ABUJA, Nigeria—Russian officials at the Southern Federal University (SFedU) in the city of Rostov-on-Don, near the border with Ukraine, have been pressuring African students at the institution to join Vladimir Putin's forces in fighting in Ukraine’s Donbas region, three students at SFedU told The Daily Beast.In early March, just days after Russian armed forces invaded Ukraine, the Wagner Group established a base in the city from which they are recruiting mercenaries to fight in Ukraine's Donbas region, according to a Facebook post by the Ukrainian military which said Rostov-on-Don had become the capital of the private military company.“He [the soldier] said Africans who agree to fight in Ukraine will be hugely rewarded by the Russian government after a period of time.” A decree signed in September by Russian President Vladimir Putin now makes it easier for foreigners to obtain Russian citizenship if they join the army.In June, The Guardian reported that a 27-year-old Congolese student, who arrived at Rostov two years ago, later moved to Luhansk in Ukraine’s Donbass region together with two friends and fellow students from the Democratic Republic of Congo and Central African Republic to join the local militia and take up arms against Ukraine.Just this week, Zambia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that a 23-year-old Zambian student who was studying nuclear engineering at the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute (MEPhI) before his imprisonment over a year had been killed in Ukraine on Sept. 22 while fighting on the Russian side."