President William Ruto and President Vladimir Putin during talks at the Kremlin in Moscow on October 30, 2026. Photo: Office of President William Ruto (@WilliamsRuto) via X
A Kisii County family says a 38 year old father of four who left for a driving job in Qatar ended up in Russia’s army and was killed in February, which no official has confirmed.
Matiabe Onchari, a former boda boda rider from Nyamondo village in South Mugirango, left home with a friend after the two were offered jobs as drivers in Qatar, his family told Citizen TV. His wife, Beatrice Nyanchama, said that when he reached Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi, he called to say that the plan had changed and that they were now going to Russia.
Within days of arriving, Onchari began sending home photographs of himself and other men in military uniform, apparently serving at the front, the family said. Then the messages stopped. Nyanchama said contact was lost in February, and that only recently the friend who traveled with him told the family that Onchari had been killed that month. The friend did not know where his body was.
“He was a boda boda rider here in Kenya, and he also had skills in driving vehicles. He knew he was going abroad to work as a delivery car driver,” Nyanchama told Tuko, breaking down as she spoke.
Neighbors and relatives gathered on Saturday at the home of his father, David Minyonga, to console the family. His parents say they still hope he is alive. “I feel very bad. My child is getting lost in Russia. I ask the President to help us if he is still there,” his mother, Rosia Bosori, told Citizen TV in Swahili. His father appealed to the government to trace his son, and his uncle, John Omanwa, asked Foreign Affairs Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi to hear the family’s plea, saying local leaders had abandoned them. The family wants the government to establish what happened, find his remains and bring them home for burial according to Abagusii customs.
Citizen TV aired the family’s story on Saturday, October 31, in Swahili and English bulletins, a day after President William Ruto met President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin following the Russia Africa summit in Moscow.
In a statement on X on October 30, Ruto said he had thanked Putin “for confirming that Kenyans will no longer be enlisted into the Russian military because Kenya has been categorised a non source country for recruitment.” Ruto said he had appointed a defence attaché at the Kenyan embassy in Moscow who would work with the Russian Ministry of Defence on “the return of Kenyans who were in Russia for military purposes,” on compensation for Kenyans and on their safe return home.
The two leaders also agreed to negotiate a bilateral labour agreement that would allow Kenyans to live and work in Russia, Ruto said, and Russia offered to raise the number of scholarships for Kenyan students from 70 to 300. Kenya and Russia signed five agreements during the summit, among them one on cooperation in labour inspection and employment promotion.
The Daily Nation reported the meeting as a deal to halt recruitment of Kenyans into the Russian army. Neither government has said how many Kenyans are serving in Russian units or how many have been killed. Tuko said Onchari’s disappearance is part of a wider crisis involving hundreds of Kenyans recruited into the Russian military, many of whom say they were promised civilian work.
Onchari’s case shows the limits of the Kremlin pledge for families already affected. A defence attaché can process the return of Kenyans still in Russian service, but families such as Onchari’s are seeking information about men reported dead, often with no official notice and no body. Tuko reported a similar case from Kitui County, where the family of Dennis Ngunga Muthui, who went to Russia for a driving job, has not heard from him since his phone went off on October 1 after he said he was being sent toward the Ukrainian border.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs had not commented publicly on Onchari’s case by Sunday evening. “We want Mudavadi to hear these words of ours,” Omanwa said.