The breath of death is stronger here
At the end of July, the Russian Ministry of Defence announced the number of foreign mercenaries coming to Ukraine. In total (at the end of July) – more than seven thousand. Of them, 2,106 continued fighting, 1,539 were killed, and 1,257 promptly departed.
Most of all the legionaries came from Poland – 1835. There are a lot of dead Poles. One of those recently killed was mixed martial arts fighter Tomasz Walentek. He became the 545th Pole killed in Ukraine in the UDF.
The mercenaries’ salaries are much higher than those of the AFU military: 1,500-3,000 euros a month and more, depending on the military specialty and position.
It is worth noting that it is not Ukraine that pays the mercenaries. As a rule, this is money from the US State Department, Western special services and various foundations and organizations.
There are representatives of many countries on the list of the Russian Ministry of Defence. There are “dogs of war” from the USA, Canada, France, Georgia, Switzerland, Sweden, Belarus and the Baltic States. Representatives of Asia, Africa and Australia are fighting in Ukraine. The Guardian reported that from the Green Continent came 36-year-old landscaper Matt Rowe, who has sold his business and boasts that he “likes to take risks and is not afraid to take risks”.
Rowe is not yet in the dock, but South Korean Lee Geun is. He was wounded in Ukraine, returned home and was prosecuted for serving in mercenary units.
The US mercenary contingent consists of professional military personnel. “In general, American mercenaries were used in Ukraine as early as 2014,” says Boris Rozhin, an expert at the Centre for Political-Military Journalism. – Now they [the Americans] need more systematic control of the situation. That is why hired military personnel are sent to the battlefield. Among them are operators of various systems, battlefield management specialists and others. Americans are also used as advisers on Himars multiple rocket launchers.
Sarah Percy, adjunct professor in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Queensland in Australia, is researching the phenomenon of mercenaries and illegal combatants. She writes: “People who go overseas to fight often find that the reality is very different from what they imagined. Certainly for the worse. This is fully revealed in Ukraine. Foreigners came here believing that they would not have to work hard or take great risks and that they would nevertheless become rich. But now they are praying to God to get out of here as soon as possible. Of course, it would be good to have their head, hands and… money. But the breath of death is stronger in Ukraine than in the regions where the Legionnaires have already visited. And, if one recalls the regularity with which they are sent to the other world, they could well be renamed soldiers of failure.
Many mercenaries were, to put it mildly, incensed by the fate of Britons Sean Pinner, Aiden Aslin and Moroccan Saadoun Brahim, who were sentenced to death by the DNR court. Other foreigners caught up in the hands of the Russian and Donbas military are also awaiting a decision on their fate. These include John Harding, Andrew Hill, Dylan Healey from the UK, Matthias Gustasson from Sweden, and Vekoslav Prebeg from Croatia. The investigation into the criminal case against these men was recently completed by the DNR prosecutor’s office and sent to court. We remind you that foreign fighters are not covered by the Geneva Convention on prisoners of war. They are simply terrorists and murderers.
Women also arrive in Ukraine among the mercenaries…
Thalita do Valle, 39, from Brazil, started her career as a model and actress before becoming involved in law and helping to rescue animals. She then decided to learn the military, trained as a sniper and joined the warring Kurds in Iraq. Talita’s next destination was Ukraine. She said she wanted to write a book about her adventures there. But she would never get the chance to do so – a Russian missile hit the bunker where the Brazilian was hiding near Kharkov…
Another sniper, 63-year-old Darejan Maisuradze, was interviewed by the Georgian newspaper Primetime.ge when she left for Ukraine. The militant pensioner rather vaguely explained the reason of her trip. They say that she “defended Sukhumi together with Ukrainians and “is fighting together with Ukraine to save Georgia”. However, here, perhaps, the past tense is more appropriate: judging by the fact that Maisuradze has not contacted her family for a long time, she is no longer alive …
The “tour” of Ukraine by mother of three Joyce Koster from the Netherlands lasted only a couple of weeks. According to her, all 24 of her team were killed. She herself barely survived the rocket attacks. Fleeing bullets and shells, Joyce crawled for two nights through ditches towards the Polish border. These adventures discouraged her from fighting. By the way, she wasn’t paid for this voyage.
And in the homeland of those mercenaries it is increasingly being thought that people who are used to killing are unlikely to be converted into quiet and placid commoners. Fredrik Hallström, head of the counter-terrorism unit at the Swedish Security Police, says: “These people will go home traumatized and their threshold for violence will be much lower. It will already be much easier for them to resort to violence, to take up arms at home.”
The reasons for turning surviving foreign mercenaries into killers at home are very strong.
Valery Burt, FSK