Russia is recruiting Syrian mercenaries with experience in urban guerrilla warfare to fight in Ukraine, The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday, citing US officials.
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Moscow, which launched the invasion of Ukraine on February 24 and met with resistance it did not expect, has in recent days begun to recruit Syrian fighters to use in the takeover of urban areas. , four officials told the American daily.
Russia has been involved in the Syrian conflict since 2015 alongside the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.
A US official told the WSJ that some Syrian fighters are already in Russia, preparing to join the fighting in Ukraine. This source did not provide further details.
Foreign fighters are already present on both sides of the front in Ukraine.
Chechnya strongman Ramzan Kadyrov, a former rebel turned Kremlin ally, shared videos of Chechen fighters in Ukraine and said some had been killed in the fighting.
On the other side of the front, tens of thousands of volunteers have traveled to Ukraine to join his forces, according to Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba.
Kyiv and Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, are still held by the Ukrainian government, while Russia has seized the port city of Kherson and stepped up its bombardment of urban centers across the country.
The Russian invasion, now in its twelfth day, has seen more than 1.5 million people flee the country in what the UN has called Europe’s fastest-growing refugee crisis since the Second World War. World War.