She asked for a picture of his body, or confirmation that David was in a morgue. None came.
The contact told her he was “very far away”, and suggested that she travel to Russia herself, or send another relative, something she said the family could not afford to do.
Later, the same contact told her she was “entitled to compensation” for her son’s death but again, without providing any documentation.
Mrs Kuloba says she has been unable to obtain official confirmation from the Russian authorities about David. When she visited the Russian embassy in Nairobi, officials there told her they did not “associate with the army”.
She has no idea what to do next and is beside herself with grief: “How do we start? Because we don’t know anything. He was my first-born. I depended on him.”
The father of another Kenyan man who went to work in Russia told the BBC he was recruited on the understanding that he was going to be driver – nothing to do with armed combat.
The young man ended up being wounded in Ukraine and has been too traumatised to speak since returning home two weeks ago. The BBC has agreed not to identify him to protect his wellbeing.
His father only discovered that his son had travelled to Russia after receiving word that he had been injured.
“He had hinted that people were going, and I discouraged him,” the father told the BBC. “I was following the war from the beginning. I was not comfortable.”
Agents had promised around $1,500 a month, he said – “good money” for a qualified driver in Kenya.
His son later told him that, like David Kuloba, he had been trained for only two weeks before being sent to the battlefield.
“He said he was injured in the bush and for five days he could not find treatment. He was using painkillers,” the father said.
He was eventually taken towards the border where he received first aid and was later transferred to St Petersburg.
He had described seeing “scattered bodies of other fighters” and explained that many like him had signed one-year contracts without fully understanding the terms, the father said.
Last month, Kenya’s foreign minister said some 200 Kenyans were known to be fighting for Russia and acknowledged that recruitment networks were still active.
This followed the news in September that a young Kenyan athlete had been captured in Ukraine, saying he had been tricked into joining the Russian army.
The government now says several recruitment agencies are under investigation, and some licences have already been suspended.
“Some agencies lure young people with promises of large payments. The government is tracking those agencies linked to this fraud,” Sylvanus Osoro, Kenya’s parliamentary majority chief whip, told the BBC.
Out of about 130 registered recruitment agencies in Kenya, around five had been flagged, with three already suspended and two others under investigation, he explained.
Parliament’s Defence and Foreign Relations Committee had taken up the matter and the agencies it summoned were expected to outline how they had recruited young people, what information they had provided and how contracts were presented, Osoro said.
