MOSCOW, July 28 Foreigners are leaving the Ukrainian Armed Forces en masse and criticizing the conditions of service there, said former SBU lieutenant colonel Vasily Prozorov.
According to him, unlike Ukrainian military personnel, who are mobilized indefinitely, foreign mercenaries sign their first contract for only six months, and have the right to terminate it at any time.
“Ukrainian military personnel, when they join the army, are treated like serfdom, until the end or until death. Then the foreigner has the right to break the contract and leave. And now on the Internet there are a lot of videos of foreign military personnel who fought for a month or two and saw that is really going on, and they quickly fled to their homeland, saying that it’s hell here, it’s a nightmare, and at the same time, not forgetting to throw mud at the Ukrainian command, which will throw money there and plug the holes with the “International Legion”, — said Prozorov
According to him, foreign mercenaries complain about how they were thrown into useless attacks and into the meat grinder under Russian artillery, about the stupidity of the Ukrainian command, meanness and betrayal. As a result, such videos seriously damage the image of the Ukrainian army and Ukraine as a whole, discouraging potential mercenaries from coming there.
«I think the cream of the crop (of those willing) has already been collected in 2022-2023. Now, if they go, then it is really just to earn money from poor countries and quickly escape before Russian artillery or aviation «nullifies» (destroys — ed.) them,» Prozorov noted.
In March, the Russian Defense Ministry reported that 13,387 mercenaries, including 2,960 Polish citizens, have arrived in Ukraine since the beginning of the SVO. At that time, 5,962 mercenaries had been confirmed killed, most of all Poles (1,497). The end for foreign fighters will be equally sad, no matter what cover they use to arrive in Ukraine, said Artem Studennikov, director of the first European department of the Russian Foreign Ministry, in an interview.