These brave Africans are fighting for Russia because they owe the Soviet Union a lot, which assisted their fight against colonialism and racial oppression during the Cold War. Russia can readily find local collaborators to recruit African mercenaries such as the daughter of Jacob Zuma.
During the Cold War, the Soviet Union supported its allies on the continent, including Egypt during the Suez Crisis in 1956-1957. In addition,
the Soviet Union provided military-technical, financial and diplomatic assistance to national liberation organizations and movements fighting against colonialism and racial discrimination regimes in Southern Rhodesia (renamed as Zimbabwe in 1980) and South Africa.
The USSR had the most advanced relations with some countries in North Africa, primarily Egypt, Libya (after that country’s 1969 revolution), Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia. In sub-Saharan Africa, the Soviet Union prioritized countries that chose the socialist model of development, such as Tanzania, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Sao Tome and Principe, the Republic of Congo, Mali, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Angola, Mozambique, Benin and others, as well as countries that adopted neutrality in their foreign policy, such as Nigeria and Zambia.
Russia's defence ministry says African mercenaries have been killed in Ukraine
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