26/7/2026
When Kenneth Kakuru left his home in Kawuku, Entebbe, on November 23, 2025, he believed he was travelling to Russia for a driving job that promised a monthly salary of $6,000 (about Shs 21 million).
Like dozens of other former security guards and drivers who had worked in Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia between 2007 and 2013, Kakuru hoped the opportunity would lift his family out of poverty. Instead, his family says he disappeared after being deployed to the Russia-Ukraine warfront.
His wife, Anthens Ankunda and his twin brother both get teary when they narrate the circumstances under which he left.
He had been without a job for a long time, and the going had become tough for us. We were under constant harassment from local loan sharks because he used to borrow money from them to buy necessities,” Ankunda says.
On November 23, he came home panting and started packing his clothes in a hurry. He told me that he had secured a job which would earn him $6,000 per month. He said, ‘my wife, I have to go. This opportunity will make poverty history in our home.’ Those were the last words he said as he left,” Ankunda said.
Ankunda says Kakuru left Uganda by bus to Juba, where he boarded a flight to Istanbul before finally landing in Moscow with 15 other Ugandans, mainly those who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan as security guards.
Upon reaching Moscow, Kakuru sent WhatsApp audio messages to his wife, indicating that they had been driven to a military camp and that what he was being told to do was a job different from what he had been promised.
He told me that they had been given contracts drafted in the Russian language to sign, after which they were subjected to military training. He would appear online for 30 minutes every morning and then disappear,” Ankunda, a mother of three, told The Observer.
After three weeks, Kakuru asked Ankunda to open an account in Centenary Bank where his first wages would be remitted.
I told my husband that the children had been sent away from school because of non-payment of school fees. However, he told me that his first wages would be deposited on the account in a week’s time, but added that he had been driven to a faraway place. He asked me to pray for him. He gave me a contact of a woman called Anna and said she would facilitate the remittance of the money.
He also said in case anything happens to him, Anna should be the one to help me in settling the compensation. Indeed, I communicated with Anna, and she assured me that the money would be paid after a week,” Ankunda told The Observer.
After a week, Ankunda checked the account, and there was no money yet; the children needed food, school fees and other necessities.
