'I have to fight' Congolese student on Moscow's side

Fighting alongside pro-Russia separatists as part of Moscow's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine wasn't mentioned in the brochures of the University of Luhansk when Jean Claude Sangwa, a 27-year-old student from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, moved to the breakaway region last year to study economics.

- Pjotr Sauer

But when the head of the Kremlin-controlled, self-declared Luhansk People's Republic announced a full military mobilisation of the region on 19 February, Sangwa, together with two friends and fellow students from DRC and Central African Republic, decided to join the local militia and take up arms against Ukraine.

"I joined because the war came to our republic. What should I have done? I am a man and have to fight," Sangwa said in broken Russian. "The whole world is fighting against Russia," he added when asked why he had decided to join the militia.

Sangwa moved to Russia two years ago to study in Rostov, close to the Ukrainian border, and then moved to Luhansk, which had been captured by separatists backed by the Russian army in 2014.

There is a long tradition of Africans studying in Russia, beginning when the Soviet Union started offering scholarships to African students in newly independent socialist and communist states in the postcolonial period.