At the outset of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, the authorities in Kyiv announced plans to welcome a large number of foreign volunteers to defend Ukraine against the Russians. Moscow, in turn, said it would recruit non-Russian fighters to join its forces in Ukraine.

It thus appears that foreign fighters will become as much a feature of the current conflict in Ukraine as they were of the wars in Afghanistan in the 1980s and Chechen and Bosnia in the 1990s. Tens of thousands of foreign recruits also joined the ranks of the Islamic State (IS) group in Syria and Iraq.

Who are the foreigners fighting in Ukraine today? Where do they come from and what do they want?

Foreign nationals arriving in Ukraine to fight the Russians vary considerably in terms of their countries of origin, political outlooks, and military experience. Ukrainian dual nationals or foreigners of Ukrainian origin are the largest group, numbering around 66,000, according to the Ukrainian defence minister.

These volunteers have been drawn to fight the Russians today just as their ancestors had fought the Soviets in previous wars. The motive is personal. Family history combines with patriotic fervour to defend Ukrainian sovereignty and independence from the Russian giant next door. The vast majority of individuals in this category have no combat experience.

The second category consists of foreigners from other Western countries. They have no Ukrainian roots or shared history with Ukraine’s wars. Their main motive is to represent the Western powers in the war, but in an individual capacity since NATO has resolved not to get involved in the conflict unless it expands to a NATO member state.

These volunteers are mainly from NATO countries such as the US, UK, and Canada. Many have previous combat experience as former soldiers who have taken part in their governments’ military operations abroad. Some are still enlisted personnel who have gone AWOL in order to fight in Ukraine, leading the authorities in their countries to caution that any such soldiers risk court-martial upon their return.

Many volunteers on Ukraine’s side come from Eastern European countries that were either former republics or satellite states of the Soviet Union. While they do not have Ukrainian roots, they strongly empathise with the Ukrainian people’s desire to free themselves of Russian influence and to join the Western camp.

Members of this group come from Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Finland, the Czech Republic, and Belarus. They also come from republics that are still part of the Russian Federation, such as Chechens opposed to Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov.

Most share the concern that if Russia achieves its aims in Ukraine, this will automatically have adverse repercussions for their own countries’ sovereignty. Some fear that Moscow will try to continue its military advance in order to regain former Soviet possessions or at least try to install pro-Russian governments.

There are also foreign nationals from non-Western countries and countries outside the former Soviet republics in Ukraine. Quite a few are from Israel, although many of these might be grouped together with fighters of Ukrainian origin.

More than 16,000 people have applied to enlist in Ukraine’s “International Legion,” according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The Ukrainian foreign minister subsequently reported that the number had reached 20,000 volunteers from 52 countries, a figure that does not include medical volunteers or activists involved in collecting and delivering food and relief supplies to Ukrainians.

Undoubtedly, Zelensky’s emotional appeals to the effect that Ukraine is fighting on behalf of Europe, the West, and the “civilised world” for democratic values and freedoms have deeply moved many ordinary people in the West, and the Ukrainian government’s official invitation to volunteers has settled the legitimacy question for many.

An official government website for volunteers to apply online has been set up. The next step is a face-to-face interview with the military attaché at the Ukrainian embassy in their country, after which they are informed of the gear they need to equip themselves with before coming to Ukraine.

Arrangements are then made for them to enter the country through border crossings with neighbouring countries.

Western governments are at odds over whether to encourage or discourage this phenomenon, which has become the subject of increasingly heated debate. The Belgian government has urged its citizens not to volunteer, while the Danish prime minister said it would be wrong to keep people from fighting in Ukraine to defend European security. The Latvian government has actively encouraged its citizens to join the fight in Ukraine.

In the UK, where it was discovered that soldiers had gone AWOL from their barracks to go to Ukraine, the British foreign secretary said she would back British nationals wanting to fight Putin’s forces in Ukraine, then subsequently changed her mind.

In response to the Ukrainian recruitment drive, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced last week that he had approved plans to recruit 16,000 fighters from the Middle East to take part in the war in Ukraine. While no details were given and the number elicited some scepticism, there was speculation that most of the recruits would come from Syria, where Russia has militarily backed the regime in Damascus since September 2015 and operates out of military bases overlooking the Mediterranean.

In Syria, Moscow could draw on the expertise of trained fighters accustomed to protracted urban guerrilla warfare, and it is believed it would deploy such fighters for a similar purpose in Ukraine, in Kyiv for example.

Observers believe that Russia would prefer to deploy foreign fighters in any operation to seize control of the Ukrainian capital, as resistance would likely be fierce, and this strategy would enable the Russian military authorities to keep down their official casualty counts.

Reports from Syria have confirmed a Russian intention to recruit Syrians into Moscow’s Ukraine operation. According to these accounts, the Wagner Group, owned by a close associate of Putin, has opened recruitment offices in Latakia, Hama, and Deir Al-Zor and has so far received 4,000 applications.

The number is likely to increase in the light of prevailing economic straits, including in areas controlled by the Syrian government where Russian influence is considerable. Because of this economic factor, Syrian recruits would be less expensive than others, including official Russian conscripts.

On 25 February, Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov offered a force of 10,000 troops to help Russia in its operation in Ukraine. Most likely, the Chechens in this force would not be from Kadyrov’s army but from the national guard that falls under Russian command and takes its orders directly from Putin.

Meanwhile, the largest portion of Chechens fighting in Ukraine today supports the Ukrainian government, fired by an intense animosity towards Russia. In fact, the Chechens acquired their reputation as fighters from their war against the Russians. Two Chechen battalions have been fighting on the Ukrainian government side in the Donbas region since 2014.

While Chechens are fighting for both sides in Ukraine, the same thing does not appear to apply to the Syrians. While Syrian opposition members might support Ukraine through various peaceful means, so far there have been no documented attempts to recruit members of Syrian opposition militias into the Ukrainian government’s war effort.

Perhaps one reason for this is that most Syrian opposition militias are based in Idlib and generally defer to Ankara which, up to now, has tried to remain neutral on the Ukraine crisis.

While the extent to which the contributions of foreign fighters could swing the course of the war one way or another has yet to be seen, their presence in the arena could add to the types of complications seen in other conflicts.

For example, Syrians or Chechens coming to Ukraine will be bringing with them the complexities of their battles at home. Their enlistment on one side of the confrontation is a kind of invitation to their adversaries to enlist on the other.

There are many precedents for the phenomenon of foreign fighters. Many have likened the wave of westerners rushing to side with the Ukrainian government with the European and US volunteers who travelled to Spain to support the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939).

In both cases, the volunteers are being seen as political idealists fired by a zeal to defend democracy and human rights against “fascists” or other such terms currently being used to describe Russia.

However, others have likened people travelling to join the war in Ukraine to jihadists who went off to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan and who subsequently became the core of the Al-Qaeda terror group and an ideology that evolved into transnational terrorism.

Forty thousand radical Islamists from around the world also travelled to Syria and Iraq to sign up with IS after 2012.

Whatever their motives, the presence of foreign fighters in the war in Ukraine will have a tendency to protract the conflict even if the original adversaries decide to conclude a ceasefire. The foreigners bring with them their own agendas, and they forge certain tribal bonds among themselves. Often they carry sufficient weight to impose conditions on the course of the conflict or on agreements to end it.

It is also important to consider the role played by shifting narratives. In Syria and Chechnya, for example, a nationalist and democratic cause quickly segued into a religious calling. At the outset of the Ukrainian conflict, Zelensky made several television appearances in a shirt with a cross on it. Although he has now abandoned this symbolism, could it have been an attempt to sow the seeds for change in the narrative?

Many doubt whether a “holy war” narrative could achieve traction. They argue that most of the young people who have volunteered to fight in Ukraine are leftist or liberal rights advocates set on defending a democratically elected government and are unlikely to be lured into extremist agendas.

However, people change in the course of combat, both because of the horrors they experience and because of their close contact with comrades in arms who espouse different ideologies.

Such factors could render them vulnerable to radicalisation. Conceivably, some westerners fighting in Ukraine could fall under the influence of extreme-right extremists involved in the Ukrainian resistance, regardless of the fact that they originally set off to fight Putin, also generally supported by the European extreme-right.

Some observers have also ventured that radicals from the European extreme-right might have signed up to fight in Ukraine in order to gain combat experience. Afterwards, they could form the core of paramilitary wings with which xenophobic ultranationalist movements could attempt to impose their anti-democratic ideologies through force.

On top of this are problems associated with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), such as an elevated risk of violence and aggression among combat veterans after returning home.

Finally, it is impossible to ignore some of the double standards that have surfaced against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine. One is to be found in how the phenomenon of volunteer foreign nationals tends to be condoned in this case because they are not Muslim, as if Islam were the only faith that could spawn an extremist ideology.

Thus, Western governments tried to keep their citizens from travelling to Syria to fight with IS, but they did not do so when their citizens went there to join the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, and they are often looking the other way when their citizens go to fight in Ukraine today.

Islamist jihadist ideology is dangerous and should be stopped, but any wave of zeal for joining an armed conflict abroad should arouse concern because of the potential radicalisation and militancy that could be channelled into the expansion of violent political activity in the country the volunteers have gone to fight in or back home.

*A version of this article appears in print in the 17 March, 2022 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly