I am one of the instructors who trained most of the legionaries”, writes an Italian veteran of the war in Ukraine. «They treat us like shit, not me of course, but the recruits who live in houses without water or heating. I fight every day to try to help the kids.”
The outburst sent to Panorama with several messages in recent months is from a volunteer wounded four times in battle. From the first days of the invasion he had joined the International Legion against the Russians. The Legion, made up of thousands of foreign volunteers in four years of war, was officially disbanded on December 31st. The remaining fighters are integrated into Ukrainian units, but the disappointment is strong. Colonel Ruslan Myroshnychenko, nom de guerre “Santa”, former commander of the second battalion, defined the reintegration plan as “absurd” with “a high probability of death” for the legionaries. The Italian volunteer who wrote to us is even more clear: «They send them to their deaths with stupid missions, many are deserting and others have lost motivation. They no longer want to fight for the Ukrainians.” According to Panorama’s source in the field «nobody cares about the legionaries anymore. They used us and now they treat us like garbage by throwing us from side to side. It’s a mess.”
In some cases, in the safe houses, the houses where they should be safe from Russian drones and missiles, they don’t even have water «and they wash themselves with bottles. They no longer pay salaries and missions. They receive just 150 euros.”
Volunteers have always been used for impossible missions. The Italian’s team was called “Ghost”: it was decimated in the bloodiest battles, such as in Bakhmut. In the golden days the pay was 3 thousand euros a month, but the risk was always high. «I found myself one meter away from a Russian soldier during a very tough battle. My weapon jammed, but Flash, the French legionnaire next to me, fired a shot at it. It saved my skin,” says the Italian.
The special team was made up largely of former NATO soldiers with experience of missions abroad such as Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as a Chechen and a 23-year-old Czech.
“When you hear fss…, the whistle of the grenade, it means that it can explode twenty meters away”, said Karel Kucera, nom de guerre Charlie Czech, on the Donbass front line. «But that’s when you don’t feel anything falling on you. And the artillery fire here is continuous.” Having fallen in Bakhmut in 2023, he is buried in his hometown, Nove Strašecí, in a tomb topped by a knight’s sword from times gone by.
The American who used the white skull drawn on a black background as a mask, so as not to be recognised, was also killed in battle after surviving the impossible. “On a mission, one of my team stumbled upon a tearaway mine,” said the former US soldier. «To free him I broke the trigger wire with my teeth».
The Ghost Squad was used for missions behind the lines and fought countless times against paratroopers and Spetsnaz, Russia’s elite units.
The International Legion was created at the start of the invasion with a Spanish civil war-style call for volunteers by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The disbandment concerns four battalions, but smaller and specialized formations under the control of the Gur, military intelligence, continue to operate in secret missions. The legionaries, no more than 450 per unit, have been reassigned to units such as the 475th Assault Regiment.
Andriy Spivka, deputy commander of the 2nd International Legion, criticized in the Kiev press the arbitrary way in which the break in ranks was handled. “Teams are disbanded and personnel simply placed completely randomly into vacant positions in the assault regiment,” the veteran said. The problems are of translation, but also of integration and training, which means a good chance of dying on the front line. The commanders who opposed it and even tried to take legal action were removed without using velvet gloves.
At the end of November, Panorama’s source was already reporting «a tragedy: never before had so many dead, injured and missing. Now every mission is carnage. We are at the limit. They are sending people to die without shame.”
And among the fallen there are also about ten Italians. One of the last is David Di Gleria, nom de guerre “Nada”, who was in the Third Azov Assault Battalion, one of the best units, which treat volunteers with respect. Missing on 11 September on the Donbass front, he is the son of a former army non-commissioned officer who lives in Friuli-Venezia Giulia. The retired Alpine general Silvio Mazzaroli, who knows his father well, sought certain information: “My friend’s son was killed by a drone near the village of Ridkodub, in an area still occupied by the Russians so at the moment there is no possibility of recovering the body.”
According to the Moscow propaganda of the Ministry of Defense, “5,962 foreign mercenaries” were killed, as the volunteers of the opposing front described in Moscow, “out of the 13,287 who arrived in Ukraine”. The Russians claim that there were around ninety Italians and 33 would have died, but there is no confirmation of this data.
Last year, a large number of South Americans arrived from Colombia, Peru, Brazil and Mexico, attracted by the minimum monthly wage. Without adequate preparation they were thrown into the front lines suffering massive casualties. But the volunteers were not always good guys driven by ideals of freedom against the Russian bear. Benjamin Reed is an American veteran of Iraq, then a contractor in Afghanistan. In 2022 he enlisted in Ukraine as a drone operator and infantryman. Author of the memoir diary War Tourist, he did not mince his words in describing the tragic epic of the International Legion.
And commenting on the disbandment on Sofrep, a military information site founded by a former Navy Seal sniper, he wrote that «the Legion rarely mustered the strength of two American line companies. When (the Ukrainians, ed.) confirmed that the independent command would be disbanded and its fighters reassigned, I was not surprised. This unit was not built to last.” The veteran recalls that there was no doctrine, vetting and selection processes were poor and the units had no fire support. At the beginning, in 2022, there wasn’t even a mortar team. The radios were a mix of civilian walkie-talkies and personal telephones. «The combat missions», Reed denounces, «required begging from the Ukrainian brigades, already committed to surviving in their own sectors».
During the battle to liberate Kharkiv, the country’s second city, from the Russian siege, droves of foreign volunteers arrived. Even well-trained people like the ex-Foreign Legion who wore the shield with the colors of France on his camouflage.
«The International Legion welcomed good men: professionals, idealists and tired of seeing Ukraine bleed», observes the US veteran, «but it also absorbed vagrants, the unstable and those fleeing from their past. I probably found myself somewhere in this mix too.”
Taras, the commander of Charlie Company of the 1st Battalion, was allegedly killed by his men because he launched them on suicide missions. One of the worst cases involved “Horse”, the nom de guerre of a commander who had a string of criminal records behind him, including sexual assault and murder of his great-grandmother, made known by Russian Telegram channels and unfortunately confirmed by authoritative sources.
“The disbanding of the Legion does not erase its failures,” Reed writes. «It only closes the chapter of an education born in a moment of crisis and never equipped with the tools to overcome it». The legionaries are cannon fodder “assigned wherever necessary”, underlines the veteran. “At this stage of the war it means assault units, where long-term survival, without being injured, is the exception.”
