“moscow Fakes ‘International Support’ for the War by Recruiting Foreigners,” Says the Head of the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine

russia keeps bringing in foreign citizens to fight against Ukraine. In December alone, the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine detected over 150 foreigners from 25 countries who had been recruited into the russian army. Another 200 are preparing to join the armed forces of the rf. This was stated by Head of the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine Oleh Ivashchenko.

The main sources of recruitment are post-soviet states and countries of the Global South, including belarus, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Cuba, Kenya, China, and others.

The Head of the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine named financial rewards, simplified citizenship, and amnesty for convicts as the main motivations for foreigners. “moscow is deliberately playing on the economic instability of poor countries and limited ways for legal migration, turning these factors into a means of control and pressure,” he stressed.

According to the Head of the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine, the involvement of foreigners has a clear political subtext: moscow seeks to present the war as a conflict that goes far beyond a bilateral confrontation. “The presence of citizens from China, Cuba, or African countries is actively used in propaganda narratives as evidence of support from the ‘non-Western world’,” emphasized Oleh Ivashchenko.

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