MOSCOW, May 31. /TASS/. Mercenaries from the United States, Georgia and Poland are fighting for pro-Kiev forces in the area of combat operations in the Donbass region in east Ukraine, the Defense Ministry of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) said on Sunday.
"Up to a company of personnel [from 60 to 100 men] from the Georgian volunteer battalion was spotted in the populated settlement of Verekhenetoretskoye. A company of US and Polish servicemen was deployed at the Veterok checkpoint between Gorlovka and Dzerzhinsk," DPR Defense Ministry spokesman Eduard Basurin was quoted by the Donetsk News Agency as saying.
According to the DPR’s reconnaissance, Polish military formations were spotted in Dzerzhinsk, Dimitrovka, Slavyansk, Mironovskoye, Konstantinovka and Kramatorsk. The Polish personnel’s strength is up to 1,000 servicemen.
Two companies of the Ichkeria volunteer battalion were spotted in Krasnogorovka.
A battalion with the personnel of up to 800 men was spotted in the populated settlement of Lastochkino. Most of the personnel are "representatives of the Negroid race," the DPR Defense Ministry spokesman said.
Also, two platoons of black-skin servicemen were spotted in Slavnoye.
"Volunteers from Arab countries were detected on the territory of a psychiatric hospital in Yasnobrodovka. It is not ruled out this unit may have direct relation to the Islamic State terrorist organization," Basurin said.
The arrival of 14 attack drones from Israel with special personnel was registered in the port of Odessa. According to the DPR’s data, this unit will serve in the Angrif battalion of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry, the spokesman said.
"This fact evidences that owing to low morale and poor psychological condition of Ukraine’s servicemen, the Ukrainian leadership is making the main emphasis on foreign private military companies, which may be involved in subversion activities in Donbass," Basurin said.
Thousands have been killed and hundreds of thousands of people have fled Ukraine’s embattled southeast as a result of clashes between Ukrainian troops and local militias in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions during Kiev’s military operation, launched in mid-April 2014 to regain control over parts of the breakaway territories, which call themselves the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s republics.