PREMIUM ‘Death brokers’ of Russian-Ukraine war promise millions to grieving Kenyan families A shadowy network is offering compensation to those desperately searching for relatives caught up in Russia's war. Weekly Review Just now Listen

Evidence gathered in a forthcoming report by Journalists for Justice, a Hague based media investigative team, documents that Kenyan recruits who travelled to Russia through alleged recruitment agencies such as Global Face Human Resources Limited or individual brokers in 2025 were passed on to handlers in Russia who supervised the opening of their Russian bank accounts.

Asked whether this meant there was an official process for compensation and repatriating bodies, Ochieng said there might be, but claimed that the Kenyan government either did not want to make it public or was not interested in helping its citizens.

Stopped communicating To test how the proposed arrangement is presented to an individual family, our reporter contacted Ochieng' on July 22, 2026, posing as a relative of a Kenyan man who had travelled to Russia and stopped communicating.