MOSCOW. November 14. /TASS/. A captive Georgian mercenary from Ukraine’s foreign legion has revealed that he was recruited by the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) while he was being held in a detention facility, according to a video released by the Russian defense ministry on Tuesday.
The video shows the Georgian captive, Georgy Chubetidze, talking about how he was convicted for a crime and placed in custody in Ukraine in April 2022. He said that he had been recruited for a to serve three years in the so-called 2nd international legion of the Ukrainian army by SBU officers, after which he underwent a three-month training period in Ternopol. According to Chubetidze, his instructors were from the US, UK, and Canada. The mercenaries, in his words, were told that they must kill Russian soldiers and were promised 300 US dollars in pay to do so.
According to the man, fighters of the foreign legion are citizens of Poland, Great Britain, the US, Brazil, Spain, and France, with most of them having committed grave crimes, such as murder, robbery and drug trafficking, in their countries. These people are recruited in prisons and detention facilities by special services and sent to Ukraine to evade justice.
Most of the mercenaries, in Chubetidze’s words, are drug addicts who have no mercy on civilians. He recalled that two French mercenaries had shot dead a local resident who refused to let them into his house. Unit commanders shoot and kill their subjects if they refuse to engage in combat tasks. Apart from that, snipers from among the legion’s fighters are deployed behind territorial defense units to kill those who are retreating.