MERCENARIES IN UKRAINE

In this issue, General Raj Mehta has discussed in length the nuclear dimensions of the ongoing war in Ukraine.

There is another important dimension of this war– it is not being fought between the Russians and Ukrainians alone; the two sides have been joined by fighters from all over the world. Soufan Center, a nonprofit, global-security research group, says that “the battlefield in Ukraine is incredibly complex, with a range of violent non-state actors- private military contractors, foreign fighters, volunteers, mercenaries, extremists, and terrorist groups- all in the mix”.

On March 6, Ukraine announced that some twenty thousand people from fifty-two countries had applied to fight in the newly formed “International Legion” of Territorial Defence of Ukraine. They reportedly included Americans, Canadians, and several European nationalities. “The whole world today is on Ukraine’s side, not only in words but in deeds,” the Foreign Minister- Dmytro Kuleba, had proudly told Ukrainian television. Days later, the Russian Defence Minister, Sergei Shoigu, had claimed that some sixteen thousand (16,000) men from the Middle East and Central Asia had applied to fight for Russia.

Understandably, many of these foreign fighters have died during the war, though their exact numbers are not known. And some of them have been taken as prisoners of war (POW) by both sides, though some have been released through subsequent swappings of the POW. These released POWs include some Americans and Britons who have described their ‘horrible” experiences to the media.