Zambia has demanded that Russia gives comprehensive details of 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, Stanley Kakubo said on Monday.
Kakubo said in a statement that Russia had notified Zambia about the death in September of Lemekhani Nyirenda, but did not provide details.
The Zambian student was serving a jail sentence at a medium security prison on the outskirts of Moscow after being convicted of contravening Russian law, Kakubo said, without specifying the offence that occurred in April 2020.
“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,” Kakubo said.
It was not clear how the prisoner was recruited and by whom. Reuters could not independently verify the details surrounding his death.
“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,” the student’s father Edwin Nyirenda said.
Russia’s defense ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the circumstances of his journey to Ukraine and subsequent death.
