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Fighters With Ukraine's Foreign Legion Are Being Asked To Sign Indefinite Contracts. Some Have Refused - The Economist
Fighters With Ukraine's Foreign Legion Are Being Asked To Sign Indefinite Contracts. Some Have Refused - The Economist
EYEWITNESS
Priday is 6’3” and powerfully built with green eyes and a crew-cut. Zelensky’s
plea caught his attention: here was a chance to instruct people who now
needed his first-aid skills more than ever. He had been following the
Russian troop manoeuvres on the Ukrainian border for months. “Whenever
you see me on my phone, I’m not on social media,” he said. “I’m scrolling
through the news. My partner hates it. I’m always asking her, ‘Have you seen
this? Have you seen this?’” Priday didn’t think that Putin’s build-up of troops
was a bluff. “It didn’t make sense if it was all a ploy,” he said. “It’s too
expensive to keep that much equipment there for so long.” So when Russia
finally invaded Ukraine on February 24th, Priday was already mentally
prepared for his next move.
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A few days later Priday informed his school that he was taking three weeks
off and told his fiancée he was heading to Ukraine: “She was sad, but she
understood what it was that I needed to do.” Social-media posts suggested
that anyone interested in helping the war effort should contact the
Ukrainian embassy in their home country. His goal, Priday told diplomats in
London, was to give Ukrainians basic medical training, focusing his efforts
on “as many women, children and disabled people as possible”. “I have no
interest in being a hero or dying,” he told the embassy staff. “My heart goes
out to the people. And I want to help.” On March 2nd he left for Krakow in
Poland on a one-way ticket.
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The two vans were waved through each of the six checkpoints they passed.
The volunteers were dropped off at a Ukrainian army base, a collection of
yellow buildings with red tiled roofs, just before 3am. They were led inside
one of the buildings to a room with no heating and 25 beds without sheets.
The Ukrainians checked everyone’s passports and turned away one
prospective volunteer, a Russian who worked in Dublin. He was told,
according to Priday, that there was “no way” he could sign up.
Priday was surprised by the naivety of those eager to fight. Some volunteers
likened the Ukrainian struggle to that of the Kurds in Iraq against Islamic
State, but he knew how the Russians were a different kind of enemy. “This is
nothing like fighting terrorists,” Priday tried to explain to other recruits.
“You’re fighting a real country, with a real army, with a real navy, with
special forces and heavy weaponry and superb tactical capabilities. And it’s
all being conducted by a crazy man.” As he said to his fellow volunteers, no
one seemed to have thought through what would happen if a foreigner like
Priday – a nato veteran – were to be captured by the Russians. “Prisoners
like me would be a gold mine for Russian propaganda,” Priday said.
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Two other sources confirmed to 1843 magazine that the contract binds
volunteers to serve for an indefinite length of time. (By way of comparison,
the French Foreign Legion requires people to sign up for five years in the
first instance.) None of the volunteers 1843 magazine spoke to had been told
about the terms of contract before they made the crossing into Ukraine. A
source in the Ukrainian ministry of defence also told 1843 magazine that the
contract was for an unlimited period. He said that, in practice, those who no
longer wished to fight could apply for a discharge and were unlikely to be
refused. Between 20 and 30 volunteers have already been allowed to leave
after signing on. The ministry of defence spokesman denied that the
contract requires volunteers to sign on indefinitely but refused to share a
copy.
The terms of the contract are clearly giving some people pause. A number of
would-be volunteers in Lviv in western Ukraine, interviewed by 1843
magazine, said they would like to help the war effort but are wary of signing
the document. They are now looking for other ways to offer assistance.
Priday implored the other volunteers not to sign. “I was trying to explain to
them what martial law really means – and that it’s up to Ukraine to decide
when it ends. It can be extended and extended. But no one at the base was
explaining this to the volunteers. They just kept reiterating that you were
getting paid for your services.”
“To me it’s deceiving,” Priday said. “They’re selling you a dream – You can
help the Ukrainian people! – but then they’re throwing you into the worst
place possible in a war zone.” Priday refused to sign and said he was
immediately asked to leave the barracks. He was still able to convince nearly
20 aspiring volunteers not to sign the contract, he claims.
One foreigner who did sign was a 21-year old from Britain with no military
experience. He told Priday he’d been working dead-end jobs for years and
his frustration had mounted and mounted. He flew to Poland without
telling his housemates or his parents: no one in Britain knew that he had
gone. Priday felt like the man was signing his “death warrant”. (The man has
subsequently returned from Ukraine.)
Less than ten hours after he’d entered Ukraine, Priday left the camp and
hitchhiked back to the border. The last thing he saw in the barracks was a
group of young men in the bathroom lining up to shave: members of the
foreign legion are prohibited from having beards.
V olunteers are still flocking to fight. A blazing red neon sign slung
across the roof of the Cicada Hotel announces that it is open 24
hours a day. The gravel car park has become a staging ground for
chancers, mercenaries, volunteers, drifters, missionaries, legionnaires,
spies and swindlers who, at any hour of the day, are looking for some form
of transport – buses, vans, cars – to whisk them across the border. Eighteen-
wheelers are parked next to Volkswagens with diplomatic plates and Red
Cross vehicles loaded with medical supplies. A green van, a former food
truck that still bears the words “DELICIOUS FOOD” in faded Cyrillic
characters, has been renovated to become a troop carrier. A sign reading
“FOREIGN LEGION” is taped to the windshield. Volunteers sleep inside cars,
engines running to keep the occupants warm.
On any given night you can meet French foreign legionnaires, Baltic ex-
servicemen and American gun-nuts raised on “Rambo” and “Top Gun”
hankering for a shot at their old Cold War foe. A bulked-up former pilot from
Louisiana who did four tours in Afghanistan he sold his pick-up truck to
fund his trip to Ukraine. “I’m just here to shoot,” he said with a grin. There
are Balkan fighters in cargo pants; German hipsters-turned-gonzo
humanitarians; Ukrainian military attachés with black pistols holstered
into their jeans; Mormons from Utah; and a middle-aged Norwegian woman
determined to ease the burden on Ukrainian mothers and take up a
Kalashnikov in the spirit of solidarity.
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A Lithuanian volunteer seasoned in anti-tank warfare wears a sweatshirt
that reads, in blue-and-yellow letters “Русский военный корабль, иди
нахуй” (“Russian Warship, Go Fuck Yourself”), the response of the
Ukrainian soldiers stationed on Snake Island in the Black Sea when a
Russian naval vessel ordered them, hours into the invasion, to lay down
their arms. The Lithuanian’s friends had given him the sweatshirt as a
going-away present. He took out his phone and scrolled to a photo of a
tattoo of a crusader on horseback that he recently had emblazoned across
his chest. “I worry that if Putin conquers Ukraine, he will turn to Lithuania
next,” he told me. “So I’m here fighting for my own country as much as I am
for Ukraine.”
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