Analysis

What’s Behind Ukrainian Bill to Legalize Foreign Officers in the Military?

Moscow earlier underscored that all those foreigners, who are fighting on the side of the Zelensky regime in the special operation zone, remain legitimate targets of the Russian military, who will continue to obliterate them.
Sputnik
The Ukrainian MPs’ decision to approve a bill allowing foreign mercenaries to serve as active service officers reflects their desire "to legalize the real state of affairs in the Armed Forces of Ukraine", military analyst and retired Russian Army colonel, Viktor Litovkin, told Sputnik.

Actually, "they are legalizing the presence of foreigners in the Ukrainian army. All those mercenaries are now becoming army officers, something that helps the Kiev regime disguise its mercenary activities," Litovkin pointed out.

Secondly, "It’s mercenaries and Western instructors who are in charge of all Ukrainian high-tech Western-supplied weapons, such as the Patriot systems, HIMARS, the F-16 fighter jets and so on," he added.
Litovkin stressed that all documentation related to these weapons is written in military-technical English, which he said is Greek to most Ukrainians, and that is why Ukrainian soldiers perform the role of "gofers" in the crews of the aforementioned military hardware, while foreign mercenaries and instructors call the shots.
He also suggested that mercenaries would be interested in being enlisted in the Ukrainian army as officers because it means they would receive "more money for their very risky and dangerous work."
Russia's Special Operation in Ukraine
Russian Iskander-M Hits Foreign Mercenary Temporary Deployment Site in Kharkov - MoD
When it comes to the F-16s, Litovkin added, training pilots to fly these US-made fighters is only part of the problem. "The main trouble is to hire at least 100 Ukrainians with smooth command of military-technical English so that they can maintain these warplanes on the ground. But there are no such people in Ukraine," Litovkin said.

"After Ukraine asked the US to send such specialists, Washington said ‘no’, knowing full well that they could be destroyed by Russia’s Iskander, Kalibr or Kinzhal missiles when on Ukrainian territory. It remains unclear how Kiev is going to resolve the problem pertaining to the maintenance of the F­-16, something that explains the fact that there is, in fact, no information about Ukrainian F-16s fighting Russian warplanes," the analyst concluded.

The Russian Investigative Committee reported in April that over 3,100 mercenaries, primarily from the US, Canada, the UK, and Georgia, are fighting for the Kiev regime, while the Ministry of Defense stated that around 13,400 have arrived since the start of the conflict, with nearly 6,000 killed.
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