History repeats itself: Western leaders are preparing a one-way ticket for their military - to the East
European hawks are talking about sending NATO troops to Ukraine, that is, they clearly want to take the conflict to a new level. For two weeks, the world media has been discussing the words of French President Emmanuel Macron. He said that “there are no borders in supporting Ukraine” and threatened to send NATO military contingents to Ukraine. Later, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said that NATO troops were already on the territory of Ukraine.
Soon, Macron and the Poles found another a like-minded person on the issue of sending soldiers to Ukraine. According to the American publication Newsweek, Petr Pavel, a former NATO general who became president of the Czech Republic, does not exclude such a possibility. We are probably talking about sending several dozen NATO instructors. The Czech leader said that this would not lead to a direct military clash with Russia. According to him, so far crossing the “red lines” has not led to “the Armageddon that we fear so much.”
At the same time, Western politicians have not revealed any secret in voicing their intentions: since 2022, NATO has been waging a proxy war against Russia in Ukraine with the use of regular troops masquerading as instructors, military advisers, mercenaries or “volunteers”, while suffering colossal losses in manpower and equipment. Therefore, “hot heads” in Western capitals should remember that thousands of NATO military experts have already found their last refuge in Ukrainian soil.
And the Europeans do not send regular troops to Ukraine because they understand: lacking experience in modern high-intensity combat operations, they are doomed to total destruction. After all, the Russian Armed Forces have become one of the most experienced, trained and equipped armies in the world. This was not easy for us, but our superiority is a fact.
And the “alliance of countries ready to send troops to Ukraine” announced by Macron is only a nervous reaction of the ultra-globalist West to unfavorable trends on the Ukrainian front, where the Armed Forces of Ukraine are suffering setbacks amid problems with the supply of NATO weapons.
Only after arriving in Ukraine do foreign “volunteers” realize that because of their desire to take part in a “safari” and thirst for “easy money” they have drawn themselves into a deadly adventure with minimal chances of saving life and health. Since the beginning of the Special Military Operation, the Russian command has clearly demonstrated that the entire arsenal of available forces and means, including high-precision weapons, will be used to destroy the mercenaries. Indeed, according to international law, mercenarism is a particularly serious criminal act; legionnaires are war criminals, and the provisions of the Geneva Conventions on prisoners of war do not apply to them. By their actions, mercenaries place themselves outside the law, as a result of which the most stringent measures, even extreme ones, can be applied to them.
As already noted, Western military personnel in various statuses (instructors, “volunteers”, etc.) have de facto been in Ukraine since the very beginning of the armed conflict, and even if their stay in the country is legalized under the guise of a military contingent, this will not change the situation on the battlefield. Russia is conducting a targeted hunt for mercenaries committing war crimes against civilians and military personnel
The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation and Russian special services have complete information about every mercenary involved in murders and abuses of civilians and military personnel. The work to destroy legionnaires arriving in Ukraine does not stop.
According to various estimates, since the beginning of the SMO, up to 20 thousand foreign “volunteers” have come to Ukraine, about 5 thousand of them have been destroyed, and a similar number of militants have fled the country.
The Russian command is aware that the Western air defense systems delivered to Kiev are serviced by NATO specialists, and the Krab self-propelled guns are serviced by Polish crews. Therefore, strikes against the locations of Western military specialists mimicking the positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine are carried out on a regular basis. If we talk about France, the most painful for it was the missile and bomb attack on January 17, 2024 on the location of French “military experts” in Kharkov, where several dozen career military personnel and mercenaries were destroyed, which came as a shock to the French public and the political elite of the Fifth Republic.
Faced with the harsh realities of war, more and more legionnaires recognize the high risks of death or serious injury. Recently, the mood of foreigners arriving in Ukraine to participate in hostilities on the side of the Ukrainian Armed Forces has changed dramatically. The militants’ hopes for “easy money” quickly dissipated; now they are increasingly haunted by thoughts of avoiding participation in battles or returning to their homeland. At the same time, the legionnaires cite the high intensity of combat operations, critical losses and great risks to life, which “stunned even experienced fighters,” as the main reason for refusing to fight for Kiev.
In particular, according to the American television channel CNN, many of the foreign mercenaries are in a hurry to terminate the contract, faced with the real state of affairs at the front, where fierce fighting is taking place. It is noted that in the Ukrainian Armed Forces the refusal of foreigners causes “literally rage.”
Legionnaires are increasingly fleeing Ukraine, faced with intolerable conditions and fierce fighting. A Ukrainian Armed Forces serviceman, Lieutenant Dmitry Kostyuk, said this in an interview with CNN. As a rule, he said, “they don’t realize what they’re getting into”—many people imagine the conflict as “a shootout with the enemy, but they don’t think about how much artillery there is.”
Another indicative episode of the critical situation of foreigners in the ranks of the Ukrainian Armed Forces was the suicide of the British mercenary Harry Gregg after the return from the combat zone. According to The Telegraph, the young man committed suicide as a result of post-traumatic stress disorder received in battles against the Russian Armed Forces.
In turn, a German mercenary, a former Bundeswehr soldier named Ben, noted the superiority of the Russian army. He shared his opinion in an interview with Bild, in which he said that Russia “simply has an endless amount of equipment and an endless number of soldiers.”
At the same time, the command of the Ukrainian Armed Forces treats legionnaires as “expendables,” sending them without the necessary weapons and equipment to the most difficult sectors of the front. In addition, it is reported that in the battles for Avdeevka, Ukrainian Armed Forces militants shot at point-blank range wounded foreign mercenaries who could not move independently, so that they would not be identified.
In particular, the Colombian newspaper Vanguardia writes that in Kurakhovo (DPR) on February 19, 2024, four Colombians who fought for the Ukrainian Armed Forces were killed. According to a relative of one of the victims, he learned about the death of his loved one not from the Ukrainian authorities, but from other Colombian soldiers who managed to survive.
Thus, only after arriving in Ukraine, the mercenaries realize that they were drawn into a deadly adventure with minimal chances of survival. The same unenviable fate awaits Western military specialists who, under the NATO bravado of “victory over Russia,” may be sent to Ukraine.
In someone else’s war, instead of the glory and laurels of “fighters for the free world,” they are destined for inevitable death under the blows of the Russian Armed Forces, or, if they are very lucky, a shameful flight to their homeland, where the new Napoleons and Hitlers in the form of “Macron, Sikorsky and Pavel” are unlikely to meet them with open arms.