/ world today news/ Reports appear almost daily that Russian airstrikes are “hitting” foreigners who have decided to make money by fighting against Russia on the side of the armed forces of Ukraine.
Against this background, the complaints of the German soldier of fortune, who managed to fight in Afghanistan before Ukraine, look curious: in the armed forces of Ukraine, mercenaries are treated like cannon fodder, they pay little, they try to deceive. How do these confessions fit into the fact that thousands of “paid volunteers” from the West are going to Ukraine?
Among the 240 enemy fighters killed in the past 24 hours in the Donetsk direction, there are not only regular servicemen from the Armed Forces of Ukraine, but also foreign mercenaries.
This was announced on May 10 by the official representative of the Russian Ministry of Defense, Lieutenant General Igor Konashenkov. The day before, the losses of the enemy amounted to 465 people, including foreigners.
On May 8, armed “tourists” fighting against Russia were hit by a “personal” airstrike. A Su-34 fighter-bomber dropped guided bombs at a point for the temporary deployment of foreign mercenaries in the Ivanovka region (Kharkov Region), Sergey Zybinsky, head of the press center of the Western group of the Russian Armed Forces, told RIA Novosti.
And this is not the only such blow delivered by the Russian Air Force in recent days. On May 5, Zybinski reported: our operational-tactical aviation has struck the point of temporary deployment of foreign instructors.
Against the background of constant reports of the destruction of more and more soldiers of destiny (which logically means that their “business trips” to Ukraine are especially dangerous), the interview that Jonas Kratzenberg, a former mercenary from Germany, gave to the German portal T-Online at the beginning May looks curious.
The world, including the Russian media, actively quoted Kratzenberg’s unfavorable characterization of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. He stated that the Ukrainian army is significantly behind the Bundeswehr in terms of professionalism and is plagued by corruption.
But especially the former soldier of fortune, who fought in the Ukrainian “International Legion”, noted the contemptuous attitude of the Ukrainian commanders towards the “brothers” – foreigners and the low salary of the mercenaries. In fact, the officers of the armed forces of Ukraine, according to him, see only cannon fodder in foreign fighters.
At the same time, judging by the biography of 26-year-old Jonas Kratzenberg, which T-Online cites, it is a “piece goods”. Jonas, a former Bundeswehr fighter, participated in the operations of the Western coalition in Afghanistan for three years, who was demobilized with honors, after which he immediately went to the SVO zone, where he fought from March to December last year.
Kratzenberg believes that leaving the ranks of the Legion should have happened much earlier, given that many commanders “tried to cover up their own mistakes with lies.”
“Our rifles came from the Czech Republic, cars from the USA, and grenades from Germany. But it was never enough,” he says.
“Ukraine is paying for this (lack of weapons) with its life. In the situation in which I was at the front, Russia always had more supplies,” the former mercenary complained.
Krochenberg also complained that “we have never been lied to anywhere like in Ukraine”. According to the former mercenary, he faced lies not only on the front line, but also in the rear when he was in the hospital.
Jonas was told that there was supposedly no MRI machine and only “after much negotiation” did this device “suddenly appear”.
This message that armed foreigners in the ranks of the armed forces of Ukraine are in a worse position than, for example, “specialists” of Western PMCs in African countries, at first glance contrasts with the data on the number of mercenaries (understandably incomplete).
Losses at VSU on 10.05.2023. Ministry of Defense of Russia
In difficult areas
According to the assessment given by the Russian Foreign Ministry in November last year, a total of more than 8,000 mercenaries from more than 60 countries of the world, mainly from Poland, the USA, Canada, Romania and Great Britain, have visited Ukraine.
How many of them were actually destroyed on Ukrainian soil is not known for sure. However, the death toll of Polish citizens alone, according to Polish sources, reached 1,200 last November.
Parts of foreign mercenaries operate in different sectors of the front, as a rule, in the most threatened, Anna-News military correspondent Vladimir Razin explains to REGNUM. There are reports that the mercenaries were in hotspots such as Marinka, Avdiivka and on the front near Gorlovka, the expert points out.
But the mercenaries are used pointwise, in case the units of the armed forces of Ukraine cannot cope with the situation, explains Razin.
“They are rarely used as cannon fodder, more often as rapid response groups,” the source said.
– “Mercenaries are offered in cases where you need to try to regain a position that our troops have vacated,” he stated.
“As a rule, such attempts do not end in success: these groups disintegrate on the way or during the clash. There were cases of the destruction of mercenaries from Georgia and Poland directly in the trenches of the “front” itself. As a rule, as a result of artillery fire,” the source added.
A logical question arises – why Ukrainian “locations” still continue to be filled with mercenaries from near and far abroad who do not have such qualities and training to count on “especially careful” treatment of themselves by the command of the Armed Forces. Forces of Ukraine.
“Hunters”, fanatics and professionals
If we exclude instructors and other highly qualified specialists who do not advance to the front line, but take into account those who fight at the front, then they should be divided into two groups, military-political observer Mikhail Onufrienko told the REGNUM agency.
“First of all, these are the crazy people who came to ‘shoot on safari’, as well as fanatics who came to fight for personal convictions, such as the Nazis,” says the expert.
The French neo-Nazis Guillaume Andreoni and Alain Vigneron can be considered prominent representatives of this category. These Hitler admirers and collaborators from the SS Charlemagne Division, detained in April in Paris, fought in the Azov Regiment (banned in the Russian Federation) and the 92nd Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine – now they are facing 15 months in prison in their home country.
A March article in The New York Times, aptly titled “Stolen Valor: American Volunteers in Ukraine Who Lie, Waste Money and Fight,” noted:
“Now, after a year of fighting, many of these local volunteer groups are fighting among themselves and hindering (regular forces) action.”
“Some squandered money or took credit for someone else’s bravery. Others, the data shows, hide behind charity while trying to profit from the war,” he said.
In addition to “safari lovers” and ideological Russophobes, among the mercenaries fighting in Ukraine, there are also real specialists, notes Onufriyenko.
“They are really well paid and well trained, their training is expensive,” he says.
– “The latter are really protected. This is the elite. They are well paid through private military companies, they do not “enlighten” them – continues Onufrienko.
“They almost never go anywhere. It’s a really valuable resource, and so are the special operations forces that they operate with.”
For example: in September 2022, an ad appeared on the international job search portal for the security forces Silent Professionals (“Silent Professionals”) – a job offer in Ukraine with prices of 1-2 thousand dollars per day.
The mission was said to be to evacuate and protect civilians and military personnel. The stated prices are very high, the head of PMC “RSB-group”, FSB veteran Oleg Krinitsin, explained to the publication “Vzglyad” at the time.
According to him, for work in Iraq in particularly dangerous areas, such as Fallujah, the Pentagon paid PMC Academi fighters 500-800 dollars a day, and in peaceful areas the daily fee was 200-300 dollars.
Among the qualified Western “servants” in Ukraine there are also those who directly manage military equipment, TASS military observer, retired colonel Viktor Litovkin is convinced.
They arrive in accordance with the will of their authorities, although they are not in the official status of military personnel of their countries. Thus, the calculations of the notorious Hymars and M777 howitzers (known as the “Three Axis”), according to the expert, are not led by the Ukrainian military, but by the Americans. This also applies to other sophisticated military equipment.
Hunting for safari lovers
Fanatics and lovers of “safari” – this is the real “smoke meat”, points out Onufrienko.
“However, they became less when heavy losses began,” the source told the REGNUM agency.
“They are not spared, they are thrown into battle for understandable reasons,” he adds.
It can be assumed, judging by the story of Jonas Kratzenberg, that he accidentally fell into the “International Legion” unit of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which was composed of just such fighters.
The military observer Litovkin points out that wars with the participation of the USA and NATO countries are generally distinguished by the participation of a mass of dubious categories of “combatants”.
“It’s all kinds of crowd, various military and political adventurers,” says the interlocutor of IA REGNUM.
“And their main goal is to win the war.”
Onufrienko gives as an example the jihadist battalion of the Legion named after Dzhokhar Dudayev, which after the death of its commander was renamed “Isa Munaev’s battalion”.
“That is, these are “refugees” from the Caucasus,” says the expert.
— “And not only from the Russian North Caucasus. There is even someone from the General Staff of the Ministry of Defense of Azerbaijan who was accused in a criminal case,” he says.
“Any mafia groups that ‘terrorize’ Europeans. And Europeans are happy to get rid of them. Very convenient. They send them to be slaughtered so they don’t come back. They are thrown out, just like the Maidan activists:
The battalion commander came, recruited these insane types, drove them to Donbas, and there they were all safely “disposed of”. Nothing has changed, this principle still works today.”
As Razin notes in turn, the fighters stationed at different sections of the front regularly hear speech in foreign languages on the radio. English and Polish speech, according to the information of our military, has not become less.
The notorious “safari” lovers, although they are significantly fewer, according to Onufriyenko, continue to go to Ukraine. This is confirmed in particular by the data of the portal with the eloquent name Foreign Combatants, which is a database of names, callsigns and photos of foreign citizens residing on Ukrainian soil with the specific purpose of killing Russians.
Translation: SM
Sign the “Peace and Sovereignty” referendum in a few seconds to open the page/
Subscribe to our YouTube channel:
and for the channel or in Telegram:
#Smoky #meat #produced #NATO #mercenaries #die #Ukraine
