Now the 25-year-old sits in a Ukrainian POW camp, his optimism replaced by barbed-wire fencing and snow-covered countryside that is unlike anything he grew up with in Senegal.
Diop is one of thousands of non-Russians, many from Africa, fighting Moscow's war in Ukraine. Some were attracted by the pay that recruiters offered, but many fell for what amounted to a lethal scam. Promised employment or schooling, they were instead fed into the meat-grinder battlefields of a war now in its fifth year.
Diop, who says he ended up in uniform after being lured by the promise of a civilian job, is one of the lucky ones. A Russian list of 316 deceased African recruits shows that, on average, they died less than six months after being deployed to Ukraine, according to Inpact, a Switzerland-based nonprofit that obtained the records. More than 50 African recruits were killed within a month of arriving at the front, Inpact found.
The Kremlin expected a quick win when it launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, but it has found itself mired in a war that has left 325,000 of its troops dead and 900,000 wounded or missing, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. Russia has suffered 242 dead and wounded for each square mile of Ukrainian territory it has gained, according to the Institute for the Study of War, a nonpartisan Washington think tank that studies military operations worldwide.
Talks to end the fighting are moving slowly, if at all.
Earlier in the war, the Russian military boosted its ranks with poor recruits from distant reaches of the country, Wagner Group mercenaries and convicts promised freedom in exchange for combat service. But those pools are running dry and the Kremlin is increasingly fishing for international recruits.
Russia 'was my dream'
Malick Diop grew up in Senegal in a thatched-roof hut with a dirt floor, sooty walls and roaming goats. He was thrilled to receive a scholarship to study political science and world history in Nizhny Novgorod, some 250 miles east of Moscow.
Studying in Russia "was my dream," he says.
Many wealthy countries, including the U.S., have sharply restricted entry by African students and other migrants from developing nations.
Russia is the exception. It grants easy entry to citizens from nine African nations, including Zimbabwe, South Africa and Kenya. Moscow offers scholarships to 5,000 African students a year, a soft-power tactic to foster links with future elites on the continent.
But Diop's scholarship wasn't enough to live on and he found himself in financial straits. He was planning to go home when he was approached by a Russian man with an alluring offer: work as a restaurant cook for the equivalent of $5,200 a month -- a staggering enticement.
"Someone will contact you," the Russian man promised.
Diop didn't know it, but the man was part of a network of headhunters recruiting for Russia's military. They recruit or trick Africans already in Russia, or pose as travel agents that bring in fighters from Africa and the Middle East.
"I never heard of the man again," Diop says.
"I don't trust this," his uncle, Saliou Diop, recalls telling him.
Still, Diop turned up at the address the man had given him, only to find the place was full of soldiers. Yet he refused to believe he was going to be sent to the front lines, even after signing a document. "I signed it because I don't understand Russia very well," he says.
Days later, Diop was driven across the border and given a helmet and a rifle.
Fighting for Russia
More than 24,000 non-Russians have fought for Russia since the conflict started, according to Ukraine's intelligence service, which says it bases the calculation on Russian records it has obtained.
Citizens from 36 African countries have fought in Ukraine, according to Inpact, which investigates mercenaries around the world and is funded by European governments. The number of African recruits has tripled in the past three years, the group said, based on a Russian list of 1,417 fighters from the continent, itself only a partial tally of Africans in Russian uniform.
Some non-Russians have ended up on Ukraine's battlefields through government-sponsored agreements, such as one that brought North Korean troops to fight on Russia's side.
Ukraine also enlists foreign combatants but does so overtly.
Some foreign fighters who join the Russian military do so willingly, attracted by the high pay relative to what they could earn back home. But the pay on offer varies widely, reflecting attempts to lure recruits with false promises.
Dapana Durage Lakshitha Nuwan says he moved to Moscow from Sri Lanka four years ago to work as a cook. That is where the 23-year-old got a lucrative offer: the equivalent of $2,400 a month to join the Russian army, a huge bump from the $720 he earned as a cook. He was wounded and captured less than three months after being sent to the front in Donetsk, he said in an interview.
The recruiting business can be lucrative. One intermediary in Nigeria advertised that he charges would-be recruits the equivalent of $3,700, which is due when the visa or enlistment is confirmed. "Serious applicants only," the ad says. "Limited slots available!"
The Kremlin wants foreign fighters sympathetic to the Russian cause, experts say. In viral French and Arabic footage on TikTok, fighters from Burkina Faso, Togo, Algeria and Iraq extol the perks of joining the Kremlin's army: gyrating women, luxury cars, sophisticated guns and coveted Russian passports.
Relatives of those sent to the front lines describe a darker reality.
In 2024, 27-year-old Armel Mbarga left his home in Cameroon and traveled to Russia without telling some relatives the purpose of his trip. He resurfaced later on social-media posts from the front lines, standing next to a Russian wearing the military patch of the Wagner mercenary group.
In January last year, Mbarga was reported missing in action and is presumed dead. He left a widow and two young children. "It was a real shock for us," said a relative. "Even after months, the family hasn't yet come to terms with this loss."
One in three Cameroonian recruits has been killed in action, according to Inpact.
Russian families can get as much as $180,000 in government compensation when a relative dies in combat. But the families of Africans killed fighting for Russia get nothing, according to Tamara Kurushkina, an official at Ukraine's Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War.
From Africa to Donetsk
The toll among African soldiers, according to Inpact, has been highest in regiments stationed in Donetsk, a region of eastern Ukraine that Russia has repeatedly tried and failed to seize.
Kenya's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in November that more than 200 Kenyans may have joined the Russian military.
In September, Kenyan authorities rescued 21 men in a town near Nairobi as they were "awaiting processing to the war zone," the ministry said. The men had signed contracts with "unscrupulous agencies" promising them jobs and up to $18,000 for visas, travel and accommodation, the ministry said. Police arrested one person for allegedly "luring unsuspecting Kenyans to fight in the war," the ministry said.
In South Africa, police are investigating allegations that Duduzile Zuma, daughter of former President Jacob Zuma, lured 17 men into fighting in Ukraine with a false promise of civilian jobs. Neither Duduzile Zuma nor her lawyer responded to requests for comment.
Back in Senegal, Diop's parents say they were unaware of their son's fate until they saw him in a video released by the Ukrainian military. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Diop says he was deployed to Luhansk in eastern Ukraine, where he spent days in a bunker with several Russians and two Brazilians, before walking at night to the front line.
Ukrainian drones wiped out the other members of his team, leaving Diop staggering into the forest alone on a wounded foot. "I kept walking over bodies -- Ukrainian dead, Russian dead," he recalls. "It was a nightmare."
Ukrainian soldiers captured him 11 days later and sent him to a POW facility in western Ukraine.
Wearing his compulsory work uniform -- nylon coat, winter hat and trousers, all cobalt blue -- he leads a regimented life in a room of bunk beds, reading French classics and eating a daily ration of watery barley broth and buckwheat porridge.
As long as the war continues, he remains in limbo. Back at home in Senegal, his uncle Saliou Diop is angry and worried. "For Russia we Africans are just cannon fodder," he says. "Why don't they send their own sons?"
The younger Diop can only be freed in a prisoner exchange if it is requested by Russia but Moscow has shown no interest in getting its foreign fighters back according to Kurushkina the Ukrainian official dealing with POWs.
His father Sette Diop says he is longing for his son to come back home. But Malick says he is worried that he would be jailed if he returned to Senegal. Most African countries have banned their citizens from fighting in other people's wars.
"My aim is to return to Russia,"he tells gobsmacked Ukrainian officials.
"Coming back to my country is not an option.I'd rather die here."