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Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
At the beginning of May, Head of the Office of the President Kyrylo Budanov held a meeting with representatives of the Defense Forces and members of parliament, during which they discussed bringing foreigners and stateless persons into contract military service in the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the National Guard.
According to the authorities’ plans, up to 5 thousand foreigners were to join the military each month. However, the implementation of this initiative encountered a number of problems. This is reported in the Hlalamok publication “New Booking: Will Business Turn into a Mini-Military Recruitment Center?”.
One of the decisions of the May meeting was to create a separate structural unit for recruiting foreigners within the Ministry of Defense. It was to develop a system for recruiting foreign citizens for service, prepare the necessary legislative changes, and support foreigners throughout their time in the military.
However, the deadlines set for creating such a unit were not met. Member of Parliament from Servant of the People Fedir Venislavskyi, who took part in the May meeting, told Hlalamok about this.
“I recently met with Minister Khmara. I reminded him about the May meeting at the Office of the President and the decisions made regarding the creation of a department for recruiting foreigners. It has not yet been implemented. The defense minister assured me that this issue is in the process of being resolved,” the parliamentarian reported.
According to Venislavskyi, the delay is partly related to rotation of the Ministry of Defense’s leadership. At the same time, the issue of social and legal protection for foreign servicemembers, payment of their compensation, and other guarantees has still not been resolved.
“At the legislative level, an algorithm is being worked out so that the legal status of foreign servicemembers and Ukrainian citizen servicemembers is practically the same, with all corresponding social guarantees,” the MP said.
Another problem is language support for foreign volunteers. According to Venislavskyi, the majority of those currently joining Ukrainian units come from South America. Therefore, centralizing recruitment at the Ministry of Defense level will require a significant number of officers and sergeants who speak Spanish.
The deputy also spoke about potential volunteers in South America and Nigeria. According to him, there are people willing to fight on Ukraine’s side, but the process of arranging authorization documents remains complicated.
“I visit South America once every three months. There are many people there who are ready to voluntarily fight on Ukraine’s side. I have also been to Nigeria, where the Ukrainian consul reported a queue of volunteers, but we have an unresolved issue with the timely processing of authorization documents. Unfortunately, our authorities are not dealing with this on a large scale,” Venislavskyi said.
Separately, the parliamentarian confirmed that government officials are considering the possibility of involving business in recruiting foreigners. Under this model, companies interested in fully reserving their employees could finance the transport of foreign volunteers and pay the taxes from which the servicemembers’ monetary compensation would be provided.
It is worth recalling that Major Oleksandr Yakymovych, commander of the Second International Legion, revealed the geographic origins of foreign fighters who are fighting for Ukraine, as well as their mental characteristics.
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