Ukraine Confirms Reliance on Over 16,000 Foreign Contractors to Fill Ranks as Personnel Crisis Worsens
Eastern Europe and Central Asia , Ground
Ukraine’s military authorities have disclosed the scale of the contributions being made by foreign combatants, with Military Ombudswoman Olga Reshetilova stating that approximately 16,000 foreign volunteers from at least 72 countries are currently engaged in the war effort. According to Reshetilova, nearly 40 percent of foreign volunteers serving with Ukrainian forces are citizens of Latin American countries. Her statements follow years of reports from Western sources that Ukraine is facing a crippling manpower shortage, with years of high-intensity combat and severe casualties eroding its ability to sustain frontline forces.
The reported scale of Latin American participation marks a notable development in the composition of Ukraine’s foreign personnel. While early foreign recruitment efforts attracted significant numbers of European and North American volunteers, later phases of the war have reportedly seen increasing participation from countries where military service can offer significantly higher incomes than available domestically. Russian security agencies have previously highlighted the growing number of Latin American personnel fighting alongside Ukrainian forces, with multiple Russian defence sources having reported in July that the number of Colombian nationals serving alongside the Ukrainian Armed Forces had recently risen significantly.
While the figure cited by Reshetilova appear to refer to foreign contractors, which alongside those from Latin America have included particularly large numbers from Poland, the total likely does not include active-duty personnel deployed in significant numbers by NATO member states. British Deputy Chief of Defence Staff Lieutenant General Robert Magowan of the Royal Marines in December 2022 revealed that the Marines had been carrying out high risk operations alongside Ukrainian government forces from April that year. 300 personnel from the Royal Marines’ 45 Commando Group were revealed to be conducting “discreet operations,” with Magowan stressing that these were carried out “in a hugely sensitive environment and with a high level of political and military risk.”
As early as June 2022 the New York Times reported that a CIA ‘stealth network’ was at the crux of the war, referring to the U.S. as establishing within Ukraine “a stealthy network of commandos and spies rushing to provide weapons, intelligence and training... C.I.A. personnel have continued to operate in the country secretly, mostly in the capital, Kiev, directing much of the massive amounts of intelligence the United States is sharing with Ukrainian forces.” The “signs of their stealthy logistics, training and intelligence support are tangible on the battlefield,” the Times observed. “Commandos from other NATO countries, including Britain, France, Canada and Lithuania, also have been working inside Ukraine... training and advising Ukrainian troops and providing an on-the-ground conduit for weapons and other aid,” it added, stressing the sheer “scale of the secretive effort to assist Ukraine that is underway.”
In January 2024 German Chancellor Olaf Scholz confirmed that British special forces on the ground in Ukraine were supporting launches of Storm Shadow cruise missiles against Russian targets. The British presence on the ground in Ukraine was subsequently more widely acknowledged following the death of one serviceman, Lance Corporal George Hooley of the Parachute Regiment, in December 2025. Both contractor and active duty personnel have played important roles in the Ukrainian war effort, with the roles of contractors varying from basic frontline combat, to operating complex equipment. Russian state sources have referred to European contractors killed in a major strike on their headquarters in January 2024 as “highly trained specialists who work on specific weapons systems too complex for the average Ukrainian conscripts.”
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