The Russian military said, on Friday, that just under 7,000 “foreign mercenaries” from 64 countries have arrived in Ukraine since the conflict began and that 2,000 of them have been killed.
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Our lists, as of June 17, include mercenaries and weapons specialists from a total of 64 countries. “Since the start of the special military operation, 6956 have arrived in Ukraine, 1956 have already been eliminated, and 1779 have left,” the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement.
The Russian Ministry adds that Poland is the “absolute leader” among European countries in terms of the arrival of fighters to Ukraine, followed by Romania and Britain.
This statement was accompanied by a table of the numbers of foreign fighters by nationality arriving in Ukraine and the recorded losses, according to the Russian army.
For example, he asserted that 59 French “mercenaries”, out of 183 who came to fight, had been killed since the start of the Russian offensive. The countries with the highest number of casualties according to Moscow are Poland (378 dead), the United States (214), Canada (162) and Georgia (120).
Since the start of Moscow’s intervention in Ukraine on February 24, thousands of foreign volunteers, mostly Europeans, have traveled to this country to aid the troops in Kyiv.
Russia presents these fighters as “mercenaries,” a derogatory term that suggests they are motivated by the lure of profit.
Three of them were sentenced to death by pro-Russian separatists, two British and one Moroccan.
For their part, Ukraine and its Western allies indicate that if there are mercenaries, they are on the Russian side, in particular the presence of elements of the Wagner Group, whose soldiers have spread from Syria to Libya, through Mali. .
