The Washington Post has not written that the West is sending soldiers to Ukraine. On the contrary, the article Russian media refer to focuses on International Legion foreign fighters who voluntarily go to war – each for his own reasons. None of the countries that are currently providing military aid to Ukraine have expressed readiness to send troops to participate in hostilities, nor has Ukraine ever asked that they do.
Russian media are once again trying to convince their readers that the Ukrainian Armed Forces have many foreign mercenaries, and that the West sends them to Ukraine. The NTV television channel and other Kremlin media cite a Washington Post article as proof of their claims, alleging it states that “along with weapons, Western countries are sending their mercenaries to Ukraine” and that “now about three thousand foreigners are serving on the side of Kyiv.”
To create this latest fake, Russia’s propaganda machine used a Washington Post article – Democracy Defenders and Rambo wannabes: Ukraine’s volunteer foreign fighters. The article deals with foreigners who chose to come and fight on the side of Ukraine against Russia. Jeff Stein, the author of the article, does not write that these foreign fighters are sent by the West “as manpower”, on the contrary, he emphasizes that men who have chosen to fight for Ukraine do so for their own personal reasons – “some went defend democracy, others are fleeing their own demons.”
Russian media also claim that the Washington Post article states that 3,000 foreigners are fighting for Ukraine. In fact, the article only approximates the number of foreign fighters, as the actual numbers are not public.
According to the Washington Post article, “An estimated 1,000 to 3,000 such foreign fighters are believed to be active, with most serving in three battalions of the International Legion, according to analysts and academics monitoring them, who stressed that the numbers were rough approximations. The Ukrainian military did not reply to requests for details about the volunteers, or estimates of their numbers.”
The article also points out that “Compared with the battlefield contributions of hundreds of thousands of regular Ukrainian troops, the impact of the volunteers is relatively small. But the foreign fighters draw outsize attention in the West, especially when killed or captured, and they raise a thicket of uncomfortable legal, moral and political questions for Ukraine and for the volunteers’ home governments.”
According to the Center for Research on Extremism at the University of Oslo, some 100 foreign fighters have been killed in Ukraine and more than 1,000 injured.
None of the countries currently helping Ukraine with weapons, logistics, training, has said it is ready to provide soldiers for combat operations in Ukraine. Analysts note that it is unlikely that this will change in the future.
StopFake has repeatedly debunked fakes and manipulation about foreigners fighting on the side of Ukraine in stories such as Fake: The number of foreigners in the Ukrainian Armed Forces will soon exceed 50 percent, Fake: the US is “massively recruiting mercenaries” for the war in Ukraine, Fake: Stoltenberg acknowledged that NATO is fighting on the side of Ukraine.
