How Russia Recruits Soldiers From Cuba to Fight in Ukraine
On a blazing hot day in November, Raibel Palacio and three neighborhood friends boarded a flight at Cuba’s Varadero beach resort, taking selfies and chattering in excitement. They had a job offer that promised a way out of the island’s misery. A few weeks later, Palacio was killed by a drone as he tried to tie a tourniquet to staunch the bleeding from a leg wound on the freezing front lines of Ukraine, said Danelia Herrera, his mother.
“Cubans are cannon fodder and they will kill them all," she said, weeping in her home, a wooden shack on the outskirts of Havana. The four young men arepart of a wave of Cubans who enlisted in the Russian army, lured by salaries in the region of $2,000, far higher than they would be able to earn at home, where the average monthly wage is less than $20. Ambassador Ruslan Spirin, Ukraine’s special representative to Latin America and the Caribbean, said the government believes that about 400 Cubans are fighting in the country.
“We take it seriously," he said. Others think the numbers go higher. Maryan Zablotskyi, a member of the Ukrainian parliament who has studied the issue, estimates that between 1,500 and 3,000 Cubans have enlisted as the island’s state-controlled economy crumbles.
Russia has also recruited fighters from the Central African Republic, Serbia, Nepal and Syria, according to Ukrainian authorities, to prop up its war effort. On the opposing side, the number of volunteers, initially numbering thousands, including U.S. military veterans, has dropped off as the war drags toward a third year.
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