Manuel Barrios took part in the fight against Russian troops in Ukraine because a bank threatened to seize his home in Colombia. Luis Alejandro Herrera returned to the front to recover the savings he had lost in a failed attempt to enter the United States from Mexico. Jhoan Cerón struggled to support his young son.
All three died in a war that their families said they either knew about or cared little about.
They were among hundreds of Colombian veterans who volunteered to fight for Ukraine for a chance to earn at least three times what they can earn at home.
“He said he was there fighting in a war that wasn’t in his country because he was in need,” said Barrios’ wife, Maria Cubillos.
The stories of the Colombian volunteers reveal the changing nature of the war in Ukraine, which has evolved from a rapid struggle for survival as a nation to a war of attrition. Heavy losses and stagnant fighting have left both sides scrambling to find new reserves of fighters to replenish their ranks.
In the case of Ukraine, foreign volunteers, mostly Westerners who came last year out of moral convictions, in search of adventure or out of hatred of Russia, are being supplemented by fighters from poorer countries who more closely fit the definition of the legal status of mercenaries: soldiers go into conflicts abroad for economic reasons.
“I dare say that no Colombian goes there to defend democracy,” said Cristian Pérez, who retired as a Colombian army sniper, worked abroad on private security contracts and is considering the possibility of fighting in Ukraine . “Because most Colombians have never heard of Ukraine. “It all depends on the economy.”
Colombia is a fertile recruiting ground, as decades of fighting against Marxist insurgencies and drug cartels have given the country the largest army in South America.
However, foreign fighters make up only a small part of the Ukrainian military
Ukraine’s enemy, Russia, has had to place much greater emphasis on financial benefits, including death insurance and subsidized mortgages, to attract volunteers. Russia has also taken advantage of global economic turmoil to recruit fighters driven by economic necessity, including men with little military experience from Central Asia, Nepal and Cuba.
The more the fighting turns into a brutal trench warfare with no end in sight, the more important material motivations become.
The Ukrainian military has not disclosed the approximate number of Colombian or other foreign fighters in its ranks for operational security reasons. The Colombian government also did not provide any figures and emphasized that the volunteers were still citizens but no longer had connections to Colombian institutions.
Interviews with four Colombian volunteers who served in Ukraine, as well as a review of audio and text messages sent by fighters there, show that there are hundreds of Colombian volunteers in Ukraine at any given time.
“We welcome the help of every citizen in the world who is ready to fight evil,” said Oleksandr Shahuri, spokesman for one of the main military units employing Colombian volunteers, the International Legion for the Defense of Ukraine, also known as Legion of Defense of Ukraine”. Foreign Legion.
Colombia, a country of 50 million people, has long exported skilled fighters. A security alliance with the United States has given its soldiers the best training and equipment in Latin America, and prolonged fighting has given them experience that few traditional armies can match.
For poor Colombians, the military has long been one of the few legal routes to economic security. In Colombia, retired professional soldiers receive a lifetime monthly pension of between $400 and $600, as well as free health care for their families.
However, these advantages are often not enough to make ends meet, and many find that the skills learned in the jungles and mountains are of little use in civilian life.
“They trained us for nothing but weapons,” said Andrés, a retired Colombian soldier who served in Ukraine and asked not to reveal his last name for fear of harming his career prospects.
Some veterans end up joining organized crime groups. A man interviewed for this article said he worked for a Mexican cartel for three months.
Those who continue to work in the legal economy tend to become bodyguards, a job that pays veterans of elite units up to about $1,000 a month, an above-average salary. However, in many cases it is not enough to achieve your financial goals.
And competition for jobs is increasing. A peace deal between the government and Colombia’s largest rebel group in 2016 significantly reduced the size of the country’s armed forces.
Economic pressures are driving Colombian veterans abroad. Many covet lucrative security contracts in Middle East oil states, although these positions are typically open to men under 40, disqualifying most retired Colombian professional soldiers.
Some foreign missions have caused scandals. Two dozen retired Colombian commandos are on trial in Haiti and the United States for their role in the 2021 assassination of a Haitian president.
The war in Ukraine offers Colombian veterans a rare opportunity to change their fate while fighting for an internationally recognized, U.S.-backed government.
“He always had the ambition to be someone else,” said Paola Ortiz, the widow of Herrera, the late Colombian soldier who returned to Ukraine for a second term this year after being deported from the United States. “He wanted to be able to give his children an education. “He wanted to have his house, his business.”
Rumors of fighting opportunities in Ukraine began to spread in Colombian veterans’ chat groups last year, as the initial rush of idealistic Western volunteers into the country began to stabilize.
More than a dozen Colombian veterans and their families described the volunteering process in interviews.
Colombian men travel to Poland on their own, often selling valuable possessions such as cars to pay for the trip.
At the Ukrainian border, they use translation apps to tell border guards that they have military experience and want to fight for Ukraine. Once in the country, they show up at a military base in the western city of Ternopil.
After an interview and a routine medical examination, they are placed on a waiting list for one of the two main targets of Latin American fighters: the Foreign Legion or the 49th Carpathian Sich Infantry Battalion.
They open a local bank account and send their families debit cards that they can use to withdraw the proceeds from a Colombian ATM.
The Colombian soldiers said they were paid about $3,000 a month in Ukrainian currency, about the same as local soldiers’ salaries.
They said they experienced a very different war at the front than the one they experienced against the insurgents.
Hand-to-hand combat with automatic weapons in densely vegetated terrain was replaced by bombing raids on exposed areas. And they couldn’t rely on the air superiority they had in Colombia for air strikes or evacuations.
“If you want to go, think about it first,” a Colombian volunteer said in an audio message sent to a veterans chat group in October. “Colombia,” he said, using a local expression, “is a piece of cake compared to here.” “When you feel a rocket hit nearby, you see the devil himself.”
The man, whose identity is being withheld because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said that of the 60 Colombians who had come forward with him, only about seven remained. The rest were killed, wounded or returned home after a few weeks at the front.
After arriving in Ukraine in February, Barrios told his wife, María Cubillos, that the fighting was more dangerous than he expected.
According to Cubillos, Barrios decided to go to Ukraine weeks after the birth of her third child because the bank threatened to seize her house. His nursing salary cannot cover the loan payments, Cubillos said.
“‘Come out so you don’t leave me alone with these boys,'” she said Cubillos told her in an interview in the Colombian city of Neiva. But he repeated to her: “‘Not fat, the house.’ He insisted on that.”
Barrios died in a rocket attack after 20 days on the front lines, too soon to even receive a salary.
Under Ukrainian law, the families of soldiers killed in combat must receive $411,000 in compensation.
But Cubillos said he didn’t have money for a lawyer or a plane ticket to travel to Ukraine and present the compensation claim in person.
He remains responsible for Barrios’ debts and said the bank continues to threaten to seize his home.
Her only souvenir from her husband’s Ukraine mission is a box containing the flags of Ukraine and the Foreign Legion, brought along with his body.
“I wanted to throw it all away. In return for him came a box with a flag that has no use for me,” Cubillos said. And he adds that someone told him not to do it because “‘there’s a baby that needs to know his father’s story and show him what comes from him’.”
Thomas Gibbons-Neff and Nataliia Novosolva contributed reporting from Kiev, Ukraine.