A Zambian student who was serving a prison sentence in Russia and died fighting with Russian soldiers in Ukraine was hired by the Russian mercenary group Wagner, his leader said.

The head of the Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, said in a statement quoted by the AP News Agency that the student, 23-year-old Lemekhane Nyireda, "died heroically."

Zambian Foreign Minister Stanley Kakubo said earlier this month that Russian officials notified the Zambian government of the death of Nyireda, who was a government-sponsored student before being convicted in Russia of an unspecified crime in April 2020.

The Zambian embassy in the Russian capital of Moscow revealed that Nyirenda died on September 22 and that his remains were transported to the Russian border town of Rostov before being returned to Zambia.

Before his imprisonment, Nyirenda was studying nuclear engineering at the Moscow Institute of Engineering Physics.

He was serving a nearly nine-year sentence in a prison outside Moscow, the Zambian government said.