African leaders have reaped a harvest of Russian military and trade deals at their latest summit in Moscow, securing pledges for everything from fighter jets to satellite technology, but without any visible progress on Russia’s disputed use of army conscripts from Africa.

Thousands of young African men are serving in the Russian army, often coerced to the front lines in Ukraine after being recruited for non-military jobs, and many have been killed. Their fate is a growing controversy in many African countries, but Russian President Vladimir Putin avoided the subject in his speeches at the summit.

Instead, the announcements from Moscow were all about Russian exports to Africa: a dozen Su-35 fighter jets for Ethiopia, space technology for Tanzania, a mining data system for Mali, banking services for Burkina Faso and Niger and possible floating nuclear plants for Togo and Namibia.

“For us, Africa is the continent of the future,” Mr. Putin told the two-day summit, which ended Thursday.

Ukraine discloses evidence of its military operations against Russia in Africa

African leaders were effusive in their praise for the Russian President. Ghana’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, called him “my revered colleague and great friend,” while Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa referred to Mr. Putin as “my brother.”

In total, according to the Kremlin, 22 African leaders attended the summit – a significant increase from the 17 who attended the last such event in Russia in 2023, although barely half the number at the first summit in 2019.

It is not known whether some of the leaders raised the issue of African army conscripts in their meetings with Mr. Putin this week. But the summit’s lengthy, 236-point final statement does not contain a single word about the subject, according to a leaked unofficial copy seen by The Globe and Mail.

Despite the summit’s official silence, the fate of the African soldiers is becoming a hot issue across the continent, with the families of missing men protesting and demanding help to find them or rescue them from the Russian army.

In Zimbabwe earlier this month, families gathered at a registry office to provide DNA samples to help the search for relatives who were missing or killed in Russian military operations in Ukraine. Many were grieving and some broke down in tears, Zimbabwean reports said.

“What is the value of strategic partnerships if African citizens can be deceptively recruited into a foreign war, disappear from their families and, in some cases, die thousands of kilometres from home?” asked Lulu Brenda Harris, a journalist at the Centre for Innovation and Technology, a Zimbabwean news outlet, in a commentary about the Moscow summit Wednesday.

In Cameroon this week, dozens of protesters marched to the Russian embassy in the capital, Yaounde, to demand information on family members in the Russian army. The protest was led by a newly formed group, Bring Back Our Sons and Brothers, which was created after the government confirmed that 16 Cameroonians had been killed in Ukraine. Some marchers, speaking tearfully to local media, said they had heard nothing from their family members for months.

In Uganda this week, the government released documents on the growing number of missing and dead Ugandans in the Russian army. The documents listed 11 dead and 16 missing men, along with five in active service. This followed the government’s request for information on 35 Ugandans whose families believed they were in the Russian army.

In Kenya, dozens of families gathered in Nairobi on Oct. 6 to demand answers about their missing family members and to urge President William Ruto to raise the issue in Moscow.

According to estimates by Ukrainian officials and independent reports, as many as 5,000 African soldiers are in the Russian army. Many were lured to Moscow with the promise of other well-paying jobs. When they arrived, their passports were taken away and they were forced to sign military contracts, then sent to the front line, where some survived for only a matter of days.

The African section directors of Amnesty International, in an open letter this week, urged African leaders at the Moscow summit to raise the issue of the “coercive and deceptive recruitment” of Africans into the Russian army.

These practices often amount to trafficking, which is a crime under international law, and must be investigated and prosecuted, the Amnesty directors said.

The African leaders in Moscow may have been unwilling to make public statements about an issue that Russia is reluctant to discuss. Several African countries – including Mali, Niger and the Central African Republic ? are heavily dependent on Russian troops to defend their regimes from insurgencies.

Analysts are skeptical about Mr. Putin’s attempts to expand Moscow’s influence in Africa, especially in economic sectors. Trade between Russia and Africa was estimated at about US$27-billion last year – significantly below the US$40-billion target announced by Mr. Putin in 2019 and far below China’s annual trade of US$350-billion with Africa.

“With Russia’s capacity constrained by the war in Ukraine, which continues to drain resources and diplomatic bandwidth, the real test is whether Moscow can convert political declarations and security interests into concrete, deliverable commitments in other fields,” said Tighisti Amare, director of the Africa program at the British-based Chatham House institute of international affairs, in a report this week.