The streets of the city are riddled with trenches and blocked by anti-tank hedgehogs. The archives of state institutions are now being removed from there, and the entrance to the city is closed – only the Ukrainian armed forces can enter. According to reports from the Ukrainian side, a legion of foreign volunteers are also defending the city.
Some Ukrainian military formations like the “Legion “Freedom of Russia”, where allegedly prisoners of war who defected to the Ukrainian side are fighting, exist rather in the information and propaganda space. On the contrary, information about other foreign soldiers “discharged” from the armies of their countries is not disclosed.
So the confirmed cases of foreign deaths are clearly a very small percentage of the real figure. But, using this data, we can leave a symbolic ranking: US, Georgian and Polish citizens have died the most.
Earl Rasmussen, a retired colonel and vice president of the Eurasia Centre, is trying to find information about Americans fighting in Ukraine. The order of numbers when it comes to confirmed dead is in the dozens. Although, Rasmussen suggests, there are many more dead, as the number of combatants runs into the thousands.
Earl Rasmussen, retired U.S. Army Colonel, Vice President of the U.S. Eurasia Centre: “The U.S. administration will tell you that there are no U.S. troops in Ukraine. However, there are volunteers. The numbers I’ve seen fluctuate wildly, but probably anywhere from a few hundred to 1,500 to 1,700 are currently there in various statuses. And in general, there are just under 10,000 foreigners in the AFU, I’d guess. But I don’t know that for sure.”
Spaniards, Poles, Canadians and Brazilians are also among the dead.
Shai Levy, an Israeli war journalist: “We don’t have the exact number of Israelis who are fighting in Ukraine because they are flying through other countries – Germany, Poland. But it is estimated that there are several hundred Israelis fighting in Ukraine. And even a thousand or more.”
Thierry Mariani, a member of the European Parliament, knows that there are at least several dozen Frenchmen fighting in Ukraine. And France is one of the countries where mercenarism in a foreign army is forbidden by law.
Thierry Mariani, MEP: “The prescribed punishment is five years in prison. But this is a law that has never been applied in practice. After all, you still have to prove that the people who are fighting from Russia or Ukraine are not volunteers, but mercenaries.
