"What pushed a South African to sign a contract with the Russian army?" repeats the 28-year-old mercenary E. P. M from Ukraine. "Simple, really. Maybe you remember the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics. That made me very angry, so I decided that I wasn't going to joke about the name of God." How?
When he mentions the Olympics, E. P.M. is most likely referring to a scene from the opening ceremony performed by drag artists, a transgender model, and a naked singer recreating the Last Supper.
Both Christians and Muslims saw the staging as an unacceptable provocation and mockery of the sacred. Of course, most likely, our protagonist was the only person on the planet who used "that blasphemy" as an excuse to fight for Putin. Like hundreds of other African mercenaries, he would soon discover that there is nothing more corrupt and rotten than the Moscow officers.
When history reviews what happened in this war, testimonies like this will serve to reinforce the chilling certainty that the men who fought on the Kremlin's side were not only facing Ukrainian enemies but also, and above all, thousands of thieves and murderers with stars and no honor who rob them and send them to die with Putin's blank check of impunity. Chronicle has obtained more than a dozen testimonies since the beginning of the large-scale aggression, but this one is particularly relevant because it comes from one of the few known South African mercenaries who have fought with the invading forces.
"I never even thought about going to Russia," he continues. He speaks in English, with a strong Afrikaner accent. Not a word of Russian. "At first, I just wanted to get a passport because I wanted a new life, a different life. I wanted a future because there is none in South Africa. I want to be a teacher, you know? So they promised me an enlistment bonus and a passport, and that was it. There's no more to the story."
The truth is that there is more to the story. There is a lot of history here, and he unravels it as he answers our barrage of questions. During the interview, obtained and conducted through collaboration with intelligence sources, the soldier not only pleads for help to get out of there. He wants to reach the Russian military prosecutor's office and offer to work as an infiltrator for that organization to expose the corruption of the commanders.
Formally, the commitment he signed with the St. Petersburg office expired many months ago, but the officers continue to hold him because the contractual clauses they signed are worthless. Effectively, they have him hostage, and his passport is about to expire.
"I have served in several battalions," he clarifies at the beginning. "In the first one I was in, there were people from Ghana, Cameroon, China, and an Egyptian. They have all died except for one. There were no EU people there, but plenty of damn Arabs. Honestly, I don't like them at all. They have a pretty stupid mentality, especially that Egyptian I'm talking about," he says, not hiding his particular bias.
"At first, I tried to enlist from South Africa through the embassy, but it was completely useless. I remember that email they sent me telling me my request was ridiculous. They told me to help them in the information war and with the media. And I was like, 'I want to shoot'." "I called a friend who was fighting with a private military company, and between the two of us, we figured out how to go through the standard procedure. That's how I got my contract," he elaborates.
CANNON FODDER USED BY MOSCOW
"None of us speak Russian: left, right, forward, backward, and that's about it," he comments. "But some Russians at the first Rostov-on-Don training ground translated for us. And then we also had our own phones. Of course, offline. With the SIM cards removed."
When the South African mentions the "training ground," he is referring to the training camps in Rostov-on-Don, especially Persianovsky, a common base for accelerated military training for foreign recruits before sending them to the Donbas. Typically, they spend between two and four weeks there. His entire description of the presence of foreign forces in his regiment is consistent with reports of around 600 active Africans on the Russian side until mid-2025.
In any case, the crucial part of his story comes now when the mercenary begins to describe what was happening inside the battalions. "Already in my first service, there was a guy named Fish to whom we had to pay a kind of living subsidy. And more or less, we all agreed, which was pretty stupid. We had to pay for food, for meat, for the water we drank. Does that make sense? Well, that's how it works. And then we found out that it was all complete crap."
"In the first, second, and fourth battalions of the Regiment, they sent you to the assault if you didn't pay," continues the mercenary. These are military units specialized in assaults or rapid attacks on fortified positions. In other words, they are the cannon fodder that Moscow uses to break through enemy lines. They are usually groups with little training and poor logistics, used to achieve humanly costly objectives.
The mercenary does not know the real names of any of the officers he is trying to report. He always refers to the intermediate commanders who extorted him by their call names: Reba, Fish, Belarus, Odin, and Killa.
"It's pretty horrible," he asserts. "I had to pay 125,000 rubles (about 1,190 euros) because the commander said we had to buy a drone. I didn't actually pay them. He took the money from my card while I was at the training ground. I needed a uniform because mine was ruined, and they beat me up. I had to give them another five thousand rubles for the clothes (about 54 euros). I never saw that drone. And I never received my uniform."
"Many of my comrades refused to pay. Some uninstalled the app so they wouldn't take their phones and access their accounts. Mohammed deleted all the data from his phone. Mounir erased the passwords from memory. So in the end, I did the same."
"You always wonder who that money is for," the Afrikaner adds. "Well, fifty-fifty. Half of it is used to bribe their superiors, and the rest to buy nice things. In the second battalion, they used the drone money to fix up a car. But while we were paying, no one went to the storm. That was the good part. Once I gave money to one to buy myself a motorcycle. I never received it, but then one of the commanders showed up with a new bike riding around the training ground. It's crap."
"I remember a French guy," he adds. "We called him Moog. He didn't speak English or Russian. But they still sent him to the assault. I remember how he looked at me. I remember his tears in his eyes. And I couldn't do anything. Amir was torn apart by Ukrainian artillery. He was exhausted but they sent him back to the position. And shortly after, he was killed. I'm lucky to be alive."