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International Relations and Cooperation Minister Ronald Lamola speaks during SONA debate.
International Relations and Cooperation Minister Ronald Lamola has detailed his department’s difficulties in the process of returning four South African men from Ukraine.
The men arrived at Johannesburg’s O.R. Tambo International Airport on Wednesday.
They are among 17 men who had allegedly been lured to fight in the Russia-Ukraine war.
Lamola explains what his department has been dealing with. “It was a challenging process. It remains a challenging one for the ones who are still in the front line because they are alleged to have been lured by a private security contractor to the Russian government. So that really complicates the situation because they were not, according to the Russian government recruited directly to the Russian army.”
Because of that sensitivity and the difficulties, we had to escalate the matter to the President of the Russian federation and he has been very helpful in supporting our efforts to return the South Africans,” he adds.
Russia-Ukraine War | It has been a challenging process: Ronald Lamola
Families
The families of the four South African men who were rescued from Ukraine have expressed their gratitude to President Cyril Ramaphosa and the Russian government for ensuring their safe return.
A member of one of the families, who has chosen to remain anonymous, says: “It’s been a very difficult time and difficult journey for the families because the parents were given a wrong narrative to say that these guys were hired to be trained as bodyguards but when they got that side, they were taken into a fight in Ukraine. What we are happy about is that we were able to communicate. And we are happy that the president of the two countries – President Cyril Ramaphosa and President Putin – managed to come to a term and agree that these men must come back.”
Safety risk
Meanwhile, former SA Ambassador to Portugal Dr Kingsley Makhubela says police need to interrogate the men.
Makhubela says the men who have been brought back from Russia pose a safety risk to the country. He says police need to establish what type of training the men received.
“Now we know from the reports that we’ve been reading, the risk related to people who have been trained with military skills that they have a tendency for some of these people to get involved in criminal activities. Notably, the cash in transit heists.”
“It’s said most of them or some of them who are involved in it have been trained militarily in one way or another. So, it raises serious security risks for the country, that’s why it’s very important for security agencies to get to the bottom of this and understand what has transpired and to understand the level of training to see how we’re going to manage these people moving forward.”
