María Senovilla: ‘European fighters in Ukraine say they are not fighting for money.’

On the programme 'De cara al mundo’ on Onda Madrid, reporter, and journalist María Senovilla, a contributor to Atalayar, analysed the call-up of foreign fighters to one of the most prestigious brigades in Ukraine. She also considered the identification of hundreds of Ukrainian minors illegally given up for adoption to Russian families. 

Maria, you have spoken to foreign soldiers fighting with Ukraine in this third brigade. Do they speak Spanish?  

Yes, it is indeed a battalion of Spanish speakers. The predominant nationality of volunteer combatants throughout Ukraine is Colombian, from the beginning of the war, but I also met Chileans, Peruvians, Mexicans, and some Spaniards.  

‘I came to Ukraine, always for the civilian population, who are suffering, and for all my comrades. I have decided to be a combat medic and to help my comrades, but I do not come for money. I live very well in Spain. I come for the civilian population of Ukraine, who are suffering, and, as I said before, simply for my comrades.  

We were listening to a fighter from the Murcia region. His combat nickname was ‘Spain.’ He was telling me that he did not come for that economic incentive, even though the fighters who go to the front line and those who join the third assault brigade can get salaries that are now between more than $3,000 and up to almost $5,000, for being in those front-line combat positions. 

But he insisted, for fighters of European origin, money was not the main attraction, and if anything, solidarity was. He made a lot of reference to his comrades, to military comradeship and to that way of life, and of course to the suffering of the civilian population, which, as we have been saying throughout this year, has intensified at the same time as the bombardment of cities and civilian targets that Russia is constantly sending in is intensifying.   

I also asked these fighters why they had decided to come at this point, which is one of the worst, because right now the conflict in Ukraine, although it is not so much in the press, is at a very tense moment with this race that the two combatants are carrying out, in order to try to gain ground before Trump enters the White House. Spain, our combatant, told us the following.  

‘We know that things are hard, that the work we have is hard, but nobody has forced us to come here. We come because we want to, we come because we want to help. It is difficult, it is hard. I have colleagues already on the front line who are suffering, but that is why I came. If you do not want to come, do not come.’  

Another of the issues I had the chance to talk to these volunteer combatants about was the concept of the mercenary. In Spain, we are a little clearer about when a combatant is a mercenary, because he joins a private army and goes on different missions, and when he is a volunteer combatant integrated into a regular army. But in Latin America this line is more blurred and one of the things that Latin American volunteer combatants are criticised for is that they are labelled as mercenaries.  

Everyone says that here you come with a contract of employment. Those who sign with the Ukrainian army, foreign fighters I mean, have the same rights and the same obligations as Ukrainians. The only one they do not have is not being able to leave the country, because it only applies to Ukrainians. But in terms of employment contracts, the one you sign with the Ministry of Defence to work in the army has the same benefits. And in fact, Spain confirmed this to us.  

‘The third assault brigade gives me the guarantee of having an employment contract, social security, a salary, guarantees that other communities simply do not provide.  

Along with these fighters, I met ‘España’ in the training camp with them throughout the morning, but then in the evening I got him to take me to the combat positions, where the first batch of this battalion of Spanish-speakers was already in place. There was another Spaniard there, by the way, and they told me that at least 50 troops were already deployed on the front line, defending trenches on the Kupiansk front, which is now one of the most tense in the east of the country, and that there were probably more than 300 or 400 people who had responded to the call of the third assault brigade.  

The third assault brigade came from members who had belonged to the Azov brigade, and when the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence decided to make them official, because they were paramilitary, two brigades were created, because there were enough troops. One was the 12th brigade of the National Guard, which is the one that inherited the name Azov, but the third assault brigade was also made up of many of these fighters. The power of the call-up, when they announced at the beginning of September that they were opening to foreign fighters, who were not accepted until September, has been very great. 

Those who join the foreign battalion of the third assault brigade are interviewed online from their countries of origin, they send their CVs with their military experience and so on, and when they are accepted, they come directly to join. It is not like in other brigades, where you come to Ukraine first and then you look around to see where you are going to join. These are much more professionalised. It was quite interesting to see that they still have the power to attract people, to bring in foreigners, when the situation, especially on the front line, is extremely complicated, and the brutal appeal that this brigade has had when it comes to bringing in people. 

Maria, there are more recruits and the need is pressing. The Ukrainian authorities accept the return of deserters without criminal consequences. How many have already returned?  

The Ukrainian parliament passed a law on 29 November allowing deserters to return without criminal consequences, and within 72 hours, 3,000 people said they were returning to the brigade.  

In other words, this gives us an idea of the number of deserters there have been here in the national territory, especially in the last year of forced mobilisations. It is a problem that has been talked about in depth, but nobody gave specific figures, nobody told you how many people had left their brigade, and knowing that, in 72 hours, since this law has been passed, 3,000 have returned to their posts, gives us a clear idea of the scale of the problem.  

Those who return cannot be incorporated into the brigade they were in. This is a decision they have taken to avoid reprisals, to avoid being seen as deserters by other comrades. They join a similar position to the one they had, but in one of the other 17 remaining brigades in Ukraine. This law decriminalises any criminal consequences they might have for deserting their post, and that does put a month in effect for people to rejoin, i.e. those who have not rejoined before 1 January cannot benefit from this decriminalisation for desertion. Ukraine needs men right now.  

And execrable, unacceptable collateral damage from this war. Almost 400 Ukrainian children illegally given up for adoption to Russian families have been identified.  

Forced adoption, that is the word.  

At the end of 2022, a well-founded investigation by the International Consortium of Journalists became known in which they spoke of thousands of children illegally deported to Russian soil. They spoke at that time of more than 13,000 minors, who first must be found and identified, and it is a terribly slow process. They have already returned; I think there have been a little over 1,000 minors. In many cases the mothers have had to go to Russian soil to look for them and bring them back. But in the case of this investigation that we are talking about now, in which more than 300 children have been identified, this has emanated from an investigation by the Human Rights Department of the prestigious Yale University.  

For almost three years they have been investigating the issue, looking for connections and have identified children who have been given to guardians as foster families or directly in forced adoption, children who have parents in Ukraine and who have given them up for adoption to other Russian families.  

Yale makes this association of the attempt to Russify these children and the kind of brainwashing that is done by telling them that Ukraine does not exist, that they do not belong to Ukraine and that they are in fact Russians. The war crime is ‘gaining points’ every time we pull a little bit of thread and see how nuanced it is. It was one of the terrible stories that reached us this week.