Mercenaries or volunteers? Economic pain pushes Colombian veterans to Ukraine

Manuel Barrios joined the fight against Russian forces in Ukraine because a bank threatened to foreclose on his house in Colombia. Luis Alejandro Herrera returned to the front to recover the savings he had lost in a failed attempt to enter the United States through Mexico. Jhoan Cerón fought to care for his toddler.

All three died in a war that their relatives said they knew little about or cared little about.

They were among hundreds of Colombian veterans who volunteered to fight for Ukraine for the chance to earn at least three times what they can make at home.

“He said that because of great need he was fighting a war in a country that was not his,” said Mr. Barrios’ wife, Maria Cubillos.

The stories of Colombian volunteers highlight the changing nature of the war in Ukraine, which has transformed from a fast-paced struggle for national survival into a war of attrition. Heavy losses and stalled battles force both sides to look for new groups of fighters to replenish their ranks.

For Ukraine, the mainly Western foreign volunteers who arrived last year because of moral conviction, a search for adventure or hatred of Russia are being supplemented by fighters from poorer countries who more closely resemble the legal definition of mercenaries – soldiers driven to foreign conflicts by financial gain .

“I would dare say that not a single Colombian went there to defend democracy,” said Cristian Pérez, who retired as a sniper in the Colombian army, worked under private security contracts abroad and is considering serving in Ukraine going to fight. ‘I don’t think they even heard of Ukraine before the war. Everything comes down to economic motives.”

Colombia offers fertile ground for recruitment, as decades of fighting Marxist insurgencies and drug cartels have given the country the largest army in South America.

Yet foreign fighters make up a small part of the Ukrainian military.

Ukraine’s enemy, Russia, has had to place much more emphasis on financial benefits, including life insurance and subsidized mortgages, to attract volunteers. And Russia has also exploited global economic turmoil to attract fighters driven by financial need, including men with limited military experience from Central Asia, Nepal and Cuba.

And as the fighting turns into inconclusive, brutal trench warfare, material motivations become even more prominent.

The Ukrainian military would not provide estimates on the number of Colombian or other foreign fighters in its ranks, citing operational security. The Colombian government also did not provide figures, stressing that the volunteers, although still citizens, no longer have ties to Colombian institutions.

Interviews with four Colombian volunteers who served in Ukraine, as well as a review of audio and text messages sent by fighters there, show that there are hundreds of Colombian volunteers in Ukraine at any given time.

“We welcome help from every citizen of the world who is willing to fight evil,” said Oleksandr Shahuri, a spokesman for one of the main military units employing Colombian volunteers, the International Legion for the Defense of Ukraine, also known as known as the Foreign Legion. .

Colombia, a country of 50 million people, has long exported experienced fighters. A security alliance with the United States has made their soldiers among the best trained and equipped in Latin America, and prolonged combat has given them experience matched by few traditional militaries.

For poor Colombian men, the military has long offered one of the few legal paths to some financial security. Retired professional soldiers in Colombia receive a lifetime monthly pension of $400 to $600, as well as free health care for their families.

Yet these benefits are often not enough to make ends meet and many realize that the skills they honed in the jungles and mountains have little use in civilian life.

“All we know is how to use weapons,” said Andrés, a retired Colombian soldier who served in Ukraine, who asked that his last name be withheld for fear of harming his career prospects.

Some veterans end up joining organized crime groups. A man interviewed for this article said he worked for a Mexican cartel for three months.

Those who continue to work in the legal economy tend to become bodyguards, a job that pays veterans of elite units up to about $1,000 per month, a higher-than-average salary, but still rarely enough to meet their financial goals .

And competition for jobs is growing. A peace deal between the government and Colombia’s largest rebel group in 2016 significantly reduced the size of the country’s military.

Economic pressure is pushing Colombian veterans abroad. Many covet lucrative security contracts in the Middle Eastern oil states, although these positions are typically only open to men under forty, disqualifying most retired Colombian professional soldiers.

Some foreign assignments have led to scandals. Two dozen retired Colombian commandos are on trial in Haiti and the United States for their involvement in the 2021 assassination of a Haitian president.

The war in Ukraine gives Colombian veterans a rare opportunity to change their fortunes as they fight for an internationally recognized government backed by the United States.

“He always had the ambition to be something more,” said Paola Ortiz, the widow of Mr. Herrera, the late Colombian soldier, who returned to Ukraine for a second tour this year after being deported from the United States. “He wanted to send his kids to college, buy a house, open a business.”

Rumors of combat possibilities in Ukraine began spreading through Colombian veterans’ chat groups last year, as the initial flow of idealistic Western volunteers into the country began to level off.

More than a dozen Colombian veterans and their family members described the volunteering process in interviews.

Colombian men travel alone to Poland and often sell valuable possessions, such as cars, to finance the trip.

At the Ukrainian border, they use translation apps to tell border guards that they have military experience and want to fight for Ukraine. Once in the country, they present themselves at a military base in the western city of Ternopil.

After an interview and a perfunctory medical examination, they are placed on a waiting list for one of the two main destinations for Latin American fighters: the Foreign Legion or the Carpathian Sich 49th Infantry Battalion.

They open a local bank account and send debit cards to their families so they can withdraw money from a Colombian ATM

Colombian soldiers said they were paid about $3,000 a month in Ukrainian currency, roughly in line with local soldiers’ salaries.

At the front they said they had experienced a very different war against the insurgents than they had known.

Close combat with automatic weapons in dense terrain was replaced by bombing in vulnerable areas. And they could not count on the air superiority they enjoyed in Colombia during air raids or evacuations.

“Those who want to come here should think about it first,” a Colombian volunteer said in an audio message sent to a veteran chat group in October. “Colombia is child’s play compared to here. When a rocket explodes near you for the first time, you see the devil face to face.”

The man, whose identity is being withheld because he was not authorized to speak to the news media, said that of the 60 Colombians who had joined him, only seven remained. The rest were killed, wounded or returned home after a few weeks at the front.

After arriving in Ukraine in February, Mr. Barrios told his wife that the fighting was more dangerous than he expected.

He decided to go to Ukraine after the bank threatened to foreclose on his house, weeks after his wife, Mrs. Cubillos, gave birth to their third child. His nurse’s salary could not cover the loan payments, Ms. Cubillos said.

“Come back, don’t leave me alone with these children,” I kept telling him,” Ms. Cubillos said in an interview in the Colombian city of Neiva. “But he just repeated, ‘No honey, I have to save the house.’”

Mr. Barrios died in a rocket attack after 20 days on the front lines, too early to earn even a single salary.

According to Ukrainian lawfamilies of service members killed in combat would receive a $411,000 payment.

But Ms Cubillos said she had no money for a lawyer or a plane ticket to travel to Ukraine to file the compensation claim in person.

She remains liable for his debts and says the bank continues to threaten to foreclose on her house.

Her only memory of her husband’s Ukrainian service is a box with the flags of Ukraine and the Foreign Legion, which was delivered with his body.

“I wanted to throw this all away. Instead of him, I got a box with a flag that means nothing to me,” Ms. Cubillos said. “But I want the baby to know his father’s story, to show what came back from him.”

Thomas Gibbons-Neff And Natalia Novosolova contributed reporting from Kiev, Ukraine.