The Zambian government reported on Monday that a student from Zambia who was serving a nine-year and six-month sentence in a Russian prison had died while fighting alongside Russian troops in Ukraine.
Lemekhane Nyireda, 23, was a government-sponsored student before being sentenced for an unspecified crime in April 2020, and according to Zambia’s foreign minister Stanley Kakubo, Russian officials informed their government of his death.
“In view of this very sad development, the Zambian government has requested the Russian authorities to urgently provide information on the circumstances under which a Zambia citizen, serving a prison sentence in Moscow, could have been recruited to fight in Ukraine and subsequently lose his life,” Kakubo said.
He claimed that Nyirenda passed away on September 22 and that his remains had been transported to Rostov, a town on the Russian border, in preparation for repatriation to Zambia.
Nyirenda was a student of nuclear engineering at the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute prior to receiving his prison sentence.