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2024-06-01 Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia
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Mercenaries and professional military personnel. Who goes to Ukraine from the West to fight for the Ukrainian Armed Forces
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Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
by Andrey Musalov
[REGNUM] The authorities of Poland and the Baltic countries are ready to send their military to the territory of Ukraine if Russia achieves serious success at the front. The German publication Spiegel reported this on May 26, noting that Baltic politicians conveyed this to their German colleagues at the Lennart Meri conference in Tallinn.
The very next day, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Alexander Syrsky said that he had spoken with French Defense Minister Sebastian Lecornu, after which he legalized visits to training centers in Ukraine by French instructors - they can “get acquainted with the infrastructure and personnel.”
Syrsky said that he welcomes France’s desire to send instructors to Ukraine to train the Armed Forces of Ukraine and hopes that other countries will follow this example.
LEGION FOR FOREIGNERS
Since the beginning of hostilities in the Donbass, in the spring of 2014, “shooting enthusiasts” began to arrive there from almost all over the world. According to the Italian newspaper Il Giornale, as of mid-July 2014, out of 250 fighters of the Azov volunteer battalion (a terrorist organization whose activities are prohibited in the Russian Federation), 12 were foreigners - citizens of Finland, France, Norway, Great Britain and Italy.
The recruitment of volunteers was carried out by a professional mercenary, the Frenchman Gaston Besson, who previously fought for the Karens in Myanmar and for the Croats in the former Yugoslavia.
In the same year, the first American instructors appeared in Kyiv. On August 1, 2014, Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby said: “The White House notified Congress that the State and Defense Departments were going to spend $19 million from the Global Security Contingency Fund, created in 2012. These funds will be used to “train and equip four companies and the tactical headquarters of the Ukrainian National Guard.”
But if during the so-called ATO the participation of foreigners in hostilities was not advertised, then after the start of the Northern Military District, Ukraine officially allowed everyone to do so. On February 27, 2022, on the initiative of the head of the Kiev regime, Vladimir Zelensky, the Foreign Legion for the Territorial Defense of Ukraine was created. Its staff number was about 20,000 people.
The formation included several large units and units created on a national basis. Most of them came from post-Soviet republics. For example, the legion includes five Chechen battalions, the Georgian national legion, two Belarusian regiments - “Pagonya” and “Named by Kastus Kalinovsky”, the “Crimea” battalion, and the Karelian national battalion.
But, despite the big names, the number of personnel in the formations usually does not reach the regular level. There is no official data on this matter.
The formations “Russian Volunteer Corps” (an extremist organization whose activities are prohibited in the Russian Federation) and the “Legion “Freedom of Russia” (recognized as terrorist, prohibited in Russia) that are part of the Foreign Legion deserve special attention. During attempts to break through into the Bryansk and Belgorod regions, they tried to present the formations as “liberators of Russia.”
But if the RDK consists of principled far-right nationalists who fled persecution in Russia, then the “Legion” mainly consists of Russian prisoners of war. However, the number of these units remains insignificant, so the “Russian” militants in them are constantly diluted with Ukrainian military personnel. They bear the brunt of the fighting, while media personalities from the RDK pose for the camera, portraying “Putin’s opponents.”
FOR MONEY - YES
With foreigners from far abroad the picture is different. They are not united into large formations. In particular, the American journalist Seth Harp was able to discover only one such unit - the Polish Volunteer Corps.
As a rule, foreigners arriving in Ukraine from the West travel privately, after which the mercenaries are integrated into the Armed Forces of Ukraine. It is noteworthy that the Ukrainian authorities require the media not to call foreigners fighting for Ukraine “mercenaries.” At the same time, these people fighting for money are not at all like volunteers.
During an investigation conducted by the Luxembourg television and radio company RTL, it turned out that mercenaries receive from 500 euros for their service when they are in the rear and up to 3,000 when they are on the front line. It is advisable to come with your own equipment, since the Ukrainian side provides only a meager basic kit.
At the beginning of the SVO, most Western mercenaries, after being registered with the Foreign Legion, were sent to the Yavorovsky training ground, where the International Center for Peacekeeping and Security was located near the village of Starichi in the Lviv region. There, new arrivals underwent training and training.
On March 13, 2022, the International Center was hit by at least six Russian cruise missiles. From 60 to 180 mercenaries died.
In an interview with The New York Times, the head of the department of international technical assistance and international cooperation of the Lviv Regional State Administration, Roman Shepelyak, reported that in the first half of 2022, up to 1,000 militants of the Foreign Legion were stationed at the Yavoriv training ground.
After completing training, the mercenaries were sent to various parts of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, where they fought as part of small groups of foreigners. Judging by videos from Telegram channels, they showed particular activity during the defense of the suburbs of Kyiv, in battles in the Kharkov region, Soledar and Krynki.
According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, in the first half of 2024, up to 13,500 mercenaries arrived in Ukraine to participate in hostilities on the side of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, including more than 8.5 thousand from Western European countries, 1.7 thousand from Asian countries, from North and South America - more than 2.7 thousand, from Africa - over 220 people. Of these, several thousand simply fled from the front line, and about 5,900 mercenaries were destroyed.
"MOZART" VERSUS "WAGNER"
Judging by Ukrainian sources, the majority of mercenaries are representatives of poor third world countries who come to earn money. We are mainly talking about people from Colombia, Peru, Bulgaria, Brazil, etc.
But there are also military professionals - former military special forces of the USA, Great Britain, France, Germany and Sweden.
The most striking example is the private military company Mozart Group. It was created in March 2022 by former American special forces officer Andrew Milburn and head of the Atlantic Group Limited fund Andrew Bain.
The founders did not hide the fact that they named their brainchild in defiance of “Wagner”. In an interview with the Swiss newspaper Blick, they stated that the group’s main task was “to kill as many Russians as possible.”
Initially, the PMC was positioned as a community of American instructors designed to teach the Ukrainian military the basics of tactics and mine explosives. But then the mercenaries from Mozart got involved in the fighting. The result was disastrous: heavy losses and mass desertion. In 2023, the founders quarreled over funding, and lawsuits began. By the end of the year the project was closed.
THE STAKES ARE RISING
If at the beginning of the Northern Military District they were talking about volunteer mercenaries, then in 2024 several Western countries spoke out about the possibility of officially sending military contingents to Ukraine. The reason is obvious - large supplies of Western weapons to Kyiv were unable to turn the tide of hostilities in favor of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, since there was simply not enough human resources for this.
In addition, the use of complex weapons systems by Ukraine is impossible without a large staff of instructors, and possibly crews and crews. Therefore, active military armies of foreign countries are already present in the combat zone.
There is one more important point. If Western countries begin to actively discuss the transfer of something to the Armed Forces of Ukraine, it means that it is already on the territory of the country and is being prepared for use. And the information hype only prepares the public for the fait accompli.
Obviously, what is happening now is that Western leaders are actively discussing sending their soldiers to the conflict zone.
On February 26, 2024, after a meeting with the leaders of the European Union countries, Emmanuel Macron announced that he would allow the transfer of European troops to the territory of Ukraine. This caused a flurry of indignation among a number of European politicians. For example, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that Macron takes “too militant a position on the issue of assistance to Ukraine.”
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, in an interview with The Economist, also hastened to emphasize that the alliance does not intend to send its forces to help Kiev.
On March 7, Macron lowered the intensity of his belligerence and floridly clarified that “not ruling out something does not mean doing it.” However, on March 9, Politico reported that Paris was still gathering a group of countries ready to send their soldiers to Ukraine.
The director of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) Sergei Naryshkin spoke more specifically about the current situation. According to his data, announced on March 19, the French government is already preparing troops to be deployed to Ukraine. According to the head of the department, the contingent will consist of approximately 2 thousand French military personnel.
The overall picture was complemented by Macron’s statement at a joint press conference with Scholz. Demonstrating a diagram of possible missile strikes deep into Russian territory, he, traditionally floridly, said: “We must allow Ukraine to destroy military targets on Russian territory, from where shelling is being carried out, but we should not allow other military or civilian targets on its territory to be hit.”
Obviously, we were talking about French missiles, maintained by French personnel already in Ukraine.
RUSSIA'S RESPONSE
The Russian military is well aware that foreigners have been actively fighting as part of the Armed Forces of Ukraine for a long time. This is confirmed both by numerous videos and by English, Spanish, and Polish speech on the radio in all directions of combat operations.
Who these people are - mercenaries or regular military personnel of Western armies - is not known for certain. But this is not so important: in any case, they are a legitimate military target.
To confirm the seriousness of the Russian side’s intentions to prevent foreign troops from staying in Ukraine, on May 29, 2024, Kinzhal hypersonic missiles were again struck at the Yavorovsky training ground. The day before, foreign military training was resumed there.
According to Ukrainian sources, not only the Ukrainian military, but also instructors from NATO countries - Poland, France and the USA - became victims of the Daggers.
It is noteworthy that the strike almost coincided with a statement by Russian President Vladimir Putin that the Polish military would never leave the territory of Ukraine if the Polish authorities sent their contingent there.
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Posted by badanov 2024-06-01 00:00||
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