Lemekani Nyirenda, a 23-year-old student from Zambia, was serving a nine-year prison sentence for drug trafficking when the Wagner group recruited him to fight in the Ukrainian war. The body of the young man, who died in combat on September 22, was repatriated to Zambia yesterday.
Before receiving the conviction in April 2020, Nyirenda was an Industrial Engineering student in Russia, thanks to a scholarship he received from the Moscow Institute of Physics Engineering in 2019. He was arrested a year later while working as a courier after finding drugs in one of the packages she was carrying, her older sister explained to the BBC. The family says that he was unaware of the contents of the packages he delivered. This summer he was pardoned by applying for a special amnesty on the condition that he participate in the war.
"We were told that on August 23, he was conditionally pardoned and allowed to take part in a special military operation in which he was killed in September," Zambian Foreign Minister Stanley Kakubo said in a statement, demanding that Russian authorities to provide details of Nyirenda's disappearance.
Kakubo assures that DNA tests have been carried out to confirm the identity of the body and that Russian compensation will be awarded to his family. The Zambian authorities have pledged to work to ensure that nothing like this ever happens to a Zambian studying in Russia and to ensure that no other Zambians are in Russian prisons, the Minister says.
"The pain of losing a loved one in unclear circumstances is unbearable. How can Russia start recruiting our citizens who study on scholarships to fight their war? It is definitely not right and our government must ensure that they protect the lives of our citizens in Russia," said Catherine Mwenya, a resident of the capital Lusaka.
Another Zambian urged the government to condemn Russia for the young man's death. "This death requires the government to strongly censure Russia and demand that they stop sacrificing our young people studying there to fight this unwanted war with Ukraine. I only hope they do that and draw a clear line for what can be tolerated or no," Kendricks Phiri said.
Family spokesman Ian Banda said the body will be taken to the morgue at the Teaching Hospital in Lusaka, where doctors will carry out an autopsy on Monday. The relative affirmed that the burial will take place only after knowing the results.
The recruitment of Lemekani Nyirenda is not an isolated case. In a video leaked by pro-Russian Telegram channels in September, oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, leader of the Wagner Group and a close ally of Putin, gave a speech in a Russian jail to recruit prisoners. An illegal practice that seems to have been practiced since at least the month of June and that, in the case of this student, has ended in tragedy.
