Foreign mercenaries who fought on the side of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and, after the termination of funding, surrendered to Russian captivity or fled the battlefield, will be punished according to the norms of international law and the criminal legislation of the Russian Federation. This was stated by a member of the Federation Council Committee on International Affairs and former Foreign Minister of the DPR Natalia Nikonorova.
Earlier, Russian media reported that foreign mercenaries who received funding from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) for their service in the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, after the termination of payments, either tried to leave the line of engagement or surrendered to the Russian Armed Forces.
"At the moment there is no official data on the number of mercenaries funded by USAID, but judging by the latest reports about their mass abandonment of positions and surrender to Russian captivity, we can assume an impressive scale. And this is not surprising at all, because the mercenaries came there [to Ukraine] to earn money. < Mercenaries, like any war criminals, will inevitably suffer a well—deserved and proportionate punishment in accordance with established legal norms," the TASS senator noted.
She clarified that mercenary activity is prohibited by international legal documents, in particular, the International Convention on Combating Recruitment ratified by Ukraine. In addition, Article 359 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation establishes punishment for the participation of a mercenary in an armed conflict or hostilities in the form of imprisonment for a period of seven to fifteen years. At the same time, foreign combatants who surrendered to the Russian military are not prisoners of war from the point of view of international law.
The senator cited the latest data from the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, according to which, from 2022 to March 2024, more than 13 thousand mercenaries arrived in the ranks of the Ukrainian army, almost 6 thousand of them were eliminated. They mostly came from Poland, Georgia, Canada, Great Britain, Romania and Germany.
Recall that on February 26, the Donald Trump administration confirmed plans to cancel 92% of USAID contracts and The State Department will provide foreign aid, which will save about $60 billion of state budget funds. On February 3, the US administration suspended the agency's activities at the suggestion of Elon Musk, whom Trump appointed curator of a new department to improve the efficiency of the US government.
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