Last March, Kyiv claimed some 20,000 foreigners had volunteered to help Ukraine in the face of the Russian invasion. Léon, whose name has been changed, is a Frenchman who is one of those volunteer fighters. The former soldier joined the Ukrainian Foreign Legion and was injured in a leg and foot in a battle on the Eastern Front, our colleagues at BFMTV report.
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Léon was hospitalized in Kyiv and says his family does not know he is in Ukraine. During the fight that injured him, the Frenchman was “fifty meters from the Russian forces”. “We tried to ask them to surrender, but they didn’t respond positively, so the fight started,” he told BFMTV journalists.
Mobilized people who ‘surrender fairly quickly’
In September, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the mobilization of 300,000 reservists. The arrival of these men, who until recently were civilians, should have made it possible to consolidate Russian lines against the Ukrainian army, which has made significant territorial gains in the east and south of the country. Léon encountered some of these “disposable” soldiers. During those few months at the front, the former soldier sometimes encountered Russians with no war experience.
“Our first prisoners were mobilized. Former prisoners who came out of their hole. They didn’t fight, they surrendered pretty quickly and said: “Mobilize! Mobilize!” [en Russe] “, he explains. “We find everything from simple conscripts to Wagner mercenaries, to the elite units that have much better equipment and that are better trained,” adds Léon. The former soldier who is currently on a crutch “As long as we’re here and helping as much as we can, we have to be proud of what we’re doing,” he says.