Dozens of foreigners who volunteered to fight for the International Legion in Ukraine have abandoned the country and recrossed the border into Poland following a Russian missile strike on their training base, according to reports.
At least 30 cruise missiles pounded the International Peacekeeping and Security Center in Yavoriv, just 15 miles from the border of Poland — a NATO and European Union member-state — over the weekend, with the Ukrainian authorities admitting to 35 fatalities while the Russians claim they inflicted “up to 180” fatalities on “foreign mercenaries” and destroyed a large stockpile of Western armaments.
“The destruction of foreign mercenaries will continue,” a Russian defence ministry spokesman warned in a Monday press briefing shared on social media.
Britain’s right-leaning Telegraph newspaper, which is close to the British government, reported that “a few dozen dazed survivors from the strike began returning over the Polish border, many apparently re-assessing their decision to take up arms” on Sunday night in the wake of the strike.
These images have emerged of the Yavoriv military training base in western Ukraine. A Russian airstrike hit the base which is just 25 km from the Polish border. At least 35 people have been killed and 134 wounded #UkraineWar pic.twitter.com/h4rxrEANmk
— Yalda Hakim (@BBCYaldaHakim) March 13, 2022
Before becoming a training site for foreign volunteers, the Yavoriv facility was used to train members of the Ukrainian armed forces, with instructors often supplied by the United States and other NATO members — to the chagrin of a Russian government keen to see Ukraine remain a Russia-aligned or at least neutral buffer state rather than a hostile NATO ally.
The Telegraph said they heard “accents from the U.S., Ireland, America, Germany, and Britain” among the “bedraggled figures” who survived the Russian strike, and at least one Swedish volunteer with experience fighting alongside Kurdish People’s Protection Units in Syria.
The British news outlet said the veteran returned to Poland with no intention of returning to Ukraine, paraphrasing him as having said that the current war “was nothing like Syria and Iraq”.
One volunteer described their experience of the strike as “Hell on Earth”.
We condemn the Russian Federation’s missile attack on the International Center for Peacekeeping and Security in Yavoriv, close to Ukraine’s border with Poland. The brutality must stop.
— Secretary Antony Blinken (@SecBlinken) March 13, 2022
With the war in Ukraine having previously been concentrated in the country’s east, the strike so close to NATO territory has heightened tensions with the bloc, which has not entered the bloc directly but is supplying Ukraine with armaments and punishing Russia with sanctions.
U.S. President Joe Biden’s Secretary of State Antony Blinken tweeted American condemnation of the strike, declaring that “[t]he brutality must stop”.
Elsewhere, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan has claimed that NATO would retaliate in the event even of an accidental shot by the Russians into NATO territory.
Sajid Javid, a senior member of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government in the United Kingdom, also stressed that “Even if a single Russian toecap steps into NATO territory, then it will be considered an act of war,” likely due to Yavoriv’s close proximity to Poland.
I want to be clear: We will defend every inch of NATO territory with the full might of a united and galvanized NATO.
But we will not fight a war against Russia in Ukraine.
A direct confrontation between NATO and Russia is World War III. And something we must strive to prevent.
— President Biden (@POTUS) March 11, 2022
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