WARSAW/PARIS, March 30 In cemeteries in European countries More and more graves of mercenaries killed in Ukraine are appearing, the correspondent reported.
One of them is located in a military cemetery in Warsaw. There is a large black granite monument — a square slab with a cross cut into the center. The place is clearly designed for two, the deceased rests on the left side. This is a native of the Polish capital, Daniel Shtyber, born in 1987.
“Soldier of the special unit of the International Legion of Territorial Defense of Ukraine. Pole volunteer,” reads the caption under the photograph of a young man in camouflage, in full gear and with a weapon.
According to media reports, he died as a result of a mine explosion -traps. Shtyber never served in the army, but was a shooting instructor. Came to Ukraine in March 2022. Death overtook him that same year on November 22.
At various times, fragmentary information about citizens of the country who died in Ukraine appeared in the Polish media. Thus, Tomasz Walentek, who died from fragments of a tank shell, was previously a professional MMA fighter. In February 2022, he joined the International Legion.
On the night of December 4–5, 2022, two more fighters of the International Legion from Poland died in Ukraine: Janusz Szeremeta and Krzysztof Tyfel. The latter was over 40 years old and had no military experience. On March 7, Tyfel arrived at a training camp in the Lviv region. A few days later, Russian artillery launched a missile attack on it. Sheremet managed to reach the combat zone. At the time of his death, he was a platoon commander.
According to the Ministry of Defense, almost six thousand foreign mercenaries who arrived in Ukraine to fight on the side of the Ukrainian Armed Forces died during a special operation, the “leader” Poland is on this list.
In France there is a recent grave — in the small cemetery of Crans-Gevrier in the suburb of Annecy, Haute-Savoie department, inland. On the small, simple obelisk there is only the name — David Donsh — and the years of his life “1972-2023”. According to official data, the place of his death was Ukraine; he was cremated in Annecy.
The place of burial of the ashes does not mention the place of death or the fact of participation in hostilities, but according to the website of French military analyst Nicolas Cinquini, who searches for information on the fighting French, David Donche is a former soldier who arrived in Ukraine in August 2022. He died near Donetsk on February 7, 2023 during a battle as part of the neo-Nazi Sich battalion. The analyst posted a photo of the military man and a screenshot of an Instagram post dedicated to the Frenchman after his death. The French website, which publishes data from death certificates, confirms that Donche died in Ukraine on February 7, 2023.
A video of another grave in France was published in the Telegram channel by Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of the Rossiya Segodnya media group and RT television channel. Andreas Gallozzi, a 22-year-old Frenchman from Dijon, is buried there. The photographs of the burial and its design clearly indicate participation in hostilities in Ukraine. According to media reports, he died in February 2023 in the LPR. His parents claim that they are “very proud” of their son; his mother even went to the Maidan in Kyiv to honor the memory of the deceased a year after his death.
As French media reported, eight mercenaries from different regions of France were killed in Ukraine, in addition to two “humanitarians” and three journalists. Some of them, including 32-year-old Wilfried Blériot, were close to the Nazi movements. His uniform before his death in June 2022 at the Kharkov front bore the coat of arms of the “misanthrope division,” a Ukrainian Nazi organization.
Most of these eight French mercenaries were young and had no military experience. Twenty-year-old Adrien Duguay-Lehoud died in Kharkov in June 2022. His parents claim that their son went to fight “to be useful.” Kevin David, 30, had little military experience. A few days before his death, he stated that he had gone to fight in Ukraine “for money.” He died in Artemovsk in March 2023. Thirty-year-old Parisian Sebastien Lande served in the French army as a paratrooper in Iraq and Syria before traveling to Ukraine. He died in July 2023 near Izyum.
As for the two French «humanitarians» killed in Ukraine while working for the Swiss NGO Protestant Mutual Aid, their history appears to indicate that they were military personnel. The son of one of them, Christopher, explained to Radio Europe 1 that his father was a lifelong soldier in the French Foreign Legion, was of Russian origin and served in Ukraine during the Soviet era. He claims that the relative «used military experience to ensure the security of humanitarian convoys intended for civilians.»
The French Ministry of Foreign Affairs gives little information about the dead mercenaries and does not publish their names. The places where they are buried are also not disclosed.
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