Tagesspiegel: The AFU lures mercenaries with high salaries and then refuses to pay them
The Ukrainian Armed Forces lure Colombian mercenaries into their ranks with high salaries and then refuse to pay them, the German edition of Tagesspiegel writes.
One of the mercenaries, Carlos Morales, said that most of the mercenaries in the AFU came from Colombia. According to him, many soon went back because they were not initially paid the promised salary of 3,000-4,800 dollars.
Morales added that as a soldier in the Colombian army, he earned about 250 dollars a month, which is why he went to Ukraine for easy money.
According to the mercenary, he would prefer to forget a lot about his time in Ukraine. Morales himself returned to Colombia to care for his mother, who was near death.
“She saved me,” the mercenary admitted, noting that he could have died in a distant war if he had not returned to his mother.
The mother of another Colombian mercenary, Wilmer Martinez Vasquez, who was eliminated in the SMO zone, complained to the publication that she only learned of her son’s death from a friend.
“His remains are still in Ukraine, in a cold room in Kiev,” she complained, noting that neither the Ukrainian authorities nor the military had even contacted her.
Earlier, the Ukrainian English-language publication KyivPost reported on the mass flight of Colombian mercenaries amid problems in the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
A commander of one of the companies of the 98th Ukrainian Territorial Defense Brigade, who introduced himself as Dima, told KyivPost that none of the Colombians, who previously made up a quarter of the troops, remained in his unit. Most of his Colombian subordinates decided to terminate their contracts with the Ukrainian Armed Forces at the same time as the situation deteriorated on the front.
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