Signed up to kill in Africa, refused to die in Ukraine: Russia’s Africa Corps recruit flees to Philippines after GRU unit rerouted him to the front

A Moscow factory worker joined Russia's GRU-controlled Africa Corps lured by an advertised overseas posting. He deserted when Russia pointed him at Ukraine instead — and his account of a December 2025 errand separately helped journalists locate the corps' Moscow headquarters, RFE/RL reports. The Africa Corps is a Russian government-controlled paramilitary unit that took over Wagner Group's operations across Africa after Prigozhin's death in 2023.

"I brought you some meat"

Russian national Georgy Kochkin, 21, was working a low-paying job at a Moscow factory and carrying car loan debt when he spotted the Africa Corps job listing in October 2025. The offer included a 2 million ruble ($25,000) signing bonus and suspended car loan payments during service. 

His recruiter's first words, addressed to a supervisor as Kochkin arrived on 11 October, were: 

"I brought you some meat."

The contract he signed said nothing about Africa, IT work, or the non-combat role he had been promised. Russia sent him for training to the Mulino base in Nizhny Novgorod Oblast. Russia issued him cold-weather gear — unsuited for Africa, he noted. Veterans on base explained the unwritten deployment rule: if morning roll call named a country, it meant Africa; silence meant Ukraine. 

"Only a few were sent to Africa; most went to Ukraine," Kochkin told RFE/RL. 

At least three other recruits deserted once Ukraine became clear. Some of those who stayed were eventually sent there as sappers — troops who clear minefields.

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Fled to Manila

On 23 January 2026, Kochkin was told to expect deployment in two to three days. He left the following morning: drove to Smolensk, took a train to Minsk — half-expecting his name to surface in a police database — and flew via China to Manila, where he has applied for asylum.

Whether Russia filed desertion charges is unclear, per RFE/RL. His unit sent messages asking his whereabouts and offered a transfer to another unit. Whether criminal proceedings have since followed is unclear.

Headquarters on a Novichok campus

Kochkin's account also produced an unexpected intelligence detail. In December 2025, he drove a superior officer to the Africa Corps' "main center" in Moscow where, he said, "generals decide who goes to Africa." He remembered three landmarks near the checkpoint: Andropov Avenue, the Moscow River, and a Lukoil station beside it. Radio Svoboda Ukraine used those details to locate the site.

The headquarters sits on the campus of the Central Research Institute of Chemistry and Mechanics (TsNIIKhM) in southeastern Moscow — the same campus where RFE/RL and The Insider established in 2020 that the Signal scientific center had developed an enhanced Novichok variant used in attempts to kill opposition figure Alexei Navalny and former GRU officer Sergei Skripal.