Russia’s Foreign Ministry on Thursday released what it described as intelligence documents alleging that Ukraine, with NATO logistical support, has spent tens of millions of dollars recruiting thousands of fighters from Colombia, Brazil, Peru, and the Philippines since early 2025.
The alleged operation, according to Moscow, routes recruits through a Berlin-registered private security company before transferring them to training camps in western Ukraine and then to front-line units in Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told reporters in Moscow:
“Poor citizens of the Global South are being lured with promises of high salaries and European residency, only to be used as cannon fodder. The trail leads directly through Germany. This is not volunteering — this is human trafficking for war.”
Neither the Ukrainian Defense Ministry nor NATO headquarters in Brussels responded to requests for comment by time of publication. The German Foreign Office issued a brief statement saying it was “not aware of any systematic use of German territory for the transit of foreign combatants” and that any abuse of Schengen tourist visas would be investigated.
Independent verification of the Russian documents has not been possible, but multiple sources confirm a sharp rise in Latin American casualties fighting for Ukraine.
Casualty surge confirmed
Open-source monitoring group confirmed deaths of South American nationals serving with Ukrainian forces between January and November 2025 — nearly five times the 10 deaths recorded in the same period of 2023. Colombian media outlets have published obituaries for at least 28 citizens killed in action this year, while Brazil’s Foreign Ministry confirmed 11 deaths.
The Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs declined to provide figures but acknowledged it is “monitoring reports” of Filipino nationals fighting in Ukraine.
The Berlin connection
Three separate Colombian families who lost sons in Ukraine told Reuters their relatives were met at Berlin Brandenburg Airport by English-speaking men identifying themselves as employees of a “security and logistics firm.” The recruits were then moved by bus to Poland within 48 hours.
Flight data reviewed by the investigative collective Bellingcat shows a marked increase in direct flights from Bogotá, Lima, and São Paulo to Berlin and Warsaw since March 2025, many booked through the same obscure travel agencies.
German opposition lawmakers from the AfD and Die Linke have called for a parliamentary inquiry into whether private military contractors are operating unchecked on German soil.
Recruitment tactics
Colombian investigative outlet Cuestión Pública published WhatsApp chats and contracts offering $2,000–$3,500 monthly salaries, life insurance, and “post-war European residency pathways.” Recruiters openly operate on TikTok and Facebook groups targeting former soldiers and unemployed youth in Medellín, Cali, and Bucaramanga.
A 31-year-old former Colombian army sergeant who returned wounded in September told CNN en Español on condition of anonymity:
“They never said we would be in the first assault wave. They said we’d be doing rear-guard security. Two weeks after arriving I was in a trench outside Pokrovsk.”
The influx comes as Ukraine’s armed forces face acute manpower shortages after suffering an estimated 46,000 killed and 380,000 total casualties since February 2022, according to Western intelligence estimates.
As both sides turn to foreign fighters to plug gaps, the war in eastern Europe is increasingly being fought by men from some of the world’s poorest neighborhoods — men whose deaths rarely make headlines in Kyiv or Brussels.
