The International Legion for the Defence of Ukraine is a branch of the Ukrainian Armed Forces established in 2022, upon the second Russian invasion of Ukraine, to recruit foreigners to fight for the Ukrainian Armed Forces. The units comprising the International Legion are mostly infantry soldiers: that is to say, they are fighting on the front line from trenches and in forests. Initially they were given six weeks’ training, and paid the same as soldiers from the Ukrainian Armed Forces: relatively generous salaries (by Ukrainian standards) of US$3,300 a month for what are called “combat operations”, U$1,200 a month for relatively safe front line duties behind the so-called “Zero Line” (the actual front where there is face-to-face combat with Russians), and US$700 a month for rear duties. They were supposed not to have a criminal record in any country, but this rule was never enforced and in practice the International Legion was a mixed bag of civilians and ex-military forces, some of whom were highly professional and some of whom were far less so. At its height, it is estimated that there were as many as 20,000 members of the International Legion; now, it has been estimated, there are only a few hundred left.
Standards have dropped dramatically. The six weeks’ training has been reduced to seven to ten days before deployment to the front line. Troops are sent out to battle with minimal fitness training (you cannot become fit enough for combat duties in a mere ten days) and without having fired a single rifle from the AK-47 rifle you are given. The first time you get to fire a gun is in battle. Members of the International Legion started to desert en masse as they realised the dangers they were facing fighting the Russian Armed Forces. Originally the contracts signed by members of there Legion allowed them to quit at any time except when on combat duties; but in practice a lot of soldiers simply went AWOL and sneaked out of the country because their duties were so dangerous. The situation became so critical that in May 2024 the Ukrainian Armed Forces introduced a new rule that members of the Legion had to commit for a minimum of six months; but this didn’t seem to help the dramatic decline in numbers joining the Legion and the dramatic numbers deserting. They were sent to some of the most dangerous positions. No members of the Legion are officers; all the officers are Ukrainian and some of them treated the foreign soldiers well, some not so well.
Stories also began to leak out about the poor quality of medical treatment and evacuation that undoubtedly exist for all soldiers on the front line. Zero Line positions are often 5 to 7 kilometres (or more - reports exist of their being up to 20 kilometres’ walk) and therefore if you became seriously injured, you would have to wait for soldiers to carry you on stretchers for many hours. The walk to the road, where an ambulance may or may not be waiting for you (there is a critical shortage of ambulances; ambulances donated from the West seldom seem to go get through to the front line) and in the meantime the tourniquet applied to your limb might result in amputation - tourniquets should be applied for an absolute maximum of six hours (two hours is good practice). So evacuation times for the injured might be several days. Because Russian drones have spotted the evacuation routes both on foot and on road, evacuation was and remains extremely dangerous and the soldiers undertaking the evacuation, as well as the wounded soldier, and the ambulance, may all be the subject of Russian drone strikes. Russian drone technology on the front is by all accounts becoming increasingly sophisticated, with high speed drones and armour piercing munitions.
All of these things made the Legion run away and there are now accounts of the individual International Legion battalions having as few as 20 or 30 members. In the meantime the training conditions became increasingly chaotic, with the soldiers fighting each other, taking drugs or drinking. Foreigners with Nazi tattoos were freely admitted; the Ukrainian Armed Forces simply need men and would take anyone. Fitness tests were also reduced, and psychological examinations reduced virtually to zero. Many prospective members of the International Legion, having commenced training, never completed it or refused to sign contracts to join units having completed the training. So now we are down to a situation in which the International Legion is in some disrepute, and it is little wonder the its numbers have dropped so much.
This is not the official government line, of course. We have no idea how many members of the International Legion have died in combat, because their bodies are often never recovered if they die on the battlefield. The Ukrainian government keeps these figures strictly confidential; but one source informed us that the typical mortality rate of members of the International Legion in late 2024 was as little as six months; in early 2025 another source said it might be as little as two months. Those without extensive military training in their own countries, combat experience, and high levels of fitness, would head off to the front line and never be seen again. In the meantime soldiers suspected of being susceptible to leave or desert have had payment of their wages delayed, in many cases for several months, as an incentive for them to keep fighting and not to quit. Understandably this has caused much resentment. We know of stories of soldiers that quit after not being paid sums as high as US$8,000 (a fortune for Ukraine) and once these stories become well-known on social media, this increases the reluctance to sign up.
The Guardian newspaper has recently reported that the Azov Brigade, a regular battalion in the Ukrainian Armed Forces composed of Ukrainian soldiers, has begun recruiting English-speaking foreigners, which is problematic due to a lack of communication ability with officers; but in reality regular brigades of the Ukrainian Armed Forces have been recruiting foreigners quietly since at least mid-2024. The salaries have crept up as the dangers have become more obvious; we have no reliable data on how much you may be paid but it is negotiable. We have heard of people being paid between US$4,500 and US$6,000 per month (or being promised these sums), depending on experience, to join regular units of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Unfortunately these units operate in just as dangerous conditions as the International Legion, and mortality rates must be presumed to be the same, at least for the uninitiated in matters military.
While many of the foreign soldiers fighting for the International Legion or in regular units of the International Legion are undeniably brave, keeping going back for further tours of duty, the conditions on the front line are extremely difficult, particularly in winter when temperatures fall far below zero, vehicle quality is low (they often break down and civilian vehicles are being used for military purposes) and as was always the case, foreign soldiers have to buy their own body armour and other essential equipment out of their own wages. Also, if they want to carry a weapon other than the clumsy and inaccurate Kalashnikov AK-47 (a Soviet-era assault rifle with a heavy kickback that it is very difficult to fire accurately without significant training and experience) then they have to buy them from the Ukrainian Armed Forces and give them back (without reimbursement) at the end of their tours of duty. So there is a sense that foreign soldiers are being mistreated.
All this goes to show the tremendous strain the Ukrainian Armed Forces as a whole are under, particularly in the 2024/2025 winter fighting season which is proving particularly ferocious. The Ukrainian Armed Forces are willing to take anyone, under any conditions, because Ukraine has run out of men who are willing to fight and the additional conscription drive introduced in May 2024, reducing the conscription age from 27 to 25 and introducing swinging penalties for those who fail to register for conscription, has left the remaining Ukrainian men who do not want to fight hiding at home and away from the conscription units that conscript people walking down the street or driving their cars, taking them directly to training camps without an opportunity even to go home to say goodbye to their families first and then even taking their mobile telephones from them. It emphasises the struggle the Ukrainians face under relentless attacks from waves of troops of the Russian Armed Forces, who are slowly but surely gaining territory in the East through “meat grinder” tactics of sending wave after wave of troops forward towards Ukrainian positions and telling them not to come back alive. The cost in human lives for the Russians is estimated as triple that for Ukraine; but for Russia, with its large population and a totalitarian system of government in which stories of the horrors of the front line rarely return to civilians in Russia, the massive loss of life is a price they seemingly are able to continue to bare.
It also places in question the wisdom of recruiting foreign fighters, who may or may not have prior military experience or the right mentality to fight, into front line positions in a huge territory and along a 1,000 kilometre frontline in territory they barely know. Nobody will ever really know how effective the International Legion has been, but surely amalgamation of foreign soldiers into the Ukrainian Armed Forces is an overwhelming task. The Russians have done the same with North Korean troops, and by all accounts it has been a disaster for them, those troops being massacred in large numbers.
The some 500 members of the International Legion of Ukraine that are left, on frontline duties, are some of the strongest and most hardcore of the foreigners who came to fight for Ukraine. Their numbers will doubtless dwindle ever further as the conditions become increasingly difficult during the 2024/2025 fighting season, and nobody will ever ultimately know how many have died. By the way, the estimate of 500 includes a number of Spanish-speakers recruited from Latin America and attracted by high wages compared to their countries of origin. We pay tribute to all the members of the International Legion who have died or disappeared on the front line in Ukraine, fighting for Europe’s freedom. We also question the capability of foreign soldiers any further to make a significant difference to the war’s outcome, faced with a Russian Army estimated at some 1.2 million men stationed along the front line. May this war end soon with all God’s speed, as the death rates are atrocious, families are missing their loved ones, and the task of finally accounting for all the dead once the war is over will be an enormous one. In the meantime, the soldiers on the frontline of Ukraine, Ukrainian and foreigners, are exhausted. With a change of government in the United States, some sort of resolution of this terrible war must be found.