Ukrainian Defensive War against the Russian Invasion - Mark IV: The Partitioning of Discussion

article about the Colombians who are fighting in Ukraine against the russian:
url archive
snippet:
Colombians top the list by a wide margin. A UNITED24 Media report from February 2026 put the figure at approximately 7,000 Colombians serving in various Ukrainian formations, making them the largest national group of foreign volunteers in the country. They have joined the International Legion, mechanized brigades, reconnaissance units, and drone teams, and their experience fighting guerrillas, paramilitaries, and cartels in their home country translates remarkably well to the small-unit warfare being waged in Donbas.

Alongside them is a smaller but politically significant unit: the Bolívar Battalion, formally established in August 2023 and named after Simón Bolívar. It is commanded by a Venezuelan, José David Chaparro Martínez, and comprises volunteers from Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Argentina, Brazil, Spain, and Peru, along with some Ukrainians, Americans, and Australians. Its stated mission is not only combat but also counter-narrative. As the battalion itself describes it, part of its work involves refuting Russian propaganda in Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, and American English media outlets, where such narratives have found unusually fertile ground. Spain has also sent its own volunteers, though their numbers are in the dozens rather than the thousands.
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Our Colombians are insane and cool dudes.
I remember listning to Ukraine the latest (podcast from the telegraph) that talked about why they go to fight in Ukraine and they gave the following reason:
1. Want to fight for a good cause.
2. A lot of them are former service members from their military and after the end of most armed conflict in the country, there were lack of advancemnt and sheer boredom.
3. Getting the fuck out of Colombia.

I will see if I can find more articles about it.
edit.
url archive
here is another one.
Snippet:

When reintegration fails, military labor moves​

One must look beyond the label of “mercenary” to understand why a Colombian soldier ends up in the Donbas. Across the Bogotá forum, veterans, researchers, and officials converged on a shared pattern: professional soldiers with fifteen to twenty years of counterinsurgency experience retire in their late thirties or early forties, only to fail to reintegrate into an economy that has no place for them. Formal transition and retraining programs exist; however, their disconnectedness from labor-market realities leaves veterans without a credible civilian off-ramp.


typical mid-level officer earns roughly four million pesos (just over one thousand dollars) per month in active service, with that figure dropping to four hundred dollars for rank-and-file soldiers. Upon retirement, income often falls by half. With anemic transition programs and the domestic private security sector saturated, the contrast with Ukrainian frontline pay is stark. Salaries for soldiers in Ukraine participating in combat operations run from $3,000 to $5,000 a month (including any time in captivity and rehabilitation following injury), plus a potential $25,000 signing bonus and a $350,000 death benefit to families in the event the soldier is killed in combat. While language barriers and a multitude of bureaucratic hurdles have resulted in substantive challenges in obtaining death benefits and repatriating fallen soldiers’ remains, the economic arbitrage remains compelling for those feeling functionally stranded between illegal employment and economic exclusion. Ukraine becomes, as one participant of the forum in Bogotá put it, “the first real door that opens.”
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Least Concern said:
It's a reasonable guess at the outcome. Let's say it's true and there's really no chance of Ukraine getting their lost land back. Why not ceasefire now? Because Ukraine themselves have already seen what Russia's ceasefires are worth when the world shrugged their shoulders at Russia yoinking Crimea.

The more Russia's military capability is depleted, the lower the odds they'll just try once again in another decade and maybe successfully capture Kiev that time. And with the military and logistical support they're getting this time around (however inadequate it still may be), it's disastrous but still not yet completely ruinous to do so.

I'd rather not live in a world where one country can just invade and annex another without there being severe consequences.
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Ukraine holds a so far impregnable fortified line in the Donbass. Given that putin seems content to destroy his empire rather than make a deal, there's a decent chance that a tottering post putin Russia might just give up their largely worthless conquests, barring Crimea, which is both strategically and culturally useful, even if in other ways it's a waterless island that would be half desert without expensive irrigation. Turkey has closed the Dardanelles to Russia and Ukraine has crippled the Black Sea Fleet, but even with all that, it allows Russia to say 'we wuz Gayreeks' and that invented classical heritage is actually very important to the fools making decisions there.

Slovak PM says no peace deal with Russia possible without Ukraine's consent​

Ivanna Kostina, KATERYNA TYSHCHENKO — 2 May, 18:46
Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico has said following a phone call with Zelenskyy that despite differences on some issues, both he and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy are interested in maintaining friendly relations between their countries.

Source: Robert Fico on Facebook, as reported by European Pravda

Quote from Fico: "Despite the fact that our views differ on some issues, we share a common interest in establishing good and friendly relations between Slovakia and Ukraine."

Quote from Fico: "I confirmed that Slovakia supports Ukraine's aspiration to join the EU, as Slovakia wants Ukraine, as our neighbour, to be a stable and democratic country."

Details: Fico said that during the conversation, they agreed to meet briefly on 4 May in Yerevan at the European Political Community summit. They also plan to continue cooperation through joint government meetings and exchange visits to each other's capitals.

"I also emphasised that no peace agreement in the military conflict with the Russian Federation is possible without the consent of the Ukrainian side," Fico stated.

Background:

  • Earlier, Zelenskyy reported on his conversation with Fico.
  • Prior to the resumption of oil transit via the Druzhba pipeline, Fico told Brussels to forget about Slovakia's support for Ukraine's accelerated accession to the EU.
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Ukrainska Pravda archive / Ukrainska Pravda original link

Fico was always more pragmatic. Weapons sales like artillery were never stopped and now that Orbán is gone, Fico has to be careful not to held hostage by obsolete alignments. The Druzbha pipeline is open and everything he's said can be taken back later, if the sorry collection of Euro nationalists get into power.
 
N Space said:
As a palate cleanser, Ukraine has been sanctioning Russian tankers, this time near Novorossiysk port.

View attachment 8950438
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Apparently a Karakurt-class corvette and oil infrastructure at Primorsk port got ACK'd:
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Foltest said:
Our Colombians are insane and cool dudes.
I remember listning to Ukraine the latest (podcast from the telegraph) that talked about why they go to fight in Ukraine and they gave the following reason:
1. Want to fight for a good cause.
2. A lot of them are former service members from their military and after the end of most armed conflict in the country, there were lack of advancemnt and sheer boredom.
3. Getting the fuck out of Colombia
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Your 2nd article really hits the core of the matter why so many columbians, and the answer is money.

Columbia is violent, and while the currency isn't terrible its not very strong. Columbians are like South Africans in that they are over represented in mercenary groups because of lax national laws concerning fighting over seas/strong protections re: extradition for same and, iirc, no income tax on foreign earnings. So you give a columbian a normal Ukrainian soldier's wage, plus toss in some signing bonuses, and its a natural fit. It also gets them into theater so it makes it easier for a columbian to then pivot to other PMC work.
(I'm not sure if I can convey that properly; basically one of the hardest parts for a columbian or most other near-thirdworlders making a local fortune being a merc is getting travel documents, a passport and one with the right stamps. Once you have that stamped passport, getting approved for the next one is easier because you already are through the screening. But PMCs have limited political pull, especially pull they are willing to expend on untested recruits.
Its hardly the same thing, but US contractors would pay a significant premium to recruit personnel (i.e. separating military members) already in-country. Same guy signing up in Kuwait vs. Signing up in Des Moines was sometimes worth an extra $10-20,000 on a one-year contract
So signing up to fight in Ukraine gets you a Eurozone-stamped passport and puts you in Europe and a single hop to Turkey and the mideast, and the political powers that be will push hard for you to get that coveted foot in the door. Sign up through the USSD and things that might have been blockers, like unfortunate relatives or criminal charges, will be overridden easily.)

The US is almost certainly facilitating recruitment as well. Despite slapfights at the political level, US/Columbian militaries are very close due to Narco Wars & fighting commies.

Least Concern said:
The "mean ol' NATO at our borders" thing is a non-starter because it only makes sense if you seriously believe NATO was going to invade and conquer internationally-recognized Russian territory at some point, and if you actually believe that then you're too far gone to try to have a real conversation with. "Oh NATO was increasing eastward despite a non-binding agreement half a century ago blah blah" again, who cares unless you seriously think NATO was going to invade.

As for Ukraine's treatment of ethnically Russian populations, those people were more than welcome to go to Russia if Ukraine really was so awful. Would you support an invasion of the southern US by Mexico because of supposed maltreatment of Mexicans by the US? Does Mexico not doing that somehow "forfeit their own legitimacy?"
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Invading Ukraine because of muh NATO border makes no sense in that invading Ukraine increases borders with NATO and doesn't actually add any buffer between NATO and Moscow. Its the thinnest, gayest excuse.

If Putin was really concerned about NATO borders, he would have seen Finland's NATO application and immediately done whatever the Finns demanded of him to withdraw it, as that not only added more NATO border, but the border was closer to Moscow and offered new northen approaches to Moscow.

And daily reminder that Russia is so concerned about NATO they have withdrawn their armored divisions and air defense from the Finnish border for deployment to Ukraine.

The only reason to be concerned about neighbors in NATO is you can't bully them or threaten them with invasion anymore.

Least Concern said:
I don't follow your reasoning, but if a comparison to Rittenhouse should be made, those weirdoes who tried to attack him sure paid dearly for it in a manner that wouldn't have happened had they just kept their hands to themselves, right?
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Rittenhouse is a common Wingnat hobby horse to trot out due to his utterly fucked and nakedly politically driven prosecution. That's it, he's trying to use prosecution arguments to try to railroad a a college kid who shot child molesters and applying them to Russia, ignoring that Russia is the child molester.

Least Concern said:
I don't follow the Trump admin's reasoning for starting the attack when they did but I'm also not too fond of the idea of "Death to America"-type Islamic fundamentalists having access to a national government and nuclear weapons (or nuclear anything) so I'm not too upset over the idea of regime change in Iran.
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It also ignores that Ukraine was not having its proxies attack and board Russian ships to hold them for ransom. Ukraine was not bombing Russian military barracks in Chechnya. Ukraine was not

Least Concern said:
I'd prefer that Beijing not be allowed to capture Taiwan and the other islands controlled by Taipei, but at least the Beijing government, including Xi Jinping himself, never signed a treaty defining Taiwan and its neighboring islands as territory of another government.
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That's an excellent point, I need to add that to the Anti-brownoid arsenal when they try their Putin Dindu Nuffins schtick.
 
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Finland are not in any mood of getting back the lost land of 39.
After over 80s years of USSR and russian fuckery, the land is garbarge and full of russians.
 
Foltest said:
the land is garbarge and full of russians.
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you just said garbage twice.

But yes for our local zigger from earlier, the NATO narrative is retarded. All of Russia's western neighbors decided to join NATO precisely because of shit like this that Russia has done for ages. If Russia didn't want NATO on its borders, then they should stop being retarded fucking gorilla niggers that try to conquer and purge everyone around them.
 
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Fuck It We'll Do It Live said:
Apparently a Karakurt-class corvette and oil infrastructure at Primorsk port got ACK'd:
View attachment 8952687
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It's kinda funny... I was never much of a milsperg, so I'm learning a lot of these names and composition of Russian fleet as ships get destroyed.
While I heard of the Moskva before, for example, it only solidified in my memory after it became one. Sometimes it takes a notable event for it to really sink in.
 
Null said:
That's a really big hole. Do the little drones really carry that much explosives? In my mind it was always like, a grenade.
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The drones capable of reaching Moscow are a lot bigger. A year ago they unveiled the FP-1, which they claim can travel 1000 miles and carried about 260lb of explosives. It's likely they're using a variant of that.
 
Null said:
That's a really big hole. Do the little drones really carry that much explosives? In my mind it was always like, a grenade.
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There are different types of drones.
The smaller ones (the ones you see in footages) are often just capable of carrying grenades.
The long range ones however, carry a meaner punch.
The Iranian drones that Russian use, are huge.
 
BONECRUSHER said:
you just said garbage twice.

But yes for our local sigger from earlier, the NATO narrative is retarded. All of Russia's western neighbors decided to join NATO precisely because of shit like this that Russia has done for ages. If Russia didn't want NATO on its borders, then they should stop being retarded fucking gorilla niggers that try to conquer and purge everyone around them.
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The whole argument was invalid before it even got made because Poland is literally right there on the border. The excuse existed more out of theatre for the Russian people who probably don't even know Poland is on the border.
 
Foltest said:
Finland are not in any mood of getting back the lost land of 39.
After over 80s years of USSR and russian fuckery, the land is garbarge and full of russians.
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They'd probably vote to join Finland if there was a plebiscite, for the sake of a life of idleness, drunkenness and EU gimmiedats. Yet they'd wave Russian flags and other symbols of failure. Russian Karelia is like most of the Russia a land of alcoholism, failure and STDs found only in Africa. Definitely Finland would want that like a hole in the head. A bunch marched through DC with Russian and Soviet flags, plus the emblems of the three day four year (to eternity) SMO. Same in Germany or the UK or most of all the Baltic States. Hate their host, accuse them of Russophobia, but would sob uncontrollably if asked to go to their beloved home country.


Azov Brigade have announced the creation of the 41st Separate Pilum Regiment dedicated to UAV operations. It was hitherto a battalion for UAV operations, but given trends in warfare, expansion makes sense.
Militaryni / Azov Ukraine Supporters on Telegram



Orban's propaganda pope is crying live on TV. This is where we are guys, he can't cope with the fact that the criminal investigation has begun against him/ More to come !!
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SzabadonMagyar on Xitter

I hope that gimp is jailed, but perhaps prosecutors might go easy on him if he turn's State's evidence.

President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that Ukraine is declaring a ceasefire beginning at midnight on May 6, amid Russia's proposal for a temporary Victory Day truce from May 8-9.

Zelensky said on May 4 that Ukraine had still received “no official appeal” from Moscow outlining the terms of the ceasefire that Russian officials have publicly discussed.

“We believe that human life is far more valuable than any anniversary ‘celebration’,” Zelensky wrote, referring to Russia’s upcoming Victory Day commemorations.

He said the proposed ceasefire would begin at 00:00 on the night of May 5–6 and argued that this timeframe would be enough to test whether a genuine pause in fighting could take hold.....
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Kyiv Independent original link /

I hope Ukraine can attack Putin's May Day fail parade. Nothing would expose him more as an empty suit. He wouldn't do more than the usual (drones and missiles against civilians) as he and his chums loves their sybaritic luxury which would end if there was a non conventional response.. However, for Zelensky there's a crucial need to expose Putin's complete unwillingness to have a sincere ceasefire without preconditions. Russia has supposedly announced or proposed a May Day ceasefire, but these ceasefires tend to be violated immediately.
 
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Zelenskyy on Canada contributing $200 million to the PURL initiative:
We held a detailed discussion on strengthening air defense: the production of necessary European systems and missiles, support for the PURL initiative, and ways to equip Europe with its own anti-ballistic capabilities.

I thank Canada for a new contribution to the PURL initiative. Prior to the meeting, Mark Carney announced an additional $200 million. Mark Rutte assured that the provision of anti‑ballistic missiles to Ukraine remains consistent with earlier arrangements.
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Optimus Prime said:
The whole argument was invalid before it even got made because Poland is literally right there on the border. The excuse existed more out of theatre for the Russian people who probably don't even know Poland is on the border.
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Poland and the Baltics were the originating progenitors to the creation of that whole argument. As American "Russia must have its sphere of influence" and the western euro "the world must have a [communist] super power against America" REEEE for decades. While blocking every former WARPAC and USSR country from joining NATO as long as they could. Sweden and Finland relatively speaking, were fast tracked from applying for NATO membership to becoming a full NATO compare to them.
 
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