NAIROBI, Kenya- If a neighbour had not called urging her to switch on the television, Grace Gathoni would never have known that her husband, Martin Macharia, had been killed thousands of kilometres away in the war between Russia and Ukraine.
The news bulletin on KTN showed his name. That is how she learned her husband was dead.
To this day, she still holds onto their WhatsApp chats, scrolling through them slowly, as though each message might rewrite the ending.
Her last text, sent on the morning of 19 November 2025, remains unread.
By then, the father of four had already been dragged into the battlefields of Ukraine. His phone had been confiscated. Within days, he was shot dead.
Macharia was 39 years old.
He had left Kenya barely a month earlier, on 21 October 2025, full of hope and carrying a promise—one that would turn out to be a lie.
-A promise that turned into a trap-
For nearly his entire adult life, Macharia worked as a PSV driver, most recently with Lopha Travellers, shuttling passengers along the Ndenderu–Ruaka–Nairobi route.
The job was hard, the pay modest, but he kept going for the sake of his children and the siblings he also supported.
So when a long-time friend convinced him that jobs were available in Russia—cleaner, driver, nothing dangerous—he believed him.
The contract, the family says, indicated precisely that: a driver and cleaner. Nothing more.
But almost immediately upon arrival, the truth surfaced.
Three days after landing in Russia, he sent his wife a chilling message: “My dear, they lied to us. It is like we have been taken for military training.”
Gathoni, who spoke to Y News from her Ruaka home, remembers the moment her phone vibrated.
“I was shaken,” she says. “I told him to leave the job. He asked me to try to seek help so he could come back home. But you see, it is not like Mombasa, where he would easily flee.”
By then, he and the man he had travelled with—Peter Kimemia from Juja—had already been pushed into military drills.
They had no access to their passports. Their movements were controlled. Escape was impossible.
-A 72-hour crash course to the frontline-
Macharia told his wife he had undergone only 72 hours of basic military training before being handed combat gear. Full military preparation usually takes months, even years.
But he was given three days.
Then he was deployed to Donetsk, a place he had only read about in the news, to fight on the Russian side of the war.
The last time the couple spoke was on the night of 18 November. It was a tense call. He sounded exhausted.
Hours later, Grace woke up to a text from him—sent at dawn on November 19, 2025.
“We have gone to Ukraine. They have taken my phone,” the message reads.
“I told him, May God help you,” she recalls. “But he never saw the message.”
A week later, a stranger called her. “Check KTN News,” the voice said.
She switched on the TV and froze.
“That is when I saw he had been killed,” she says, her face tightening as though reliving the moment.
-Silence from Russia. Silence from home-
Since then, no Russian official has reached out. No unit has confirmed where his body is.
No information has surfaced about Kimemia, the man he travelled with. Even the friend who convinced him to go abroad is no longer there to help.
And the agent who processed the travel arrangements, who operated from an office along Kiambu Road, has since moved.
The office is empty. Grace has nowhere to turn.
She has made countless phone calls. Gathoni has appealed to the authorities. But all efforts have been futile.
There is no help from the Russian side, and no clear communication from the Kenyan government regarding repatriation.
The family has now appealed directly to President William Ruto and Prime Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi to intervene and help bring Macharia’s body home for a decent burial.
-A family sinking into despair-
Gathoni speaks while sitting among relatives and neighbours who continue to visit, bringing words of comfort, sometimes just companionship. But comfort does little when grief has no closure.
Her firstborn already understands that their father will never return. The younger children still wait by the gate sometimes.
They ask, “When is Daddy coming home?”
Grace has been advised to hold a memorial service without the body, but she refuses.
“How do you bury a man whose body you have not seen?” she asks softly.
Macharia was an orphan. His wife is an orphan. They built their family from scratch, working hard, dreaming bigger.
Russia was supposed to be a lifeline. It became a coffin without a body.
And as the war drags on, tens of other Kenyans remain trapped on the Russian frontline—some recruited unknowingly, others lured with false promises—fighting a war that offers no way back home.
