POLITICS
In late October, Ukraine adopted a law allowing foreign nationals to hold officer positions in the country’s armed forces. The decision affects primarily members of the International Legion for the Defense of Ukraine, commonly known as the Foreign Legion. Citizens of more than 50 nations serve in the Legion and other branches of the Ukrainian defense forces. Their units are present in various sectors of the front. It is hard to assess the combat effectiveness of individual foreign units, as they operate in close cooperation with much larger Ukrainian formations. And it is these larger formations that usually get either all the praise for successful missions or all criticism for failures. However, the Foreign Legion is far from being a decorative formation. In addition to combat missions, it performs another important function: highlighting the global nature of the conflict and reinforcing the positions of Ukrainian dignitaries in international negotiations.
Paul, a U.S. national, arrived in Kyiv in March 2022, when Russian troops were still looming on the approaches to the Ukrainian capital. His journey from the east coast of the United States was quite challenging: a flight with two connections to Warsaw, a bus to the Ukrainian border, then another to Lviv in Western Ukraine, and finally, an evacuation train. The train had brought refugees from Kyiv to the west and was heading back empty.
Train car attendants were happy to help out the thin, odd-looking foreigner, who said he needed to get to the besieged city. At the Kyiv train station, the confused man attracted the attention of volunteers, who were preparing food for the territorial defense units and delivering it to their positions. Paul, who spoke only English, was looking for someone who could explain how to get into the Ukrainian army. The volunteers took him with them, promising to help.
For about two weeks, the American lived in a makeshift kitchen in an industrial zone. He helped prepare meals, and in turn, he asked everyone who came to the kitchen to help him get into the army.
Paul said he had served in the U.S. Marine Corps, had fought for several years in Afghanistan, had quit shortly before the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and had returned home. But he did not receive a warm welcome back in America. As it turned out, Paul’s wife was already living with another man, whom Paul's son had already learned to call Dad. Paul decided not to make a scene. He moved to a motel and tried looking for a job, but it didn't work out. He took to drinking — in ever larger quantities as time dragged on. He realized he was spiraling out of control but could not stop. He thought about going back to Afghanistan, but the U.S. had already begun its withdrawal of troops.
The 24th of February, 2022, marked the beginning of Paul's new life. When he saw on the news how Russian tanks were rolling toward Kyiv, he bought tickets to Europe, grabbed the duffel bag with his old uniform, and went to the other side of the globe.
Although his help was much appreciated at the volunteer kitchen, Paul thought he could do more in the army. Commanders, including officers from units based in and outside Kyiv, quickly learned about Paul through volunteers, but they could not enlist him because of the language barrier. In the turmoil and confusion of the first weeks of the full-scale war, no one wanted to have to deal with a fighter, no matter how experienced as he may have been, who did not understand even basic commands in Ukrainian.
Eventually, in April, a Ukrainian officer and his Georgian interpreter came to pick Paul up. They were from the Foreign Legion, which had formed almost immediately after the full-scale invasion began — though not early enough to connect with Paul on his way into the country. That same day, Paul was transferred to the unit, given papers, and assigned to an anti-tank unit. His service continues to this day. Paul believes he has found the best possible use for his knowledge and skills.
“A career officer's son, I heard from my father from an early age that we would have to go to war with the Russians sooner or later, that America has no enemy more principled, and that Russia is the main threat to our way of life. And when I saw what the Russians were doing in Ukraine, I remembered everything my father had said about them. That's why I'm here,” Paul says.
“A career officer's son, I heard from my father from an early age that we would have to go to war with the Russians sooner or later,” an American fighter of the Foreign Legion says
The exact number of U.S. nationals fighting on the side of Ukraine is unknown, but the count is in the hundreds. Most of them came to Ukraine well after the beginning of the full-scale war. But there are also foreigners in the Ukrainian army, including Russians, who had resided in Ukraine for some time and volunteered to join the army in the first days or weeks of the full-scale war. All of them speak enough Ukrainian to communicate with fellow soldiers and commanders, so they serve in regular brigades on an equal footing with Ukrainian citizens.
Meanwhile, the Foreign Legion, which initially formed part of the Territorial Defense Forces and was later transferred under the command of Ukraine's Main Intelligence Directorate (HUR), was devised as a formation for foreigners who did not know the language and had no connection to Ukraine before their service.
The latter rule has numerous exceptions though. Thus, several Caucasian units of the Legion are staffed by Chechens, Dagestanis, and Georgians who had legal status in Ukraine before the outbreak of full-scale war but, for various personal reasons, decided to serve in battalions formed along ethnic lines.
“Halal food was important to me and I wanted the chaplain to be Muslim. That's why I joined a Muslim unit, where all this was guaranteed,” explains Isa, a Chechen who has been living in Ukraine since the early 2000s and is serving in a unit made up of natives of the North Caucasus.
Aside from the special diet for Muslims and the constant presence of interpreters, the conditions of service for foreigners are the same as for Ukrainians. Fighters without combat experience receive basic military training, after which they are assigned to language-based companies and battalions.
There is a unit for Italian speakers and another for speakers of Spanish. Foreigners are also paid the same as Ukrainian servicemen: 20,000 hryvnias (about $480) in the rear, 50,000 hryvnias (about $1,200) in the combat zone, and 120,000 (about $3,000) on the frontline.
The only significant privilege they have is the right to leave the armed forces — and the country — despite the continuation of martial law. At first, foreigners were given open-ended contracts that they could terminate at will. Since the spring of 2024, contracts have been concluded for six months without the possibility of early retirement.
Unlike Ukrainians, foreigners can leave Ukraine's armed forces despite the continuation of martial law
Ukrainian soldiers have no clear timeline for demobilization. In April 2024, the clause on the possibility of leaving the army after 36 months of service was excluded from the law on mobilization adopted by the Ukrainian parliament. MPs then promised to pass a separate law on demobilization. But it has yet to be adopted.
Foreigners often serve for only a few months — and sometimes, when faced with serious hardship, they simply decide to quit and return home. For instance, Argentinian national Jose, who fought in eastern Ukraine in the spring and summer of 2022 and left the Foreign Legion in November, said he had never gotten used to the cold weather in the fall and that he had been permanently sick. He originally flew to Ukraine in the company of his Argentine comrades in the anti-fascist movement, whose members perceived Russia's attack on Ukraine as an act of aggressive imperialism, alien to their ideology. But eventually, he decided to just return home.
The motivation for foreigners joining the Ukrainian army varies greatly. For example, the fighters of volunteer Belarusian formations openly admit that their main goal is to weaken Putin's Russia as much as possible. In their mind, this should help Belarus liberate itself from the regime of self-proclaimed president Alexander Lukashenko, allowing the country to take a pro-Western course.
Meanwhile, Canadian units mostly bring together fighters with Ukrainian roots who have retained ties to their ancestral homeland. But there are exceptions here, too: Jerome, a former Canadian military officer from Quebec, came to Ukraine in the spring of 2022 — as he explains it, to protect his children. He has no Ukrainian ancestors, but he has Ukrainian descendants.
Jerome was married to a Ukrainian national, but their marriage ended a couple of years before the full-scale invasion began. His ex-wife returned home with their kids. Already in early March 2022, Jerome was in Kyiv, preparing paperwork to join the Foreign Legion, and he spent several months in the war zone in one of the hottest sectors. In early 2023, he retired from the armed forces of Ukraine and went back to Canada — only to return a few months later with several former fellow officers, whom he had convinced to go fight on the side of Ukraine.
Jerome's crew shares the unit with Brits and Americans, but among themselves, the Quebec guys communicate in French.
“It's pretty fun to watch stereotypes crumble. As it turns out, the English-speaking world commonly perceives the French as pampered wimps. But these guys from England and the U.S. have now seen French-speaking Canadians who have it in them to take on an enemy tank with a grenade launcher, or assault fortified positions sitting atop an armored vehicle. They'd laugh at us quietly at first, mocking our accent, but they quickly realized that we were no worse than those cowboys,” Jerome says, looking back on relations within the unit while emphasizing that he does not only carry out combat missions, but also plays a diplomatic role, raising the international prestige of the Francophones.
Of course, foreigners alone are unlikely to turn the tide of the war. At the very beginning of the war, it was stated that 20,000 foreigners had joined the ranks of the Ukrainian army. Even if that figure was accurate at one time, given the enormous casualties, the right to resign at will, and the noticeable loss of interest in the conflict in the West, the figure is certainly far less today. And even 20,000 troops would not be enough to make a decisive impact on the battlefield.
In the Bakhmut offensive, Russia's private military company Wagner alone included at least 80,000 fighters, according to experts. Taking into account regular army soldiers and mercenaries from other PMCs, the occupation forces in this sector alone could not have been fewer than 120,000 troops.
That is, even if Ukraine were to assemble all foreign servicemen on a specific section of the front, they would hardly present a serious threat to the enemy. Currently, Ukraine has more than 800,000 people serving in the army, National Guard, navy, and police units involved in combat operations. The government plans to mobilize another 200,000 by the end of 2024. There are at least a million people in the reserves.
Yet the country's authorities continue to pursue the costly program of attracting foreign volunteers. Why? First and foremost, the participation of enthusiastic foreign volunteers on Ukraine’s side — as opposed to the foreign nationals Russia has tricked into the trenches — emphasizes the global nature of the confrontation and reinforces the positions of Ukrainian dignitaries in negotiations with their foreign counterparts.
It is much harder for Washington to refuse to help a country where guys like Paul are actively fighting against forces that openly call the U.S. their enemy. In the meantime, while the Global South is being force-fed with Putin's ramblings about the struggle against imperialism and saving Europe from Western hegemony, hundreds of the wider world’s most anti-imperialist representatives are risking their lives in the war against Putin's army.
It is crucial to understand that foreign formations in Ukraine are not for show. They are not a motley crew of random foreigners taking photos in the rear — but neither are they considered expendable. These servicemen are not loud-mouthed figureheads like Steven Seagal, who promises to kill everyone for Putin, nor are they used as cannon fodder — the way many foreigners in the Russian army are.
The foreigners in Ukraine are real fighters taking part in real operations. They have firsthand experience with Ukrainians, and they have seen exactly how Russia is fighting: the carpet bombing, the shelling of civilian convoys trying to leave the war zone. These people understand what the Ukrainian army is fighting for — and, just as importantly, they understand what it is fighting against. Leaving the Foreign Legion, they will take this understanding to their homeland. They will become ambassadors of Ukrainian resistance at home, and their testimonies will be among the main tools for countering Russian propaganda and influence.