RUSSIA REPORTED TO BE RECRUITING SYRIANS FOR UKRAINE WAR

Mon 07 March 2022:

Russia is recruiting Syrian fighters experienced in urban combat as it ramps up its assault on Ukraine, according to US officials quoted by the Wall Street Journal.

Moscow, which launched an invasion into its Eastern European neighbour on February 24, has in recent days recruited fighters from Syria hoping they can help take Kiev, four US officials told the US daily.

The Syrian forces could be asked to work in a support role, said Jennifer Cafarella, national security fellow at the Institute of the Study of War. They could help Russia with the urban warfare front, on which they have spent nearly a decade, she said, adding that the stand-off could soon become a new centre of gravity for foreign fighters.

Experts have said this could lead to a potential escalation in the violence brewing in Ukraine, which has for 12 days now been subject to a deadly invasion, in which key cities, buildings and power plants have come under attack.

Russia is paying the Middle-Eastern country’s volunteers between $200 and $300 (£151 and £227) “to go to Ukraine and operate as guards” for six months at a time, according to a report from the Syrian city of Deir Ezzor.

Russia entered the Syrian civil war in 2015 on the side of regime leader Bashar al Assad. The country has been mired in a conflict marked by urban combat for more than a decade.

One official told the Journal that some fighters are already in Russia readying to join the fight in Ukraine, though it was not immediately clear how many combatants have been recruited, and the sources would not provide further detail.

Foreign fighters have already entered the Ukrainian conflict on both sides.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has claimed around 20,000 foreign fighters from more than 50 countries have travelled to the country to join Kiev’s forces.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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