Last October, Maxwell Aidoo was scrolling TikTok from his home near Ghana’s capital, Accra, when a video caught his eye.A Ghanaian man describing himself as a travel agent explained that he was recruiting for cleaning and construction jobs in Russia. The pay – $4,000 a month – was many multiples of what Mr. Aidoo and his mother earned running their small general store. So he sent a message. The agent got back to him quickly: Would he be interested in working as a “helper” moving equipment for the Russian military? Why We Wrote This Citizens of Ghana, Kenya, and several other African nations are ending up on the front lines in Ukraine as Russia looks overseas to bolster its armed forces. Some governments are now sounding the alarm. That seemed easy enough. “I thought, ‘It pays well,’” Mr. Aidoo recalls.When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Kremlin imagined a quick, decisive victory. Instead, the war has become the deadliest conflict in Europe since World War II, with combined casualties expected to surpass 2 million this year. The grueling war has killed as many as 325,000 Russian soldiers and wounded nearly a million more.To make up
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