South Africa said Thursday it will investigate how 17 of its citizens ended up fighting as mercenaries in the Russia-Ukraine war.

“The government of South Africa has received distress calls for assistance to return home, from 17 South African men, between the ages of 20 and 39 years, who are trapped in the war-torn Donbas,” President Cyril Ramaphosa’s government said in a statement, referring to the eastern Ukrainian region largely under Russian control.

Authorities said the men were lured to join the military ranks “under the pretext of lucrative employment contracts” and ordered an investigation into “the circumstances that led to the recruitment of these young men into these seemingly mercenary activities.”

Pretoria is “working through diplomatic channels to secure the return of these young men,” the statement added, though it did not specify in which sense they were stuck.

South African law prohibits citizens from providing military assistance to other governments or joining foreign armed forces without official authorization.

The statement also did not specify which side the men had joined, and the South African government did not immediately respond to POLITICO’s request for comment. But a Ukrainian intelligence official, after being granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter candidly, said it was “clear” the men were fighting for Russia.

“It’s clear those citizens were not fighting on our side. Otherwise, South Africa would have said so publicly,” the official said. “And we’re not luring anyone into the army. There was never a scandal. But their BRICS friends do.”

Founded in 2009, the BRICS group — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — has maintained close ties with Moscow despite the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The bloc expanded last year to include Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Ethiopia, positioning itself as a counterweight to the G7.

Russia has intensified recruitment in Africa and the Middle East as both Moscow and Kyiv struggle with heavy losses and manpower shortages.

According to the open-source intelligence group Frontelligence Insight, Russian recruiters often target economically vulnerable countries, offering large sums — sometimes equivalent to a decade of local wages — and promising noncombat roles such as cooks or drivers, many of which turn out to be false.