Daniela Arias is an MA student in the Department of Russian and Slavic Studies at NYU.
This is Part I in a two-part series. Part II will appear next week.
“In the race of unrestrained violence, symbols are the only winners.” At the end of last year, I read this sentence in the book En la línea cero todos somos fantasmas (At Line Zero, We Are All Ghosts, 2025) by Colombian narrative journalist G. Jaramillo Rojas. The author recounts several stories of Colombian soldiers, numbering about a thousand, who traveled to fight for Ukraine after learning that enlisting could provide them with a level of income difficult to obtain in their home country.
At around the same time, I began to see frequent posts in the Facebook group “Colombians in Russia,” which I have followed since I studied in Moscow from 2019 to 2022. People were asking for help in finding information about their relatives, who had said they were fighting in Russia’s army and had been missing for months. Articles about Colombian participation in Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine, as well as about recruitment networks, also began to appear in the well-known Colombian newspaper El Espectador.
I decided to consult Hugo Caro, a journalist in El Espectador’s International section, to gather information for a piece in English shedding light on the situation of Colombians fighting in the Ukraine-Russia war. He provided valuable insights and referred me to relevant reports and articles that El Espectador has published since November 2025. In addition to that material, I reference here Jaramillo’s book and the documentary Detrás de la guerra (Behind the War, 2025), directed and produced by war correspondent and David Beriain International Journalism Award winner Catalina Gómez Ángel.
Beyond reporting on this issue, which affects Colombia and other countries in the Global South, this piece is motivated by a desire to understand why and how Colombians have become involved in Russia’s war against Ukraine. What does this alarming situation reveal about Colombia’s reality, about this war with its international repercussions, and about other global-scale conflicts taking place at this moment?
Detrás de la guerra brings together the stories of several Colombians with whom Catalina Gómez spent several months in Ukraine. They shared details of their lives and their work in the Ukrainian army, as well as the reasons they enlisted. Initially, it was common to see retired professional soldiers joining the Ukrainian armed forces. Many felt they still had the ability to fight and were motivated by the salaries they could earn in Ukraine, which are around 12 million COP (approximately 3,200 USD). Given that veterans’ pensions in Colombia are extremely low, he primary motivation was often financial. For others, the battlefield is “the world where they grew up and learned to survive.”
In recent years, former members of the Colombian police or of INPEC (the National Penitentiary and Prison Institute) have also joined the Ukrainian army—partly due to videos from the front lines posted on TikTok. Also entering the fray are people without formal military training who worked as bodyguards or in security, along with former members of the FARC guerrilla and paramilitary groups.
As Gómez points out, one of the main reasons the mercenary business has expanded worldwide is that mercenary casualties carry a lower social and political cost for employer countries than those involving their own national soldiers. Colombians, for example, are hired specifically as infantry—that is, for hand-to-hand combat. This is the type of training many of them received in Colombia to fight guerrilla groups; some even told the reporter they are internationally recognized for their skills in these roles. However, once they arrive in Ukraine, they find themselves in a war whose scale and military technology are vastly different from what they came to know at home.
Detrás de una guerra shows that many fighters come from remote areas of Colombia where armed conflict persists. It is in these regions where violence has intensified following failures in the implementation of the 2016 peace agreement between Colombia’s Government under then-President Juan Manuel Santos and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC-EP). Some soldiers even stated that they feel safer in Ukraine than in Colombia. In an interview, Gómez stated, “I was covering the war in Ukraine, but I was also covering the war in Colombia that has caused us so much pain—[this is] a country that has been at war for 60 years and is now exporting combatants.”
The factors described above are not, however, the only ones to consider, as the participation of Colombians in the Russian and Ukrainian armies has multiple dimensions. A key issue is the glorification of military life and armed conflict. Some fight because they find meaning in that kind of work and even say they enjoy it. According to Gómez, “Our soldiers were trained for war from a very young age and also become unemployed at a very young age. They see Ukraine as an opportunity not only for financial gain but also for a sense of purpose.” Many feel they have found an identity and are fighting for a just cause. They say they have a duty and a commitment to defend Ukrainians from Russian forces and that, in Ukraine, they have come to understand “what it really means to be a patriot.” Furthermore, it is in Ukraine that they have received recognition and gratitude missing in their own country.
Like Gómez, Jaramillo has gathered many testimonies from Colombian fighters for his chronicles. Baruc, a 21-year-old campesino from a small rural town, told him that he missed Colombia but felt “more patriotism in front of the Ukrainian flag.” A soldier nicknamed Papurri said he saw his work as a calling: “It has nothing to do with killing, but with wanting to help. Legionnaires like us who fight for Ukraine are appreciated here.” Another, nicknamed Sagitario, stated: “At first, I was motivated by the money. Where can you earn twelve million pesos in Colombia?” He also sought to clarify for Jaramillo what his role in the war was: “I’m a legionnaire, not a mercenary. Legionnaires serve in a country’s army, while mercenaries work for private armies. It’s disrespectful for people abroad to call us mercenaries when here we’re considered heroes.”
The glorification of war and nationalist sentiments also appears in these interviews. Sagitario, for instance, says that “war is a matter of habit.” Those who enlist in the Russian and Ukrainian armies find that, in Jaramillo’s words, “dying for one’s country carries enormous heroic value” and represents a powerful symbolic triumph. For historical reasons, this emphasis on national identity is something that “doesn’t really happen” in Colombia—at least, not in the same way.
As Gómez’s work already makes clear, the Colombian conflict has had a significant impact on the decision of many Colombians to fight in foreign wars. One key difference between their participation in places like Haiti, Sudan, or Yemen versus Ukraine is that, in Ukraine, they sign official contracts with the army. They can move freely within the country and enter and leave legally. The Ukrainian National Guard has allowed foreign citizens to enlist voluntarily through legal channels. To be assigned a position, they need simply register on the relevant website, find their own way to Ukraine, and report for duty. The National Guard has also declared that it does not make payments to private security companies. In other countries, the opposite is true, which is why Colombians there cannot speak as openly as those interviewed by Gómez and Jaramillo.
