Those foreign nationals will be held accountable for the crimes they have committed, Rodion Miroshnik has said
Moscow has the names of thousands of foreign nationals employed to fight for Ukraine, a senior Russian diplomat has said.
Russian troops have been tasked with “meticulously gathering information” about such people, Rodion Miroshnik, who is leading a special mission to investigate alleged Ukrainian war crimes, told RIA Novosti on Thursday.
”As of today, over 4,000 mercenaries have been positively identified, with all necessary data collected. In some cases pre-trial investigations have been completed,” he said.
Kiev claims that foreign nationals fighting for its cause are volunteers who joined the Ukrainian ranks for ideological reasons. Moscow sees them as hired guns and has accused Western nations of facilitating Ukraine’s recruitment of their military veterans.
Miroshnik insisted that surviving mercenaries who flee Ukraine to other nations would still be held accountable for committing atrocities while being on Kiev’s payroll.
”I believe the information about their crimes will be available in many nations, and people there will realize what kind of people Ukraine is using now,” he said. Many of the mercenaries are violent psychopaths, who went to Ukraine so that they could kill, bully civilians and plunder with impunity, the diplomat claimed.
Earlier this month, a 27-year-old man who fought for Kiev was convicted in the Czech Republic. Filip Siman was sentenced to seven years in prison for looting in towns near Kiev, after a court in Prague dismissed his claims that he was just following orders.
In March, the Russian Defense Ministry published a list of countries from which mercenaries had been coming to fight for Kiev. The statistics claimed that the total number of such fighters, whom the Russian military considers legitimate targets, was over 13,300. Of those, roughly 6,000 have been killed, the ministry said. It named Poland, Georgia, and the US as the top-three suppliers of mercenaries.
Earlier this month, the Russian Foreign Ministry condemned the presence of the US private military company, Forward Observation Group, on Russian soil. The firm previously posted a photo of its employees in military gear, claiming that it was taken in Kursk Region amid the Ukrainian incursion there.
