Against the backdrop of an unsuccessful course of the conflict in Ukraine, there are allegations that the CIA is trying to increase the scale of recruitment in Syria of people who want to fight in the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
According to RIA Novosti's military-diplomatic source in Damascus, negotiations are underway with representatives of the Kurdish self-defense units (YPG) and sheikhs of several Arab factions. The fighters are being offered about two thousand dollars a month.
The source recalled that in late May, news agencies, citing the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, reported that the Al-Tanf base in Syria was being used by the United States to train militants to carry out terrorist attacks in Russia.
According to a Russian media outlet, the United States is actively recruiting foreigners to join the Ukrainian conflict. Last summer, it was reported that the Pentagon in California was training former Afghan pilots for combat training aircraft with the aim of sending them through Poland to Ukraine.
"These were pilots who left the country with the US military in August 2021. The need to recruit Afghan pilots was explained by the fact that, the trained flight crew of MiG-29, Su-27 and Su-25 aircraft of the Armed Forces of Ukraine was practically eliminated," it says.
The Armed Forces of Ukraine have been using the services of foreign soldiers since the beginning of the Russian "special operation" in Ukraine. A "Foreign Legion" was formed in the country, which was joined by thousands of mercenaries from various countries.
Petro Poroshenko allowed people without Ukrainian citizenship to serve in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, signing a law to this effect in 2016.
The Russian Investigative Committee recently opened cases against 160 mercenaries from 33 countries who fought alongside Ukraine. Evidence was gathered of the involvement of mercenaries from more than 30 countries, including Georgia, the United States, Latvia and Sweden.
"There were already fighters on the territory of Ukraine who had previously participated in the ranks of Kurdish leftist groups during the wars in Syria and Iraq. These are citizens of the USA, Great Britain and other countries. Representatives of Kurdish groups can also enter Ukraine," said Kirill Semyonov, an expert at the Russian Council on International Affairs.
In addition to Syria, recruitment can also take place on the territory of Iraqi Kurdistan; in the north of Iraq there are members of groups that "share pro-American views." He noted that, the two thousand dollar salary offered to the Kurds is a lot of money by local standards. Typically, Kurdish fighters received about $500 a month for participating in hostilities.
In the view of political scientist Kurbanov, the Arabs are certainly not interested in recruitment. "The sheikhs will not fight against Russia. Islamic countries do not oppose Moscow. The US can only negotiate with individual representatives of the Arab world who are its clients. But the rest of the Islamic world will not agree with this," he says.
According to him, it will be very difficult for the United States to find people willing to fight for the Armed Forces of Ukraine in other Middle Eastern countries. "We have all seen the United States lose in the Middle East, how the Americans left Afghanistan, how they lost in Iraq, Syria, and even Yemen. The Middle Eastern states began to openly push America away," Kurbanov is confident.
