Russia has told Zambia it pardoned a Zambian prisoner to go and fight in Ukraine, where he was killed, the southern African country's Foreign Affairs Minister Stanley Kakubo said on Friday.
Russia previously announced that Lemekhani Nyirenda had been killed on the battlefield in Ukraine in September, prompting Zambia to ask how he had ended up fighting in the war.
Kakubo said Russia's Foreign Affairs Minister Sergei Lavrov told him by telephone that Nyirenda was pardoned on Aug. 23 to join the military operation, in exchange for an amnesty.