With tears streaming down his face, Evans Kibet, a 36-year-old long-distance runner, pleads for his life in a video released by Ukraine's 57th Separate Motorised Infantry Brigade.
Wearing a sports top beneath the brigade's flag, he raises his hands and begs: "I am Kenyan. Don't shoot me." Once an athlete from Kenya's high-altitude training town of Iten, Kibet says he was duped by a sports agent who promised him a chance to race in Russia.
Instead, his passport was confiscated, and he was forced into signing documents he couldn't read. Those papers, he claims, were his ticket straight into Vladimir Putin's army. What followed was a chilling ultimatum: "I was told: 'Either you go to fight or we'll kill you.'"
<social>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9SXk5x6-Vc</social>
Kibet insists he never fought a single battle. After a week of basic training, armed with an automatic rifle he barely knew how to use, he says he made a daring escape, ditching his weapon and wandering for days through a Ukrainian forest until he stumbled upon soldiers.
Terrified, he shouted his now-viral words: "I am a Kenyan, please don't shoot me." But his fate is far from certain. Back home in Kenya, his family watches the footage in shock. "I am so traumatised. I didn't sleep at night," his cousin Edith Chesoi told reporters.
His younger brother calls him "a humble man, a runner, a pillar of the family," while Ukraine says his case exposes how Russia preys on vulnerable foreigners from poorer nations, luring them with jobs and dreams, then shoving them onto the battlefield.
Many never survive long enough to tell their story. For Evans Kibet, the 36-year-old long-distance runner who once dreamt of winning marathons abroad, the only race now is for his life. His family is begging Kenya's government to intervene before he is lost forever.