his role in the Russian recruitment scheme. "Mutua was behind all that but it is Festus who was thrown under the bus," a senior member of Kenya's security forces told AFP — a claim backed by both the civil servant and the lawyer.
Mutua has faced no reprimand and no criminal charges. "If the president feels our pain, he should sack Alfred Mutua for taking our children to go and die there. He should sack him and take him to prison," said Julius Matee, a friend of Mundia's family.
The political protection
AFP reports that President Ruto is aware of Mutua's involvement, according to the government official. But Ruto faces a difficult election in 2027, and cabinet members provide valuable regional support — Mutua has a significant political base in Machakos County near Nairobi.
The scale of the scandal has nonetheless seen Mutua sidelined in practice. When Kenya sent Foreign Minister Musalia Mudavadi to Moscow in March 2026 to seek assurances that no more Kenyan workers would be forcibly recruited, Mutua was explicitly barred from joining the delegation. "Mutua wanted to come with us," the government official told AFP. "It would have been an insult to the victims."
Background
Mutua was Kenya's Foreign Minister when President Ruto came to power in 2022. He hosted Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in May 2023 — 15 months after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine — as Kenya sought to diversify its trade relationships. After being moved to the Labour Ministry in August 2024, Mutua took charge of a work placement programme that has sent more than 400,000 Kenyans abroad. Kenya's reliance on remittances from overseas workers — worth more than one trillion shillings ($7.7 billion) last year — created the economic infrastructure through which the Russian recruitment pipeline operated.
If you or your relative are being coerced to military service in Russia or you volunteered to join their armed forces but want to quit - remember, there is always a safe way out offered by the Ukrainian government. Read more here.
See also: Russia rushes Kenyan recruits to frontline death as repatriation pressure mounts