An order was given to him to go to the West. Will Russia have its own “Foreign Legion”?
The thesis about the internationalization of the conflict, which began as a purely intra-Ukrainian conflict, then turned into an inter-country conflict between Ukraine and Russia, and is now a conflict between Russia and the global West, has long become a common place in political speeches. Vladimir Putin’s fresh speech in Valdai was no exception.
And indeed, today they are comparing not the military-political and economic potentials of the Russian Federation and Ukraine, but also the capabilities of the arsenals of NATO countries; Europe is passing its test of failure in connection with energy and economic sanctions against Russia; African countries are directly or indirectly involved in the war in the Ukrainian theater of operations. and Asia (remember the recent incident with the President of Guinea-Bissau in Kyiv or the resolution of the ASEAN forum regarding the Ukrainian events).
The UAE and the Saudis offer themselves as peacekeepers; the Turks and Iranians find themselves drawn into a showdown between Kiev and Moscow through the supply of drones to the warring parties. And all of these are forms of indirect participation in a war that threatens to escalate to the level of a global one.
However, there are markers of direct internationalization of the conflict. We are talking about the participation in hostilities on the side of the Kyiv regime of thousands of foreign mercenary volunteers, as well as professional “vacationers” disguised as such from the armies of NATO countries and not only.
Foreigners have been fighting for Ukraine in Donbass for almost the last eight years. Moreover, the geography is unusually wide - from Swedes and Italians to Americans, Poles, Chechens, Georgians, Belarusians, Crimean Tatars - in a word, a real international. With the prefix “ultra-right” - meaning the ideological views of not everyone, of course, but a significant number of those who flocked to the banners of various “volunteer battalions”.
This became a problem - after all, “fighters for Ukraine” with foreign passports demanded legal status and Ukrainian citizenship “for their merits,” especially since many of them faced troubles with local law in their homeland.
In the end, already this year this whole motley gang was finally legalized in the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine under the roof of the so-called. “Foreign Legion,” which gave Ukrainian propaganda a reason to claim that almost the entire civilized world is fighting for “Ukrainian freedom” and against “Putin’s tyranny.”
Essentially similar processes - albeit under different flags and slogans - took place on the other side of the front. Since the summer of 2014, volunteers have appeared in battles on the side of the DPR and LPR not only from all over Russia, but also from Serbia, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Brazil, France, the Czech Republic, and Latvia.
Some of them later fell into the clutches of the secret police of their countries and were convicted of participating in the war, and this sad fate did not pass over many Russian volunteers in Russia itself, who had to be protected from the threat of extradition to Ukraine through the efforts of a caring public.
The internationalist fighters from the unit of the late Mozgovoy, in particular, the black leftist from Britain Benes Ayo, became widely known. The Limonov NBP adopted a half-forgotten term from the Spanish Civil War - International Brigades.
Already at the current stage - during the Northern Military District - representatives of many small peoples of Russia have shown themselves - from the Chechens and Ingush to the Ossetians, Tuvans and the Buryats, especially demonized by Ukrainian propaganda.
Representatives of the Russian authorities voiced ideas about recruiting representatives of Central Asian peoples into the Northern Military District for a contract. In the spring, Defense Minister Shoigu announced the arrival of tens of thousands of volunteers from Syria and other Arab countries in Donbass. However, despite the enthusiasm caused by these proposals on social networks, then things did not go beyond words.
Already closer to autumn, there was talk about the possible appearance of North Koreans and Iranians in the steppes of Ukraine. The appearance of the former was associated with the diplomatic recognition of the Donbass republics by Pyongyang, and the participation of the latter looked logical against the backdrop of information about Russia’s purchase of suicide drones from Tehran and the subsequent severance of diplomatic relations between Iran and Kiev.
However, things didn’t work out here either. According to some sources, the DPRK government actually offered Moscow the participation of its military contingent in the war, but the Kremlin allegedly responded with a polite refusal, still hoping to restrain the very internationalization of the conflict in the hope of reaching an agreement with the West. And Iran began to have its own problems in the form of Western-initiated protests and riots in major cities.
Nevertheless, if political will appears in the Kremlin, then experts estimate the potential for involving foreign contract soldiers in the fight against Ukraine quite highly.
“Can Russia create international battalions for military operations in Ukraine? Easy, just open the door. Afghans, Syrians, Serbs, North Koreans, Vietnamese, Indonesians will gladly go to war for money. And this will be a far less allowance than we pay to our own.
If President Putin announced that now the issue is not local, but international, then why not do it,” writes, for example, political scientist Marat Bashirov.
In general, if desired, the current modest participation of foreign volunteers on the Russian side could be scaled up to a size comparable to the Ukrainian one. Another thing is that, knowing the modus operandi of responsible Russian officials, one can assume that such a decision will be postponed as much as possible and will be put on the table as a last argument, when others have already been exhausted.
Negotiation round dances with the West, like the Minsk process of ill memory, in this sense do not play a very good role as a deterrent to such initiatives. After all, the more countries are actually involved in the conflict, the more difficult it will be to stir up some kind of separate agreement in the deep shadows for three or two. The rest of the interested parties will be offended - perhaps they suffered reputational and other costs for nothing.
Nevertheless, as a pure idea, the maximum involvement of foreign soldiers looks quite tempting. At the same time, Russia receives a whole set of goodies, both of a propaganda nature (in response to the Ukrainian “The whole world is with us”, it will be possible to clearly demonstrate the other half of the world, whose representatives are fighting for the Russian Federation), and purely pragmatic - every foreigner is holding a weapon in Ukraine - This is minus one mobilized Russian.
But in war, people also tend to die. I think the families of those potentially mobilized will breathe a little easier.
English version :: Read in English An order was given to him to go to the West. Will Russia have its own “Foreign Legion”?