By Cameron Malley, Business Insider, 5/11/24

-Ukraine’s International Legion was born in 2022, a home for foreigners eager to fight Russia.

-Ukraine said 20,000 signed up, though experts said 4,000 was a more realistic peak figure.

-In 2024, the legion is depleted by years of harsh reality and casualty rates extreme even for Ukraine.

Three days after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy issued a clarion call for “friends of peace and democracy” to join the fight from abroad.

Zelensky’s International Legion of Territorial Defense of Ukraine (ILDU) was born, echoing the International Brigades that fought fascism in the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s.

Many answered. Outside Ukraine’s embassy in London Business Insider found men lining up to serve.

“If they need to shove a rifle in my hands and put me on the front, then that’s what they need to do,” said one, a nightclub worker.

“It’s better than sitting with my thumb up my ass.”

The Legion emerged from these recruits — some with military experience, some without.

It has been deployed across the front lines in some of the war’s toughest battles, where any of its members died.

Carl Larson, a US veteran who served in Iraq, spent three months fighting around Ukraine’s eastern city of Kharkiv in the summer of 2022. He told BI his comrades’ motivations were mixed.

“Many of us were there for the right reasons, to defend democracy,” he said.

“Lots of others,” though, “were there for the wrong reasons: adrenaline junkies, people looking for a surrogate family, or because they had personal problems back home.”

Studies from in July and September last year by the London-based Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) reached a similar conclusion.

Some parleyed their postings into fame on social media, issuing impassioned dispatches from the war zone.

BI’s coverage of the International Legion since its inception found that recruits were a mixed bag of qualified veterans, glory-seekers and people trying to give their often chaotic live meaning but totally unsuitable for a military role in a war zone.

In one case, a Legion volunteer from Alabama even defected to Russia.

Some volunteers barely lasted a week. A Russian missile strike in March 2022 hit a base near Lviv being used for foreign fighters.

According to Ukrainian officials, dozens of Ukrainians were killed and more than 100 foreign volunteers injured, ending their campaigns before they began.

Marco Bocchese, assistant professor of international relations at Webster Vienna Private University and an author of the September RUSI study, called the attack a “watershed moment” for many foreign volunteers.

Ukraine originally said 20,000 foreign volunteers had signed up to fight. Bocchese told BI that this figure was “pure propaganda.”

In January last year, The Washington Post estimated that the figure was likely closer to 3,000.

Four experts contacted for this report estimated the May 2024 strength of the legion at between 1,000 and 2,000.

Some foreigners have found other homes in the Ukrainian military: in the intelligence services, or in separate Ukrainian units, such as the elite Chosen Company — a reconnaissance and assault unit composed of US and Australian volunteers within the 59th Motorized Brigade.

This video from 2023 shows the Chosen Company at work:

Matteo Pugliese, a researcher at the University of Barcelona who authored the July study, told BI that Ukrainian intelligence coordinates its own branch of foreign volunteers.

“This includes three Russian groups, Belarusian units, the Georgian Legion, and Western veterans with better combat skills,” he said.

All told, this might add another 1,000 or 2,000 soldiers, for a total of 3,000-4,000 foreigners fighting in Ukraine.

Killed in action

International fighters proved “more expendable than Ukrainian soldiers for high-risk operations,” Pugliese said.

Indeed, Larson, who headed a 25-man platoon of legionaries in 2022, said he and his men were a “sacrificial unit.”

“We were a speed bump,” he said. “If the Russians had come, we could have held them up for maybe an hour.”

Larson said that many foreign volunteers, especially those who had fought in places like the deserts of Iraq, struggled to adapt to both the terrain in Ukraine as well as the weapons used there.

“We lost many guys to drones,” he said.

The Legion’s press service declined to comment on its strength, citing security reasons.

A spokesman, Oleksandr Shahuri, said that more than 100 nationalities had joined up.

A report by Task and Purpose in February of this year concluded that at least 50 of those who died were US citizens, a figure that is likely an undercount.

Of those 50, most had served in the US military, including 20+ Army veterans and 12 ex-Marines.

There was a Green Beret and a Navy SEAL. Some had conventional military careers, others left after getting into trouble.

A US State Department spokesperson said there is no official tally.

“Our ability to verify reports of deaths of US citizens in Ukraine is extremely limited,” they said. “In addition, not all US citizen deaths may be reported to US authorities. For these reasons, we are unable to provide a definitive number of all US citizens who have been killed.”

The Legion’s future

Earlier this year, Zelenskyy issued a decree allowing foreign nationals legally in the country to enter its National Guard. He also proposed legislation making it easier for foreigners defending Ukraine to receive citizenship.

That could prove “very enticing” for some foreign volunteers, Bocchese said. “Many want to make Ukraine their future home.”

In some states, fighting for Ukraine means giving up your freedom back home. Austria, Montenegro, Kosovo, and India made it illegal to join up.

“Some will be facing criminal sanctions upon returning home for the fact that they enlisted in a foreign unit,” Bocchese said.

For that reason, many hope to gain citizenship and “put roots down,” said Larson, the US veteran.

Ukraine’s efforts to draft its own men mean the Legion is “no longer decisive or relevant in strategic terms,” Pugliese said.

An April 2024 increases payments for Ukrainian volunteers, adds new punishments for draft dodging, and seeks to compel Ukrainian men living abroad to come home.

According to Larson, who continues to help recruiters for the Legion, sign-ups have dwindled by two thirds since the flood of March 2022.

“Half the signups are from Latin America now,” he noted, a big shift.

In the fall of 2023, the Legion began admitting Spanish-speaking applicants, many of whom were inadmissible before, Pugliese told BI.

Some had made it in but were mistreated by their officers, he said.

The new Bolivar Battalion, for example, was formed by fighters from Venezuela, Ecuador, Argentina, and Colombia and was is led by a Venezuelan anti-government fighter.

Many are former professional soldiers from Colombia, battle-hardened fighting drug cartels and rebel groups in their homeland.

Experienced non-commissioned officers can earn four times as much as back home, or even more, the Associated Press reported.

Latin Americans “have different motivations from typical Western soldiers,” Larson told BI.

“They’re there for the money.”

Rachel Blevins interviews Mark Sleboda, 5/31/24

YouTube link here.

“Neocons are about the most dangerous species in international relations today. They are the kind of people who would rather see a million dead than chose a cooperative framework to resolve a (perceived) problem. Let’s remember the memorable words of Ultra-Neocon Madeleine Albright: When asked in 1992 at an interview if half a million dead Iraqi Children which the US sanctions on the country had caused was worth it, Albright replied: “I think that is a very hard choice, but the price, we think, the price is worth it.” (https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/20…. If Hitler came back, he’d be a neocon. In this talk, professor emeritus Michael Brenner gives a comprehensive overview of the genesis and development of US neocons and the damage they are causing in international relations.”

YouTube link here.

By Isabel Van Brugen, Newsweek, 5/30/24

Russia has issued a warning to the West over the planned delivery of F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine from Belgium this year.

Moscow will perceive the delivery of the aircraft as a “signal action” by NATO “in the nuclear sphere,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in an interview with state-run news agency RIA Novosti published on Wednesday.

His remarks come after Belgium pledged on Tuesday to deliver a first batch of F-16s to Ukraine this year. The two nations signed a security agreement this week that includes supplying a total of 30 of the U.S.-built fighter jets to Ukraine to ramp up its defenses amid the ongoing war launched by Russia.

“They are trying to tell us that the United States and NATO would stop at nothing in Ukraine,” Lavrov said. “Nevertheless, we hope that the Russian-Belarusian drills on the use of non-strategic nuclear weapons that are underway now will knock some sense into our opponents by reminding them about the catastrophic consequences of further nuclear escalation.”

Lavrov added: “These aircraft will be destroyed, like other types of weapons supplied by NATO countries to Ukraine.”

Newsweek has contacted Russia’s Defense Ministry for comment by email.

Belgium vowed to supply Ukraine with all 30 F-16s before 2028. Last year, Belgium, alongside Denmark, Norway and the Netherlands, announced that it would be sending Ukraine an unspecified number of the aircraft.

Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo said at a press briefing with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Tuesday that his country would provide Ukraine with the F-16 jets “as soon as possible.”

“Our aim is to be able to provide first aircraft before the end of this year, 2024,” he said. “We will do everything in our capacity to deliver some planes already this year.”

However, De Croo said the U.S.-made jets are only to be used within Ukrainian territory.

“Everything which is covered by this agreement is very clear: it is for utilization by the Ukrainian defense forces on Ukraine territory,” he said.

There has been a growing chorus of calls for Ukraine to be authorized to use Western weapons to attack targets inside Russia, more than two years into the war launched by Moscow in February 2022.

“Putin has only one influence mechanism, that is the destruction of life. He is not capable of anything else,” Zelensky said Tuesday. “A sufficient power of weaponry is crucial so that we can physically defend [ourselves] against Russia’s terror.”

“They are shooting at you, and you cannot shoot back at them because you do not have the permission [from Western allies],” he added.

By Peter Rutland, Responsible Statecraft, 4/30/24

Peter Rutland is a Professor of Government at Wesleyan University and associate of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University. Before that he taught at the University of Texas at Austin, and at the University of York and London University in the UK.

The Carnegie Center’s Maksim Samorukov recently published an article in Foreign Affairs entitled “Putin’s brittle regime. Like the Soviet one that preceded it, his system is always on the brink of collapse.”

The argument is driven by a straightforward historical analogy. The Soviet system appeared strong and immutable, and virtually no one predicted its collapse. But collapse it did. Likewise, the Putin system appears strong and resilient, and few people can imagine its collapse. But collapse it will.

One can understand why this argument would be attractive to Foreign Affairs. Wishful thinking always gets an audience: people like to be told what they want to hear. Absent any prospects of a successful counter-offensive in Ukraine, the most likely scenario for Ukrainian victory is regime collapse in Russia.

Historical analogies can be attractive but misleading in that they may focus our attention on superficial similarities, while ignoring structural differences. And there are several important respects in which Putin’s regime is in a very different place from the Soviet Union of the perestroika era.

First, Mikhail Gorbachev was only in power for six years and he was never able to establish effective control over the inner circle of Soviet leaders, nor the bureaucracy at large. As a result, his policy initiatives were blocked from effective implementation, forcing him to adopt more radical measures which destabilized the entire system.

In contrast, Putin very quickly established strong control over rival elites after he came to power in 2000, restoring the “power vertical.” He has been in charge for 24 years, and most analysts agree that the institutional foundations of the Putin regime are robust and it will likely survive the death of its founder.

Second, a critical factor in the unraveling of the USSR was the fact that it was fighting an unwinnable war in Afghanistan, which forced it to enter negotiations with the West. Russia is fighting a war in Ukraine which it is still confident it can win.

Third, the Soviet Union was bankrupt, running trade deficits and borrowing money abroad. In contrast, despite the pressure of Western sanctions, Russia ran a $50 billion trade surplus last year. The Soviet planned economy was rigid and value-destroying, a sinkhole of state subsidies. Unlike the Soviet Union, Russia has a dynamic capitalist economy, well integrated into the global economy, and one whose entrepreneurs have been adept at evading Western sanctions.

Fourth, the USSR was a federation where ethnic Russians made up 52% of the population. Putin’s Russia is a more centralized state where Russians are 82% of the population.

Admittedly, the possibility of an Islamist insurrection in the North Caucasus is a potential security challenge. But the logic that turned Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov into a loyal vassal of Moscow would apply to any successor. It is better to enjoy a flow of subsidies from Moscow and buy Lamborghinis, than to have Grozny turned back into a sea of rubble. The Chechens have learned their lesson from the first and second wars: that pursuit of independence is not worth the effort. None of the other ethnic republics in the Russian Federation are remotely interested in starting a war with Moscow.

The Crocus City Hall attack of April 22 was not only a reminder that Islamist terrorism remains a security threat for Russia, but it represented a massive intelligence failure by the Russian security services. They were warned in advance by the U.S. that such an attack was coming: they should have placed armed guards at all concert halls in Moscow. However, attacks like Crocus are not going to cause regime change in Russia.

The terrorists did not come from North Caucasus, but from Tajikistan. That indicates that the 8 million migrant workers from Central Asia are a potential security risk. But their value in Russia’s labor-short economy still outweighs the security challenge, at least for now.

The Wagner insurrection in June 2023 was an extraordinary development, the most serious threat to the stability of the Putin regime since its foundation in 2000. We’ll never know what would have happened if the dog had caught up with the car: if Yevgeny Prigozhin had not turned back, but had ordered his troops to advance into Moscow. What we do know is that the insurrection failed. Prigozhin is dead and buried, and regime stability was quickly restored.

Allowing the Wagner group to develop to a point where it could launch that mutiny was a serious error by Putin — second only to his decision to launch the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. But it remains an outlier, and cannot serve as a foundation for U.S.policy.

To prevail in diplomacy and war one needs a realistic assessment of the adversary’s strengths and weaknesses. The abrupt collapse of the Soviet Union reminds us to expect the unexpected. But Putin (and China’s President Xi Jinping) have learned from Gorbachev’s mistakes. Washington should not build its Russia policy on the assumption that lightning will strike twice in the same place.