AK 47: Russia's weapon of terror and killings in Kenya, world aircraft crashes

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Had Russian decision makers considered what was reported as a regret expressed by the inventor of the AK-47, Mikhail Kalashnikov, on his deathbed in 2013 and ordered an end to its production, millions of lives lost in the world, including thousands of Kenyans, may have been spared. In the second part of the god of weapons Wellingtone Nyongesa and Canadian journalist Stephen Bandera look at the effects of the world’s most dangerous gun on Kenya and Moscow’s role in plane crashes caused by its weapons craze.

When in July 2025 the Kremlin celebrated an upsurge in domestic weapons production with President Vladimir Putin claiming ammunition output had increased 22 times as certain weapon types jumped 30 times ahead since his unprovoked war against Ukraine, Moscow was inadvertently celebrating the number of people those weapons have killed in the world, including in Kenya.

In a show of might, at a ceremony deliberately broadcast for the world to see, which included aircraft bombers, missile heads, drones and all manner of modern weaponry were displayed. It looked like there was no need to showcase Moscow’s most dangerous weapon, the light gun created from a mix of wood and metal, the Automat Kalashnikova invented by Mikhail Kalashnikov in 1947, famously known as AK47.

In the eyes of Russia’s top diplomat, who, Putin has trusted with the role of speaking for the country in all sittings outside Russia, Sergey Lavrov, that gun is a godsend to Africa.

“The Kalashnikov is a symbol of decolonisation. African states remember very well how their grandfathers and fathers achieved independence with the help of Soviet weapons ….” He has said.

Available data, however, draws a contrasting conclusion that the AK 47 has all along carried the devil’s blessing on the continent of Africa, including Kenya.

Human Rights groups, including Amnesty International and Oxfam, consider the AK-47 (and its many variants) to be the deadliest and most prevalent individual firearm in human history. Since its creation, the Kalashnikov family of weapons has likely killed more people— more than 20million in the world—than any other firearm, including tanks, warships, and warplanes combined. The AK 47 has been used in homes, in streets, in valleys, in conventional wars and gorilla war fares.

In a 2006 report, Amnesty International described the AK47 as the world’s most favourite killing machine “Many thousands of people are killed every year by the weapon. This is because there is little international control on its production, sale and use …there are up to 100 million AK-47s and variations of its design in the world today. They are found in the state arsenal of at least 82 countries and are produced in at least 14 countries”

The rights body quoted the inventor of the gun Lieutenant-General Mikhail Kalashnikov, calling for tougher controls and, in a statement released to the Control Arms campaign he said: "Because of the lack of international control over arms sales, small arms easily find their way to anywhere in the world to be used not only for national defence, but by aggressors, terrorists and all kinds of criminals [ …] When I watch TV and see small arms of the AK family in the hands of bandits, I keep asking myself: how did those people get hold of them?"

The weapon that bears his name has not been an instrument of decolonisation in Kenya as Lavrov imputes; if anything, it has been an instrument of depopulation and debilitation, killing 4500 Kenyans in 2014 and 2015 alone. It has been used to wound hundreds, killing thousands in 52 years spanning 1970 to mid-2022, according to data found in the Global Terrorism Database, a data set with more than 213,000 terrorist attacks. 883 terrorist attacks were recorded in Kenya between February 1975 and May 2022.

Between 1989 and 2022, 311 of these attacks involved firearms (35% of all terrorist attacks) that killed 847 Kenyans, and wounded 315 (1,162 Kenyan victims in 236 attacks, 75 had no victims; there were also 13 non-Kenyan victims: 9 killed and 4 wounded).

The AK-47 is a common weapon used in various types of killings in Kenya, ranging from urban crime and domestic incidents involving security personnel to large-scale banditry and terrorism.

The Alshabaab terrorist group, which has caused Kenya sleepless nights, spends 24 million dollars per year on weapons, records at the National Counter terrorism center reveal. The group’s preferred gun of choice is the AK-47 that it uses as an assault weapon in its ground operations. The group has no formalised procurement of its weapons and only accesses them through the black market, sometimes through Russian agencies whose only goal is to make a profit.

When the terror gang it is not using the AK47, it prefers Improvised Explosive Devices (IED), particularly vehicle-borne improvised devices, which it uses to target security forces, government officials and civilians.

Our investigations reveal that in all recent terror attacks in Kenya, the gun of choice has been the AK47. 

Records at Kenya’s National Counterterrorism Centre indicate that on 21 September 2013, four Al-Shabaab gunmen armed with the AK 47 assault rifles conducted a four-day siege at Westgate Mall in Nairobi’s Westlands, killing 67 people and injuring around 200 others. The terror group claimed the attack was in retaliation for Kenya’s military intervention in Somalia.

On April 2 2015, four gunmen, later identified as Alshabaab, launched an attack at Garissa University, killing 148 people and injuring 100 others in the group’s deadliest attack in the country. The four-armed men who were later killed were all armed with the AK47 rifle.

On January 15, 2019, armed with AK47 assault rifles and IEDs, Al-Shabaab operatives killed 21 people, including one US citizen, at the high-end Dusit D2 hotel in Nairobi.

In the Global Terrorism Database that is run by the University of Maryland (USA), Kalashnikovs rifles were named specifically in 39 attacks that occurred in Kenya in the fifteen years between 2007 and mid-2022, killing 188 people and wounding 293 others; in this decade-and-a-half, all 481 (100%) victims killed and wounded in these 39 “kalashnikov” attacks were Kenyan in nationality, according to data the Global Terrorism DB.

Recent documented cases of attacks after 2022 reveal that the AK47 is the preferred killer weapon in police and security personnel incidents, violent crime and gang activity to banditry. For instance, in August 2024, in Kitui, a police constable at Kanyonyoo Police Station used his service weapon, the AK-47, to shoot to death his girlfriend and another woman at a market before fleeing.

In Uasin Gishu in June 2024, an intoxicated police officer allegedly shot and killed his wife and another man at a nightclub using an AK-47 rifle. In Laikipia in August 2025, at the Kirimon KDF Camp, a Kenya Defence Forces serviceman and a woman were found dead following a shootout where an AK-47 rifle was recovered at the scene. In Nakuru, a police officer killed his girlfriend and himself with his service weapon in the Freehold Area

The popularity of the gun has left criminal gangs with little option but to latch onto it. In Nakuru in May–June last year, a gang used a single AK-47 in a series of attacks in Ngata and Pipeline estates, resulting in the deaths of at least three people, including a police officer and a 24-year-old shopkeeper.

In Uasin Gishu, detectives linked an AK-47 recovered from a criminal gang to the killing of a pharmacist at Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital.

Away from the Kalashnikovs, Kenya has suffered the effects of various Russian weapons that would be appropriately labelled as “symbols” of terror. On November 28, 2002, terrorists fired two Russian-made Strela-2 (SA-7 Grail) shoulder-launched missiles at an Arkia Airlines Boeing 757 departing from Mombasa airport. The missiles narrowly missed the plane, which was carrying 261 passengers, due to what security experts assess as technical failures and the missiles' age. 

The missile casings were recovered in Changamwe, roughly two kilometres from the airport. The attack occurred concurrently with a suicide bombing at the Paradise Hotel in Kikambala. The Al-Qaeda terrorist group was believed to be responsible for the coordinated attacks.

Russian weapons lead the pack in taking down planes

Since the end of World War II, there have been 52 shootdowns of civilian airliners by state and non-state actors that killed 2,163 people.  The weapons used to take down the airliners have been traced to Russia and the United States of America.

Four hundred and eighty-five people were killed by weapons fired by another aircraft in 13 attacks, with the remainder killed in 39 surface-to-air attacks between 1945 and 2024.

One-half (26) of all 52 civilian aeroplane shoot-downs happened in Africa: 3 in the air, and 23 on the ground. Combined, these 26 attacks took the lives of 463 people: 114 were killed by weapons fired from three aeroplanes, and 349 were killed by SAMs. The fatalities in Africa represent 21% of all people killed on civilian flights since WW2.

A clear majority (251 of 463, or 54%) of all people killed in civilian aeroplane shootdowns in Africa were killed by Russian-made weapons. While the weapons used in the air-to-air shoot downs are known, the matter is more complicated when it comes to surface-to-air shoot downs, where the origin of the SAM is unknown; 13 such shoot downs took the lives of more than a hundred, where the reports indicate that the SAM is “unknown.”  Still, the 245 deaths with confirmed weapons details are sufficient to state that more than 70% of the 349 deaths were the result of Soviet and Russian MANPADS that killed 245 people in 9 SAM attacks.