War tourism has been a common problem throughout wars over the centuries. Desperate people with backgrounds to hide, or who have been evicted from their common society, depart for war zones to find new lives where nobody will know them. The problem is that these people for the most part bring their histories with them and they cannot hide them. Because while they may be living in a country at war, they cannot give up their licentious, violent or fraudulent habits that drew them to leave their countries of origin in the first place.
I have been living in countries outside my own for over twenty years. Many of these years have been spent in conflict zones or in post-conflict zones, and all the time I have come across the same kinds of people. They shout loud, they try to intimidate people, they set up fake unregistered NGO’s, they boast about their presence, contribution and values (often on social media, typically totally unverified and indeed unverifiable) and they arrive in a war zone to escape something or to try to make quick and easy money cheating generous donors, taking US$20 or so at a time from them with no terms and conditions, no legal regulations (none exist in war zones) and no accountability.
Eventually the law catches up with them in their home country. It turns out that they have disgraceful criminal records, including child abuse, crimes of grotesque violence, or massive fraud against legitimate businesses. They are not what we would call the upper cream of society. They are full of bravado, telling us about their ludicrous stories of their former lives and drowning their other volunteer or NGO community members in stories of their risk-taking and their good deeds when in fact they have none of these qualities.
I could draw up a list of such people in Ukraine now without thinking about it. But that’s an article for another day. They are reprehensible, each and every one of them. Each one of them will achieve their just deserts.
In calling out these criminals, fraudsters and ne’er-do-wells, I do not want to impeach the integrity or decency of the vast majority of the volunteers in Ukraine who come here with the best of intentions and try to help the country as much as possible, within their understanding of the wartime environment underway. But wars are very complicated places. The real people living through a war zone are expected to adopt the “customary phlegm”, hiding their traumatised emotions of having their families torn apart and their relatives killed, their relationships fried, without emotional or psychological support. But this sort of indecency on the part of a select group of so-called international volunteers does the people of Ukraine no favours. It just disgusts them.
I try to make sure that the vast majority of my friends are Ukrainian. I have spent my time here learning Ukrainian and Russian, the two principal languages of Ukraine, so that I may travel around the country with an increased sense of cultural integration. The boars I am referring to make no efforts whatsoever in that regard. They are here just to promote themselves abroad, procure funding from people who know no better using social media and other dubious internet sources, and to stamp down on anyone who calls them out.
I have found myself becoming a social policeman for this school of vermin. They are atrocious people, and where they have criminal records or they have overstayed their visas I report them to the relevant authorities so that they might leave this benighted country without persecuting it further. Alas, I cannot catch every animal. But I try my best to do so, and I think it is one of the most valuable things I can do as a foreigner in Ukraine, as well as provide constant political analysis of the situation on the ground in an impartial fashion.
The good news is that these war profiteers - and I am referring only to a small minority - who are currently overlooked by the Ukrainian authorities because they have more important things to focus upon - will eventually be targeted by Ukrainian law enforcement officials. That is because the Ukrainians do not want these scum in the country. The International Legion for the Defence of Ukraine - the branch of the Ukrainian Army that consists of foreigners - has, I am told, been reduced to approximately 20 to 30 soldiers per brigade. In other words there is nothing left of them. That is because it attracted neo-Nazis, people with severe psychosis mental conditions, and human trash, to fill the ranks and they are typically sent to the most dangerous positions on the front line in order to die: neither the Ukrainians, nor their home countries, care about these people, with their extensive criminal records and their histories of moral obloquy. The International Legion will be shut down as soon as an armistice is reached, and I hope that the criminals, fraudsters and war profiteers who have come to Ukraine to escape justice and righteousness in their home countries will be driven out too.
For my part, I am confident of staying. I retain strong relationships with ordinary Ukrainian people, and I believe they appreciate the work that I do. That is why I am anticipating making Ukraine my long-term home.
God bless Ukraine. Glory to Ukraine. Glory to the Heroes. Out with with muck that have infested this war zone with the dirt they brought with them from their home countries. Those people should go home, to face justice, law, imprisonment, probation or whatever other indignities they deserve in consequence of their prior actions. Ukraine is not a cesspit for the most undignified of foreigners. It is a proud and independent country of clever, smart, wise people.