Two South African gamers who regularly chatted on Discord while playing the military simulator Arma 3 traveled to Russia in 2024 after contacting a recruiter in the chat. One of them died in the war against Ukraine.
Two South African gamers who regularly chatted on Discord while playing the military simulator Arma 3 traveled to Russia in 2024 after contacting a recruiter in the chat. One of them died in the war against Ukraine.
According to Bloomberg, the Discord interlocutor introduced himself as @Dash. After the correspondence, the men met in Cape Town and visited the Russian consulate, and on July 29, 2024, they flew to Russia via the UAE. Once there, they met with @Dash and, according to the publication’s sources, signed one-year contracts with the Russian army in early September near St. Petersburg.
After several weeks of basic training, one of the newly minted occupiers was sent to the front in Ukraine. He served as a grenade launcher assistant and last contacted his family on October 6, 2024. Friends were later informed of his death, and a medical certificate received by the family indicates that he died on October 23, 2024 in Verkhnyokamyanske, Luhansk Oblast. There are no publicly confirmed details about the second signatory to the contract.
Bloomberg notes that the men were promised high pay, the opportunity to obtain Russian citizenship and continue their education after their service. The material also recalls that Discord was banned in Russia in October 2024, but recruitment was likely carried out through contacts outside the country.
In South Africa, participation in war on the side of a foreign army or assisting it has been prohibited by law since 1998, and in recent months the country has been investigating possible recruitment schemes. In November 2025, authorities detained a radio presenter and four men in a case of recruitment for the Russian Federation. The next hearing was scheduled for February 10, 2026. Kenya said in November that up to 200 of its citizens were fighting for the Russian Federation, and similar reports have also appeared regarding Cameroon and Burkina Faso.
Previously, dev.ua wrote about how Google, Meta, and TikTok removed the accounts of a Russian factory that fraudulently recruited women from Africa and forced them to assemble drones. These accounts had at least 158,344 followers, and one TikTok page had over a million likes.
