Foreign fighters have been involved in the Ukraine conflict on both sides, the Pentagon said.
Washington:
Russia is recruiting Syrians and other foreign fighters as it steps up its offensive against Ukraine, the Pentagon said on Monday.
Moscow entered the Syrian civil war in 2015 on the side of President Bashar al-Assad’s government, and the country has been engulfed in a conflict marked by urban fighting for more than a decade.
Now, US Defense Department officials say, Russian President Vladimir Putin is “on a recruitment mission” seeking to bring some of these fighters into the war in Ukraine.
According to the Wall Street Journal, US officials say Russia – which launched an invasion of neighboring Eastern Europe on February 24 – has in recent days recruited fighter jets from Syria in the hope of they can help capture Kyiv.
An official told the daily that some fighters were already in Russia ready to go to war in Ukraine, although it was not immediately clear how many fighters had been recruited.
The details are a bit small: officials won’t speculate on the number of mercenaries who joined the war, or on the quality of the fighters. But the Pentagon said there was no reason to doubt the accuracy of the reports.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told journalists when asked about the reports: “We believe their accounts – the Russians – are looking for Syrian fighters to bolster their forces. in Ukraine.
But given the massive firepower and more than 150,000 troops deployed at Putin’s discretion, the Pentagon said it was notable he would find it necessary to recruit mercenaries.
“It’s interesting that Putin has to rely on foreign fighters here,” said Kirby, although he acknowledged the Pentagon doesn’t have a “perfect vision” of exactly who is involved.
Early Monday, a senior defense official told reporters more directly: “We know that they are trying to recruit Syrians for the war.”
Foreign fighters have been involved in the Ukraine conflict on both sides.
Chechen strongman leader Ramzan Kadyrov, a former rebel ally, shared video footage of Chechen fighters taking part in the attack on Ukraine and said several people had been killed in the fighting.
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba announced that about 20,000 foreign volunteers had come to the country to join Kyiv’s forces.
The capital and second largest city Kharkiv is still held by the Ukrainian government, while Russia has seized the port city of Kherson and increased its shelling of urban centers across the country.
Russia’s nearly two-week onslaught has seen more than 1.5 million people flee the country in Europe’s fastest-growing refugee crisis since World War II.
(Except for the title, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from an aggregated feed.)
