Zambia Asks Russia To Explain How Its Student Killed In Ukraine Was Recruited

Zambia has asked Russia to explain how one of its citizens who had been serving a prison sentence in Moscow ended up on the battlefield in Ukraine, where he was killed, Zambia’s foreign affairs minister said on Monday.

Lemekhani Nathan Nyirenda, 23, was studying nuclear engineering at the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute, according to a statement by Zambia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Stanley Kakubo. Read the statement:

The ministry of foreign affairs and international cooperation is deeply saddened by the untimely death of Mr. Nyirenda under such circumstances and commiserates with the family on their loss.

Kakubo called on the Russian authorities to provide further details regarding the recruitment of Nyirenda and how he ended up fighting in Ukraine. He said:

The Zambian government has requested the Russian authorities to urgently provide information on the circumstances under which a Zambian citizen, serving a prison sentence in Moscow, could have been recruited to fight in Ukraine.

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It was not clear how the prisoner was recruited and by whom. The student’s father Edwin Nyirenda said:

He was serving the prison sentence when he was conscripted into the army to go and fight in Ukraine but we don’t know who conscripted him.

What happened:

Kakubo says Nyirenda was convicted and sentenced to nine years at the Tyer medium security facility on the outskirts of the Russian capital in April 2020.

It’s unclear what charges Nyirenda was convicted of.

The foreign affairs ministry said it received word of Nyirenda’s death on November 9, and that after communicating with the Zambian embassy in Moscow, confirmed that the student had been killed on September 22.

It is not clear where exactly Nyirenda was at the time of his death in Ukraine, but his body has been transferred to the Russian border town of Rostov in order to begin the repatriation process back to Zambia.

Kakubo said he had personally been in touch with Nyirenda’s family in Zambia and is hoping to provide more details of their son’s death once official communication from the Russian authorities is received.

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