‘Please don’t come to Russia’: Zimbabwean prisoner of war reveals the human trafficking pipeline

WHEN Tatenda Tarwire—a 37-year-old Zimbabwean national—received a message from a Moscow-based agent just a few months ago, he thought his proverbial ship had come in.

According to him, upon agreeing to uproot himself from Zimbabwe to Russia, he immediately started dreaming of what he would do with the small fortune he would receive for the seemingly-innocuous labor he’d be providing to his Russian hosts.

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They told me I’d get a $20,000 signing bonus after signing the contract, plus $2,500 every month for 12 months. After that, I’d be able to go back home. My wife and kids were happy thinking [their] father is going to work and get more money and we’d start [a] business. We’d build a house and maybe also buy cars like other people.

Given that the average yearly income in Zimbabwe stands at $3,036, Mr. Tarwire firmly ignored his uncle’s repeated misgivings and cheerfully boarded his flight to Moscow, arranged by his would-be benefactors.

Upon arriving in Moscow on April 6th, 2026, according to Mr. Tarwire, the friendly demeanor of his hosts changed significantly; where they were once inviting and encouraging, they adopted a more forceful tone, demanding he relinquish his passport and phone to them without providing any rationale. It was in this moment that he began to pray to God, and the foreboding words of his uncle tore through his heart: “No, my friend, please don’t go.”

How Are Africans Being Recruited Into Russia’s War? Inside the Deceptive Pipeline

While Zimbabwe’s President Emmerson Mnangagwa has openly declared his support for Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Zimbabwe’s political opposition and Information Minister Zhemu Soda have sharply criticized Russia’s practice of luring Zimbabwean nationals under the false pretense of securing lucrative employment within Russia.

The Zimbabwean legal system has also taken an aggressive stance against local recruiters for the Russian military, in one recent case even insisting that participants in this recruitment scheme stand trial at the High Court of Zimbabwe, given the gravity of the offense of human trafficking.

Although Mr. Tarwire knew he would be working a military job in Russia, he noted that he was promised by his hosts that he would be safe from the frontline dangers posed by the ongoing war.

It was that question I asked: Am I going to war or just work in Russia as a soldier? He said, no, in the front we are only sending Russian soldiers because they know the territory, they know the language. But later I realized that 98% being killed in the war are all foreigners.

Mr. Tarwire quickly realized that he’d made an irreversible mistake when he arrived at a training facility outside Moscow and met other Africans—mostly from Cameroon, South Africa, Burundi, Rwanda, Benin, Kenya, Nigeria, and Zimbabwe as well—who had fallen into a similarly perilous situation. Desperately seeking comfort and reassurance, he asked them: “Did you get your bonus? Have you sent money home to your families?”

Most answered in the negative, telling him that they’d either never seen the money that had been promised to them, or that they’d received it, but had no way of sending it outside of Russia, owing to the strict international sanctions regime imposed upon the Russian financial system.

The Frontline Reality: Drone Warfare and Fields of Casualties

Before he knew it, Mr. Tarwire was sent directly to the Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine, where he detailed for me the horrors he experienced.

Through gasps and tears, he told stories of walking out on his first sortie and seeing fields covered in thousands of Russian corpses, and of being ordered by a Russian commander to abandon a Belarusian recruit who’d been starving for seven days and had lost his leg in combat several days prior.

He proceeded to tell me how he was forced to complete perilous marches every day through Ukrainian drone-covered territory, among other, more disturbing experiences he sobbed and shook severely while attempting to relate.

Toward the end of our conversation, Mr. Tarwire invoked God and His love, earnestly assuring me that it was only due to a higher power that he’d been granted the mercy of being captured by Ukraine’s Armed Forces. Expressing profound shame for his actions and begging for forgiveness, he took our final moments to appeal—in a plaintive voice that seemed to come from the depths of sorrow and loss—to people on the African continent, and to the Black diaspora as a whole.

My advice, my very, very, very big advice to all Africans, please don’t allow your brothers or fathers to come to Russia. They are selling themselves to go and die because no one is coming back home. If you see one year is over and you see your brother or father is not calling you, you should know that he is dead. From now, may God [never] allow [anyone] to come to Russia because he is going to lose his life.

After Mr. Tarwire wiped his eyes and lumbered to the exit, I was reminded by the next POW—a man from Peru, who’d been given the callsign “Chino” on account of his features—that these experiences are part of an organized system, as opposed to being an isolated anomaly. _*United24Media*_