MOSCOW, September 17. /TASS/. Most of the ideologically motivated mercenaries who came to Ukraine to "go on a safari against the Russian people" were eliminated by Russian troops, and now it's mostly money-motivated mercenaries from Latin America who join the Ukrainian army, said Vasily Prozorov, a former SBU officer and founder of the UkrLeaks Investigative Center.

"[In my book I classified] people who came to fight for ideological reasons, professing, let’s say, the principles of Russophobia, as ‘ideological·commercial’ mercenaries. That is, for example, representatives from certain Baltic countries, Georgia, Poland, and Canada. They went to fight in Ukraine solely to kill Russians. They saw this as the meaning of their lives. But the Russian army very quickly knocked the arrogance out of them, along with their desire to shoot and go on a safari hunting Russian people. And their numbers have dropped significantly. Now we can say that there are practically no ideological Russophobes left among the mercenaries. The main group going to Ukraine now is commercial mercenaries, mostly from Latin America," Prozorov said at a press conference at TASS dedicated to the release of his book "Ukraine: Murderers for Hire. War Dogs Fed by Kiev."

In the book, Prozorov wrote about the involvement of foreign mercenaries, including citizens of the United States and Western Europe, in the Ukrainian conflict since 2014.