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2022-03-19 Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia
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‘A Swarm Of Misfits for one soldier with combat experience’: Legion of the Damned: Inside Ukraine's army of misfits, veterans, and war tourists in the fight against Russia
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[TaskAndPurpose] Every war has its own dynamics which can be equally lethal to veterans and beginners if not properly understood.
The initial crop of applicants has been a mixed bag – with a swarm of Fantasists for every one candidate with experience in combat. And even combat experience means little in this war – because trading shots with the Taliban or al Qaeda is quite different from crouching in a freezing foxhole being pummeled by artillery fire.
Recruits for the Ukrainian Foreign Legion are invited to apply via the Ukrainian embassy in their country of residence. After a cursory initial interview, they are told to head for Ukraine via Warsaw and overland to Lviv in western Ukraine. The route is so well known that it is heavily monitored by the Russians, according to a Ukrainian special forces officer I spoke with. He was worried that they would soon begin targeting recruits before they reached their destination. After Lviv, the recruits are sent to a camp near the Polish border for selection and training. Selection apparently follows no discernable process other than separating those that don’t have military experience from those that do. The former are put through a 4-week training course — the latter are given a weapon and sent to the front in ad-hoc units with a Ukrainian officer. Some candidates are inexplicably rejected while others – regarded as being eminently unsuitable by their peers, are retained. In any case, the process has some fatal flaws – no one becomes a competent soldier in just 4 weeks, and even experienced soldiers require assimilation training. Every war has its own dynamics which can be equally lethal to veterans and beginners if not properly understood.
In their first trial by fire earlier this month, the volunteers were put into a hasty defense north of Kyiv, as the Russians began their onslaught on the towns lying north of the city. After the initial volley of Ukrainian anti-tank missiles had stopped the attackers in their tracks, enemy soldiers spilled out of their armored fighting vehicles about a quarter-mile in front of the volunteers, and into a withering storm of fire that halted the assault. “Shoot the ones in black uniforms,” a Ukrainian platoon commander is said to have told his foreign charges. “They are Belarusians.” Ukrainians are particularly incensed (but not surprised) at the perfidious complicity of Belarusian autocrat Alexander Lukashenko in taking his stance as a sycophantic second to President Vladimir Putin. Sadly, as with Putin, it is Lukashenko’s soldiers who are paying the price.
Although the Legionnaires helped to halt the attack, their performance that day was uneven — an observation that led the Ukrainians to discharge the surviving members of the initial intake, without any ceremony or official notification. Worse was to come. An unknown number of new recruits were training at a camp near the border when, a strike by Tupolev bombers, carrying Kh 101 cruise missiles, destroyed the camp. The death toll is not yet clear, but Ukrainian officers have told me that it will likely be more than 100.
“We should only take experienced combat veterans — that is the lesson that we are learning,” a Ukrainian general told Task & Purpose on condition of anonymity. “The others don’t know what they are getting themselves into – and when they find out, they want to go home. We need specialized skills – especially snipers.” 
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