International
Uproar as Ukraine seeks to enlist fighters from Africa

Nigeria, Senegal and Algeria have criticized Ukraine’s effort to recruit international fighters for its war with Russia. Analysts say those who have responded to the call need to reconsider.
Russia’s war on Ukraine is barely two weeks old but Ukraine is already attracting potential foreign fighters from as far away as Kenya.
“If Ukraine decides to pay me a very good amount of money, which I know I cannot earn here, I will definitely go there and fight,” Kimanzi Nashon, a student in the Kenyan capital Nairobi said.
“When we go there, and then the war ends before anything happens, I will come back to Kenya and be a millionaire,” said Nashon.
Nashon isn’t alone in harboring thoughts of being a hired fighter in Ukraine.
“If an opportunity presented itself for me to fight in Ukraine as a mercenary, I would be on my heels running there,” Beatrice Kaluki, who is unemployed, told DW.
“I would rather die on the front line in Ukraine knowing that my family would be compensated even after my death, rather than die in Kenya from depression because of the insane unemployment rate!”
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The 27-year-old said she believes other youths would run there [to Ukraine] if a chance presented itself because “they would rather die there fighting than die in this country from poverty.”
Ukraine’s call to all
Their sentiments result from last week’s rallying cry by Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for like-minded people to come to the country’s defense against Russia’s invasion.
According to Ryan Cummings, director of Signal Risk, a South African-based security risk management consultancy, President Zelenskyy might be capitalizing on Africa’s challenging socio-economic condition to lure African fighters to Ukraine.
“African nationals might see an economic opportunity from participating in this conflict,” Cummings told DW.
He said the reward could potentially come from being granted Ukrainian citizenship or being provided some form of financial compensation for participating in the conflict on behalf of Ukrainian forces.
However, African countries have come out strongly to condemn Ukraine’s call for African fighters to join the “international legion” against the Russian invasion.
Nigeria on Monday issued a warning on Twitter to its citizens that it would not tolerate any recruitment of mercenaries to fight alongside Ukrainian forces against Russian troops
Nigeria’s foreign affairs ministry spokesperson, Francisca Omayuli, said Nigeria would not allow Nigerians to volunteer as mercenaries.
Omayuli also said that the Ukraine Embassy in Nigeria had refuted local Nigerian media reports that it was demanding money from Nigerian volunteers as reported .
“The Embassy … dissociated itself from the claim that it is requesting $1,000 (€917) from each Nigerian volunteer for air ticket and visa,” Omayuli said.
According to the Nigerian daily, The Guardian, last week more than 100 young men registered their interest in fighting at Ukraine’s embassy in Abuja.
Senegal ‘shocked’ by Kyiv’s recruitment drive
Senegal has also expressed its displeasure with Ukraine’s government, saying that at least 36 people in Senegal were ready to confront Russian forces.
DW tried to reach some of the volunteers but was unsuccessful.
Senegal’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that it was astonished to learn that the Embassy of Ukraine in Dakar had posted an appeal on its Facebook page for foreign citizens to come to Ukraine’s combat aid.
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In a statement, the Senegalese government criticized the initiative and warned its citizens that recruiting volunteers, mercenaries, or foreign fighters on Senegalese soil is illegal.
Although Ukraine’s Embassy in Senegal has since deleted the Facebook post, the willingness of some young Africans to fight in Ukraine raises questions about their profiles and motivations.
“These young people who want to get involved [in Ukraine] have not fully considered political or religious implications,” said Serigne Bamba Gaye, a researcher on peace, security and governance at the US-based Peace Operations Training Institute (POTI).
“They are only interested in answering a call without perhaps understanding the issues surrounding the Ukrainian conflict,” Gaye said.
Africa’s complex ties with Russia
Senegal, which shares extensive political and military ties with Russia, was one of 17 African countries that abstained from voting on the March 2 UN resolution condemning Russia’s aggression and calling for an end to the fighting.
Algeria, another client of Russian military hardware, also called on Ukraine to desist from trying to enlist fighters from its country. Its government, too, has remained silent over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“For the past 20 or 30 years, we have seen many recruiters who recruit young Africans to take them to play the role of mercenaries,” Gaye said, adding that the prospect of economic gains easily lures young people.
“The other element that seems important to me is the social [media] networks that make any cause today have a global dimension. A country needs support, so we’re going to go there.”
Social media has turned into a battlefield between those who back Ukraine and those for Russia.
For security and risk analyst Ryan Cummings, African countries need to consider the implications of allowing their citizens to travel to Ukraine as hired guns.
“Russia has stated any country that is actively assisting Ukraine in this war, or as Russia calls it: ‘a special military operation to demilitarize and de-nazify Ukraine’, will be considered at war with Russia,” he said.
He warned that the Kremlin could also retaliate by ending diplomatic relations with African countries that support Ukraine.
MSN/DW
International
US strikes in Yemen kill 31 as Trump vows to end Huthi attacks

US strikes in Yemen kill 31 as Trump vows to end Huthi attacks
The first US strikes against Yemen’s Huthis since Donald Trump took office killed 31 people, the rebels said Sunday, with the US president warning “hell will rain down upon” the Iran-backed group if it did not stop attacking shipping.
The Huthis, who have attacked Israel and Red Sea shipping throughout the Gaza war, said children were among those killed.
An AFP photographer in the rebel-held capital Sanaa heard explosions and saw plumes of smoke rising.
Attacks on Sanaa, as well as on areas in Saada, Al-Bayda and Radaa, killed at least 31 people and wounded 101, “most of whom were children and women”, Huthi health ministry spokesperson Anis Al-Asbahi said.
Footage on Huthi media showed children and a woman among those being treated in a hospital emergency room, including a dazed girl with blackened legs wrapped in bandages.
Trump, in a post on social media, vowed to “use overwhelming lethal force” to end the Huthi attacks, which the rebels say are in solidarity with Palestinians amid the Gaza war.
“To all Huthi terrorists, YOUR TIME IS UP, AND YOUR ATTACKS MUST STOP, STARTING TODAY. IF THEY DON’T, HELL WILL RAIN DOWN UPON YOU LIKE NOTHING YOU HAVE EVER SEEN BEFORE!” he said.
Trump also issued a stern warning to the group’s main backer.
“To Iran: Support for the Houthi terrorists must end IMMEDIATELY!” he said.
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“Do NOT threaten the American People, their President… or Worldwide shipping lanes. If you do, BEWARE, because America will hold you fully accountable and, we won’t be nice about it!”
The Huthis vowed the strikes “will not pass without response”, while Iran’s top diplomat Abbas Araghchi condemned the deaths and said Washington had “no authority” to dictate Tehran’s foreign policy.
The Huthi Ansarullah website slammed what it called Washington’s “criminal brutality”.
US Central Command, which posted videos of fighter jets taking off and a bomb demolishing a compound, said “precision strikes” were launched to “defend American interests, deter enemies, and restore freedom of navigation”.
- ‘Escalation with escalation’ –
“Our Yemeni armed forces are fully prepared to confront escalation with escalation,” the Huthi political bureau said.
The rebels, who have controlled much of Yemen for more than a decade, are part of the “axis of resistance” of pro-Iran groups staunchly opposed to Israel and the United States.
They have launched scores of drone and missile attacks on ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said the Huthis had “attacked US warships 174 times and commercial vessels 145 times since 2023”.
The campaign put a major strain on the vital route, which normally carries about 12 percent of world shipping traffic, forcing many companies to take a costly detour around southern Africa.
The Palestinian group Hamas, which has praised the Huthi support, lashed out at the US strikes, branding them “a stark violation of international law and an assault on the country’s sovereignty and stability”.
Iran “strongly condemned the brutal air strikes” in a statement, denouncing them as a “gross violation of the principles of the UN Charter”.
The head of the country’s Revolutionary Guards, Hossein Salami, said: “Iran will not wage war, but if anyone threatens, it will give appropriate, decisive and conclusive responses.
- ‘Political dialogue’ –
The United States has launched several rounds of strikes on Huthi targets.
After halting their attacks when a ceasefire took effect in Gaza in January, the Huthis announced on Tuesday that they would resume them until Israel lifted its blockade of aid to the devastated Palestinian territory.
Trump’s statement did not reference the dispute over Israel, but focused on previous Huthi attacks on merchant shipping.
Earlier this month, the Trump administration reclassified the Huthis as a “foreign terrorist organisation”, banning any US interaction with it.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio also spoke to his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov. Moscow is close to Tehran.
“Continued Huthi attacks on US military and commercial shipping vessels in the Red Sea will not be tolerated,” Rubio told Lavrov, according to the State Department.
Russia’s foreign ministry said that “Lavrov stressed the need for an immediate cessation of the use of force and the importance for all sides to engage in political dialogue… (to) prevent further bloodshed”.
The Huthis captured Sanaa in 2014 and were poised to overrun most of the rest of the country before a Saudi-led coalition intervened.
The war devastated the already impoverished nation.
US strikes in Yemen kill 31 as Trump vows to end Huthi attacks
International
South African ambassador ‘no longer welcome’ in US, Rubio says

South African ambassador ‘no longer welcome’ in US, Rubio says
The US is expelling South Africa’s ambassador to Washington, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio saying he is “no longer welcome in our great country”.
In a post on X, Rubio accused Ambassador Ebrahim Rasool of hating America and President Donald Trump and described him as a “race-baiting politician”.
The decision was “regrettable”, the office for South Africa’s president said on Saturday, adding that it remained committed to building a mutually beneficial relationship with America.
The rare move by the US marks the latest development in rising tensions between the two countries.
In his post on Friday, Rubio linked to an article from the right-wing outlet Breitbart that quoted some of Rasool’s recent remarks made during an online lecture about the Trump administration.
“What Donald Trump is launching is an assault on incumbency, those who are in power, by mobilising a supremacism against the incumbency, at home… and abroad,” Rasool said at the event.
He added that the Maga movement was a response “to very clear data that shows great demographic shifts in the USA in which the voting electorate… is projected to become 48 percent white”.
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In response, Rubio called Rasool “PERSONA NON GRATA,” referencing the Latin phrase for “unwelcome person”.
The post from Rubio came as he departed Canada from a meeting with foreign ministers.
Ties between the US and South Africa have been deteriorating since Trump took office.
The US president signed an executive order last month that freezes assistance to South Africa. The order references “egregious actions” by South Africa and cites “unjust racial discrimination” against white Afrikaners – those who descended from Dutch settlers.
The South African government has repeatedly denied this.
The order also references a new law, the Expropriation Act, that the order claims targets Afrikaners by allowing the government to take away private land.
“As long as South Africa continues to support bad actors on the world stage and allows violent attacks on innocent disfavored minority farmers, the United States will stop aid and assistance to the country,” according to a statement from the White House.
The government in South Africa denies its law is related to race, the Associated Press reported.
A fact sheet from the White House states the country “blatantly discriminates against ethnic minority descendants of settler groups”.
While lower-ranking diplomats are sometimes expelled, it’s highly unusual in the US for it to happen to a more senior official like a foreign ambassador, the Associated Press reported, noting neither the US nor Russia took such actions against one another even amid tensions during the Cold War.
Rasool previously served as the country’s ambassador to the US from 2010 to 2015 before being tapped again for the post in 2025.
He was born and grew up in Cape Town. When he was nine, he and his family were forcibly removed from an apartment that was declared only for white people. As he grew older, he became more interested in politics and said the eviction was a significant moment in his upbringing that guided his future.
South African ambassador ‘no longer welcome’ in US, Rubio says
BBC
International
US court to Trump: Return workers fired across agencies

US court to Trump: Return workers fired across agencies
A federal judge in San Francisco has ordered President Donald Trump’s administration to rehire thousands of workers involved in mass firings across multiple agencies.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup said that the terminations were directed by the Office of Personnel Management and its acting director, Charles Ezell, who lacked the authority to do so.
The administration immediately filed an appeal of the injunction with the Ninth Circuit Court. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt earlier Thursday cast the ruling as an attempt to encroach on executive power to hire and fire employees. “The Trump Administration will immediately fight back against this absurd and unconstitutional order,” she said in a statement.
Alsup’s order tells the departments of Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Defense, Energy, the Interior and the Treasury to immediately offer job reinstatement to employees terminated on or about Feb. 13 and 14. He also directed the departments to report back within seven days with a list of probationary employees and an explanation of how the agencies complied with his order as to each person.
The temporary restraining order came in a lawsuit filed by a coalition of labor unions and organizations as the Republican administration moves to reduce the federal workforce.
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“These mass-firings of federal workers were not just an attack on government agencies and their ability to function, they were also a direct assault on public lands, wildlife, and the rule of law,” said Erik Molvar, executive director of Western Watersheds Project, one of the plaintiffs.
Alsup expressed frustration with what he called the government’s attempt to sidestep laws and regulations governing a reduction in its workforce — which it is allowed to do — by firing probationary workers who lack protections and cannot appeal.
He was appalled that employees were told they were being fired for poor performance despite receiving glowing evaluations just months earlier.
“It is sad, a sad day, when our government would fire some good employee and say it was based on performance when they know good and well that’s a lie,” he said. “That should not have been done in our country.”
Lawyers for the government maintain the mass firings were lawful because individual agencies reviewed and determined whether employees on probation were fit for continued employment.
But Alsup, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, has found that difficult to believe. He planned to hold an evidentiary hearing Thursday, but Ezell, the OPM acting director, did not appear to testify in court or even sit for a deposition, and the government retracted his written testimony.
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US court to Trump: Return workers fired across agencies
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