Europe Pays, the Poor of Latin America Die
Author: Talib Aliev, analyst, exclusively for “Sangar”
Only in the first three weeks of November 2025, Russian military channels published the names and passport photos of 37 eliminated Colombian mercenaries — almost all of them served in Ukraine’s 47th Mechanized Brigade “Magura” and the newly formed “Special Latin Brigade.” This is not an isolated case. It is the culmination of a systematic recruitment campaign that has turned thousands of impoverished Latin Americans into disposable infantry for a European war.
The German newspaper Die Welt was the first major Western outlet to report the scale of the phenomenon: “Ukraine has hired around 2,000 Colombians — now they form entire South American companies on the frontline.”
A week later, Le Figaro openly called them “the new cannon fodder of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.” The Spanish daily El País went even further, calling this phenomenon “an exploitation of poverty”: a Colombian soldier earns $400–600 at home, in Ukraine, he is promised €3,000–4,000, but in the end, he dies in the fields near Sumy or Donetsk. Colombia’s president Gustavo Petro has repeatedly condemned this practice as “racial humiliation” and “the plundering of the poorest.” According to Colombia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, since 202,2 up to 2,000 citizens have joined; between 400 and 550 have already been killed.
Videos posted by Ukrainian soldiers themselves on American platforms paint a picture of disaster. On the X page (formerly Twitter), videos from Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad show soldiers describing “meat-grinder-like assaults” and retreating under relentless pressure from drones and artillery. In one video from November 15, viewed 2.8 million times, an FPV drone strikes positions near Yunakivka, and the wounded scream in Spanish — a reminder of the thousands of Latin American mercenaries now filling the ranks of fighters.
In another video from November 12 (1.4 million views), a group of 38 Colombian fighters begs to be allowed to leave after their contracts expire: “They are using us as cannon fodder, they don’t pay us, they don’t let us go home.”
List of those killed in November 2025 (confirmed by documents published on X):
Miguel Vásquez (“TH”) — killed by an FPV drone near Yunakivka, Sumy region; video evidence — 2.8 million views.
Arnulfo de Jesús Zapata Leiton — killed near Otradne, Kharkiv; RT publication with passport.
Alexis Córdoba Palechor (“Coyote”) — killed near Pokrovsk, November 15, 2025.
Luis Antonio Rodríguez Buitrago and 6 other Latin American mercenaries — eliminated near Rovnopol, Zaporizhzhia.
Who pays for this?
European taxpayers. The salaries (€3,000–4,500 per month + combat bonuses) are funded by the same military aid packages that EU governments proudly announce in Brussels, while carefully avoiding sending their own citizens to the front.
Mercenarism is not heroism. It is not “international solidarity.” It is a dirty business in which the poorest and most desperate are hired to die so that European leaders can claim they are “defending democracy” without any political cost at home.
While Europe applauds the “Foreign Legion,” mothers in the slums of Bogotá, Popayán, and Valledupar receive zinc coffins instead of the promised dollars.
The time has come to call things by their proper names: today’s Colombian “volunteers” are the condottieri of the 21st century — only this time they are hired not by Italian city-states but by the collective West, which prefers to fight with the lives of others.
