Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence said two Nigerians fighting for Russia were found dead in Luhansk in eastern Ukraine after what it described as a drone strike during an attempt to storm Ukrainian positions. The intelligence directorate named the men as Hamzat Kazeen Kolawole and Mbah Stephen Udoka and said both served in Russia’s 423rd Guards Motor Rifle Regiment. The directorate’s account, provided in a statement, placed the deaths in Luhansk, part of the Donbas region.
The intelligence directorate said the contracts were signed in the second half of 2025, with Kolawole signing on Aug. 29, and Udoka signing on Sept. 28. It also said neither man received any military training. Kolawole, according to the statement, was survived by a wife and three children in Nigeria.
In its description of how the men died, the intelligence directorate said both Nigerians were killed in late November while trying to storm Ukrainian positions in the Luhansk region. It said they “never engaged in a firefight” and that the “mercenaries were eliminated by a drone strike,” in the statement’s account of the incident.
The statement also fit into a broader accusation that Russia has been recruiting men from other countries to fight in its war against Ukraine by offering them job-related opportunities. Ukraine’s intelligence presentation of Kolawole and Udoka’s cases was framed within that wider narrative of foreign recruitment for the conflict.
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, and the war has largely been concentrated in eastern and southern Ukraine, with repeated reports of displacement across the country and pressure on global food and energy markets.