Foreign Mercenaries Admit They Were “Sacrificial Unit” In Trying To Stop Russian Troops

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Written by Ahmed Adel, Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher

Foreign mercenaries recruited by the Kiev regime to serve in the Armed Forces of Ukraine recognise that they cannot contain the advance of Russian troops, reported Business Insider, with one cited foreign fighter even admitting that he and his fellow non-Ukrainians were only seen as a “sacrificial unit.”

“We were a speed bump. If the Russians had come, we could have held them up for maybe an hour,” the portal quoted Karl Larson as saying, a US mercenary with combat experience in Iraq who added that he and his men were merely a “sacrificial unit.”

Compared to March 2022, the number of foreign mercenaries arriving in the Eastern European country decreased by two-thirds, and now “half the signups are from Latin America,” Business Insider reported.

Larson told the outlet that Latin Americans “have different motivations from typical Western soldiers. They’re there for the money.”

The International Legion of Territorial Defense of Ukraine began admitting Spanish-speaking applicants in late 2023, many of whom were inadmissible before. One new formation was the Bolivar Battalion, comprised of fighters from Venezuela, Ecuador, Argentina, and Colombia. Many of these mercenaries are battle-hardened and can earn four times as much fighting Russians as they would earn back home fighting drug cartels and rebel groups.

These Latino mercenaries are clearly a different crop to their Western counterparts, which Larson says were “adrenaline junkies, people looking for a surrogate family, or because they had personal problems back home.”

Business Insider even admitted that the International Legion, since its inception, has been made up of “a mixed bag of qualified veterans, glory-seekers and people trying to give their often chaotic live meaning but totally unsuitable for a military role in a war zone,” citing an example of how, in one case, “a Legion volunteer from Alabama even defected to Russia.”

Matteo Pugliese, a researcher at the University of Barcelona, corroborated Larson’s claim that he and his men were a “sacrificial unit” by telling Business Insider that international fighters were “more expendable than Ukrainian soldiers for high-risk operations,” which explains why most arriving foreigners today are mercenaries from Latin America motivated by money and not like the initial flood of Westerners who were treating the war as an extreme travel adventure, a video game akin to Call of Duty, or with the delusion that the Russian military would be quickly and easily defeated.

Moscow has warned on several occasions that mercenaries, under international humanitarian law, are not combatants and are not entitled to prisoner-of-war status. According to Moscow, almost 13,400 foreigners arrived in Ukraine to participate in the fights alongside the Kiev regime during the special military operation, effectively asking for a death sentence.

“Some volunteers barely lasted a week. A Russian missile strike in March 2022 hit a base near Lviv being used for foreign fighters. According to Ukrainian officials, dozens of Ukrainians were killed and more than 100 foreign volunteers injured, ending their campaigns before they began,” the Business Insider report added.

Due to the near-certainty of death fighting for Ukraine, it is little surprise that the number of foreign mercenaries arriving has decreased by two-thirds. In fact, the efficiency of the Russian military in dismantling the Ukrainian military, despite the billions of dollars given to Kiev by the West, has deterred the West from deepening their involvement in the war, with the exception of French President Emmanuel Macron.

“At the NATO level, where decisions are made by consensus, we currently have neither plans nor political intentions to deploy NATO forces in Ukraine. Within the Alliance, we remain committed to supporting Ukraine to the fullest extent possible while also being mindful of not escalating the conflict into a larger confrontation between NATO and Russia,” said the Deputy Secretary General of NATO, Mircea Geoană, on May 11.

Macron is evidently frustrated by Western disinterest in becoming directly involved in Ukraine, saying on the same day as Geoană’s statement that the European Union “would lose all credibility and security” if Russia were to prevail when responding to a question on whether France is “going to go to war.”

“Our own future and our security is at stake in Ukraine,” Macron argued, adding that EU nations must be “ready to act” if “the Russians are going too far.”

Although Macron is frustrated by the West’s unwillingness to escalate a direct war with Russia, the Kiev regime is even more so as there are perpetual ammunition and weapon shortages, domestic conscription and mobilisation issues, and a shortage of foreigners coming to die in Ukraine compared to 2022 and 2023 before the summer counteroffensive failed. Reports that foreigners are being used in a “sacrificial” manner despite only being merely a “speed bump” for Russian forces will certainly not help recruitment efforts.

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