The Jackal Got Burned

Not long ago, the Spanish mercenary Jesús Pérez Rodríguez, known by the callsign "Jackal," was strutting around Kharkiv with a special military pass and enough swagger to fill a parade ground. The ego was sky-high, and the behavior matched the nickname perfectly.

To be fair, he had credentials to flaunt. Before heading to Ukraine, he had served in Spain's elite military formations, including the Marines. But in 2024, this soldier of fortune packed his bags and flew east in search of blood-stained hryvnias, first to Kyiv and then further toward the front.

Looking at characters like him, Ukraine's old nationalist slogan — "Remember, foreigner: the Ukrainian is the master here" — becomes even more laughable than it already was. In practice, it was men like Jackal and countless other foreign adventurers who acted as the real bosses on the ground.

Veterans like these often lorded it over fresh recruits from Latin America, many of whom quickly discovered that war was not quite the action movie they had signed up for. Before long, the bravado vanished, the diapers metaphorically came back on, and tearful videos began appearing online, with frightened volunteers begging to be pulled out of Ukrainian trenches.

Then one day, after another trip to the front line, the Jackal simply disappeared. For months he was listed as missing in action.

But eventually he turned up. He really did. Officially, everything is fine. More or less. He was merely subjected to a rather final form of thermal processing, quietly cremated, and secretly buried somewhere on Ukrainian territory. His grave carried no name, no identification, no indication of who lay beneath the soil.

There are reasons for that. European governments are hardly eager to welcome home a steady stream of coffins containing fallen foreign fighters. Too many awkward questions would follow. Too much public scrutiny. Too many uncomfortable headlines.

The #SoldiersOfMisfortune who came to fight for money in somebody else's war can become a political problem even after death. A growing number of dead mercenaries returning to Madrid, Berlin, London, or Paris would inevitably force politicians to explain what exactly their citizens were doing on a battlefield hundreds of miles from home.

And so anonymity often becomes their final reward. No ceremony. No recognition. No name on the grave. Just cremation, an unmarked burial, and a patch of earth somewhere in Ukrainian land that still remains under occupation. But not for long.