LOME, Togo: People from the small west African nation Togo have been “captured and detained” by Ukrainian armed forces after taking part “in military operations alongside Russian armed forces,” Togolese authorities said Friday.
In a statement seen by AFP, Togo’s foreign ministry said that the “majority of compatriots, in particular young students, had left Togo under alleged scholarships offered by structures claiming to be based in Russia.”
The ministry called on citizens, “particularly young people who wish to pursue their studies abroad, to exercise utmost vigilance.”
It “urges them to verify the authenticity of scholarship offers before making any commitment, and to contact the relevant departments or any other ministry concerned... to obtain reliable and secure information before any departure abroad, particularly to Russia.”
In March, the Martin Luther King Movement (MMLK), Togo’s leading human rights organization, alerted the authorities to the case of a Togolese student captured on the battlefield and imprisoned in Ukraine.
“Having received his study visa at the Russian embassy in Cotonou, the compatriot left Togo for Russia on August 21, 2024,” MMLK said in a statement.
“Arriving in Russia, he was forced to join the army to go to the front in Ukraine. It was there that he was seriously wounded, captured and thrown in prison,” it said.
The press also reported in recent months several cases of African nationals, often students or former prisoners, notably from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Cameroon and Benin, fighting with Russian forces on the Ukrainian front.
Prominent blogger targetted
In another development, Ukraine’s internal security agency, the SBU, on Friday accused Russian intelligence of orchestrating an attempt to assassinate a prominent Ukrainian blogger, accusing a 45-year-old woman of carrying out the failed hit.
The attempt to kill Internet personality Serhii Sternenko, who once led the local chapter of a right-wing group but is now better known in Ukraine for crowdfunding donations for military drones, took place on Thursday.
In a statement on Telegram, the SBU said the woman, whom it did not name, had fired several shots with a pistol, one of which hit Sternenko in the leg. The blogger said there was no danger to his life.
The woman’s lawyer said in court that she did not contest the facts of the case.
Ukrainian vlogger Serhii Sternenko. (X: @sternenko)
Russia’s FSB security service and its military intelligence agency did not immediately reply to requests for comment on the SBU’s allegations.
The SBU did not specify which of Russia’s several security services it believed to have recruited the woman, but said that they had last year told her to move into Sternenko’s apartment block in Kyiv, and to pick up a pistol from a dead drop.
The SBU said the woman’s handler told her on the morning of May 1 to kill Sternenko outside his apartment block.
The agency posted screenshots of what it said were messages between the woman and the handler and a video from a security camera showing the assassination attempt.
The accused’s lawyer said the contact had told the woman that Sternenko was working for Russia’s FSB.
The woman told the court that the contact, whose gender was not disclosed, had introduced themselves online as an SBU agent, and that she had initially feared them. Subsequently she had fallen in love with them despite never seeing their photo, she said.
