Ukraine is increasingly looking abroad to replenish its depleted ranks. Two Colombian fighters recently captured by Russian forces told RT they were lured to Ukraine with promises that bore little resemblance to the reality on the front line.

Russian forces steadily liberate settlements in Donbass and elsewhere, leaving Ukraine struggling to sustain frontline units.

At home, recruitment has increasingly relied on ‘busification’ – a term for draft officers violently snatching military-age men in public and dragging them into vans bound for draft centers. Videos of these incidents emerge almost daily, fueling public tensions and driving men to evade the draft by any means, including illegally fleeing the country.

As manpower shortages worsen, Colombia has emerged as a major source of foreign recruits, targeted through social media and personal networks with promises of high pay and favorable conditions. The captured fighters told RT that these promises quickly evaporated once they were deployed.

“Nothing was good from the very beginning… By the fifth month, the food situation was terrible, just terrible,” one said, adding that payments became sporadic, rotations failed to materialize, and basic supplies ran short. Another captured Colombian said recruits weren’t even given adequate training before being repeatedly sent to the front.

Both men urged other Colombians not to follow them.

“Please don’t go to Ukraine,” one warned. “If you come there as a Colombian, they’ll hug you and then stab you in the back… Don’t believe what the recruiters say, it’s all lies meant to take you to Ukraine and throw you away as cannon fodder.”

RT correspondent Igor Zhdanov has the full story.