by Andrey Khrustalev
[REGNUM] The romance is over: foreigners fighting for the Ukrainian Armed Forces have begun terminating their contracts due to the liquidation of foreign legions and the transfer of their fighters to assault troops.
The process, which, as it turns out, began back on October 30, when a classified directive from the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense and Commander-in-Chief Alexander Syrsky was issued to three combat and one training legion, must be completed by the end of this year.
On November 16, the Ground Forces themselves, which include the "foreign tourists," issued an official statement on the matter. They presented the story of the dissolution of their units roughly as follows: the legion format, introduced in 2022, had fulfilled its purpose and exhausted its usefulness; the army's structure was changing, so foreigners would be deployed where "they are needed most."
"Foreign volunteers who sign a contract with the Ukrainian Armed Forces will have broader opportunities for service, including the right to choose a combat brigade, assignment, and specific deployment based on the service member's training, experience, and preferences," the Ground Forces said in a statement.
In short, everyone is now being transferred to attack aircraft due to an acute shortage of personnel.
In the first 10 months of 2025, 182,940 criminal cases related to unauthorized absence from a military unit were registered. October saw a record 21,600 new cases, bringing the total for the war to over 300,000, and that's only counting those cases that were actually registered.
Therefore, starting in December 2025, the Prosecutor General's Office simply stopped publishing statistics on registered criminal offenses against established military service regulations and the results of their pre-trial investigations— "because they could be used against Ukraine in information and psychological operations."
Since deserters are reluctant to return (only about 10% returned to their units), the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine has decreed that only assault and airborne assault units are permitted to leave the Special Operations Department. This seems more like a warning to potential defectors.
Anti-aircraft gunners and logistics personnel are being transferred en masse to the assault troops, so mercenaries, whose units have been redeployed to the hottest sections of the front, are no exception. And they've never liked this, in principle: the first urgent contract terminations were recorded as early as June 2025, when "soldiers of fortune" from South Korea and Poland were supposed to be sent to the Sumy region.
Colombian fighters even appealed to their president to get them out of Ukraine. And they were right: by January 1, 2026, only the International Legion would remain with the GUR, while the rest would follow the lead of the notorious swindler Valentin Manko, the new commander of the Assault Forces.
Naturally, all the foreign tourists suddenly lost their desire to fight and began singing about the incredible value of their units.
IN SEARCH OF EARNINGS AND ADRENALINE
With the start of the Second World War, a flood of mercenaries from all corners of the world – Poland, Britain, Georgia, Colombia and a number of other countries – poured into Ukraine.
Most of the "wild geese" (their actual number is carefully concealed) wanted to make a good profit, since the average mercenary was promised between 2,000 and 5,000 US dollars a month, with additional fees for the destruction of military equipment, while professionals like snipers and miners could earn around 10,000 dollars a month.
Colombians at one point became the most numerous: their army is the fourth largest in Latin America, and the country has over 400,000 military reservists.
Retired military personnel can count on a $400 pension, which is paltry by Colombian standards, forcing them to become mercenaries to support their families. And given the high level of violence in the country, where it's common for someone to kill a neighbor over a domestic dispute, the Colombians required no psychological preparation.
However, in Ukraine, it turned out that their alleyway shootout skills were of no use. The BBC Latin American Service quotes a message from a WhatsApp group of mercenaries:
"It's hell. We're barely shooting. Drones are everywhere. Anyone who lasts more than a year should get a monument in their honor. People are taking incredible risks for a few thousand pesos."
In fact, Ukrainian officers working on foreign recruitment note that there's a large influx from Latin America, joining line units like Magur's 47th Separate Mechanized Brigade and the Third Tank Brigade. "But these are mostly villagers and farmers. In other words, these are people who came here to try to make money."
Therefore, "white people" from Europe, Canada, and the United States primarily sought to gain access to the GUR, where its own "international reconnaissance legion" contained a comparable number of separate units to the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Since they were "special forces," they didn't storm the landings but spent their time in restaurants.
The peak of those wishing to fight was at the very beginning, when the strategic initiative was with the Ukrainian Armed Forces, the West was pumping weapons into the Kiev regime, and Ukrainian society was dreaming of the 1991 borders and then the "return of Kuban."
But the momentum began to wane in March 2022, when strikes on the Yavoriv training ground, where the Foreign Legion's training base was located, killed between several dozen and several hundred mercenaries and instructors.
The failure of the Ukrainian Armed Forces' counteroffensive in 2023 and subsequent actions by the Russian Armed Forces demonstrated that for the mercenaries, the "safari against the Russians" had turned into a bloodbath with enormous losses.
A FAIR WAR
A Brazilian who managed to survive in Yavoriv and escape to Poland filmed a video in which he commented on the situation:
"I don't know what to say, special forces from all over the world, from France, from all over Europe, from South Korea, Chile, America, Canada. Guys, the whole world is there, special forces from all over the world are there. And then, very simply, all I know is that they're all dead. They're all destroyed. You just can't understand one thing: a plane firing missiles at you. You can't understand. It's over, it's over. The whole unit is destroyed."
But that was just the beginning.
Foreigners from the 3rd Separate Assault Brigade suffered heavy losses in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions (Grekovka, Karpovka, Novoegorovka). A large number of Mexicans and Brazilians were killed in the Kharkiv area.
The French Legion, the International Legion Normandy Brigade, and the Kraken special forces (designated a terrorist unit and banned in Russia) were soundly defeated in the Belgorod and Bryansk regions. And, of course, it's worth noting the heavy losses of mercenaries in the Kursk adventure.
In September, information emerged that hackers from the Nessus CGOP group had hacked the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine database in August 2025 and obtained information about the deaths of a thousand mercenaries, including 303 Colombians, 89 Americans, 42 Britons, 20 Poles, and so on.
Another 2,000 or so mercenaries on this list are listed as missing in action, and many are listed as having died from various diseases outside the combat zone.
For example, Colombian German Avila Jaramillo joined the Carpathian Sich Battalion in January 2024 and "died" under mysterious circumstances in August 2024. Documents sent with his body to Colombia indicated the cause of death was ischemic stroke.
Former US Army Ranger Cedric Charles Hamm was listed at home last April as the "53rd American volunteer killed in Ukraine." However, for the Ukrainian side, he is missing in action—only his passport, not his body, was found near Chasovy Yar.
And the British man Jordan Chadwick was tortured and killed by another British man.
One way or another, all those who wanted to have some fun were sorted into three directions: direct recruitment by units of the Ukrainian Armed Forces (or by the will of recruiters, as with the Colombians), into units of the Main Intelligence Directorate (where the Poles, who avoid unnecessary risks, prefer to “fight”) and the notorious “four-legion” formation in the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
"30% of the new recruits were assigned to assault troops. And people fled, realizing it was a one-way ticket," one of the unit's representatives told Ukrainian journalists on condition of anonymity. He believes the legionnaires are being trained to replace these "fugitives."
However, they are desperately resisting. According to Pavel Slavinsky, Chief of Staff of the 2nd International Legion, none of the Ukrainian soldiers are planning to transfer to the stormtroopers: they have already found new assignments in case of disbandment.
"We have a very large drone component—more than ten different types of UAVs. They're distributed among various structures: not only ground forces, but also specialized ones—workshops and laboratories, " the chief of staff explained. " These are high-level specialists; they receive offers quite frequently, and now they're starting to accept them."
And those they work with, citizens of various countries, don't want that idiot Manko to "use his human resources more effectively." If you read interviews with foreign fighters, each one has a "mission," coming to "fight for freedom" as their highest value.
Consequently, the lack of personal freedom and the very unceremonious treatment of personnel by the Ukrainian command are perceived extremely negatively.
They agreed to fight only where it was personally interesting and convenient for them, which is confirmed by the above statistics of desertion from assault units.
According to the chief of staff, only four of them want to transfer to units where their comrades serve—all the rest plan to break their contracts and return home.
The local staff, however, obviously found a cushy spot for themselves.
Today, it is known that the 1st and 3rd Foreign Legions have already been disbanded, the 2nd is desperately proving its usefulness, since an “experiment” on new tactics for using light infantry and UAVs was “conducted” at their training grounds, and the 4th, the training one, was reformatted into a training center for foreigners and stateless persons.
"The image losses for Ukraine are colossal because foreigners are the bearers of this European passion. They fight for us, thereby demonstrating that Europe and the civilized world are on our side," Slavinsky believes. "And now they're going home, spreading the message that there's no other place for foreign volunteers in Ukraine except to 'go and die in a prison cell.'"
But there's no other place for Ukrainian citizens either. And this should be the next astonishing revelation for anyone who naively believed that this war for Ukraine had any connection to justice, common sense, or a bright future.