{"id":23941,"date":"2026-02-18T18:58:31","date_gmt":"2026-02-18T16:58:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jhb-webdevelopers\/channelafrica\/news\/four-of-19-men-stranded-in-russia-arrive-in-sa\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T16:34:41","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T14:34:41","slug":"four-of-19-men-stranded-in-russia-arrive-in-sa","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/news\/four-of-19-men-stranded-in-russia-arrive-in-sa\/","title":{"rendered":"Four of 19 men stranded in Russia arrive in SA"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Four of the 19 men recruited to go and fight in a war between Russia and Ukraine have landed at the OR Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg, South Africa (SA).<\/p>\n<p>They left the country last year under the pretext that they are going for bodyguard training in Russia.<\/p>\n<p>The four men will be processed at the immigration at the airport and taken to custody by police officials.<br \/>\nThis follows a call between SA President Cyril Ramaphosa and Russian President Vladimir Putin who committed to facilitate their return.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, Ukraine\u2019s Centre for Countering Disinformation says Moscow has recruited at least 18 000 fighters from 128 countries.<\/p>\n<p>Kyiv previously said it was holding citizens from various countries including Somalia, Sierra Leone, Togo and Sri Lanka at prisoner of war camps.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;SABC&#8211;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":20639,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"news-type":[26],"class_list":["post-23941","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-general_news","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"They left the country last year under the pretext that they are going for bodyguard training in Russia.","published_date":null,"news_description":"They left the country last year under the pretext that they are going for bodyguard training in Russia.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/23941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/23941\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26765,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/23941\/revisions\/26765"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=23941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}