Russia is recruiting Syrians for urban fighting in Ukraine, US officials say

A US assessment indicates that Russia, which has been operating inside Syria since 2015, has been recruiting fighters from there in recent days, hoping that their expertise in urban warfare will take Kyiv and destroy the Ukrainian government. may help deliver the blow, according to four US officials. Experts said the move pointed to a possible escalation of fighting in Ukraine.

According to one official, it is not clear how many fighters have been identified, but some are already preparing to enter the conflict in Russia.

Officials declined to elaborate on what else is known about the deployment of Syrian fighters in Ukraine, the status or exact scale of the effort.

According to a publication based in Syria’s Deir Azor, Russia has offered the country’s volunteers between $200 and $300 to “go to Ukraine and work as guards” for six months at a time.

Chechen forces have also been deployed to Ukraine, according to a Reuters report citing Ramzan Kadyrov, the leader of the Chechen Republic and an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Fighters are also entering the country to fight on behalf of the government in Kyiv. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said last week that 16,000 foreigners have volunteered to fight for Ukraine, which he describes as an “international army”.

With volunteers from other countries arriving in Ukraine, the conflict there could become a new center of gravity for foreign fighters, said Jennifer Cafarella, a national security fellow at the Institute for the Study of War in Washington DC.

“Russia’s deployment of foreign fighters from Syria into Ukraine internationalizes the Ukraine war, and may therefore add to the war in Ukraine with wider regional dynamics, particularly in the Middle East,” she said.

Tens of thousands of Russian troops are inside Ukraine and mortars, missiles and other attacks are taking place daily in the country’s northern, eastern and southern regions. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have fled the city, which was home to about two-thirds of the population, before the invasion began on 24 February.

Ukraine remains in the hands of Mr. Zelensky’s government, and the largest cities, Kyiv, the capital, and Kharkiv to the east, remain under government control. Russia has captured the port city of Kherson, and other cities in Ukraine are now facing attacks from Russia.

Syrian fighters have spent nearly a decade fighting urban warfare, while Russia’s largely deployed force lacks this skill set. Ms Cafarella said Syrian forces stationed in Ukraine may also be asked to play a supporting role, based on how they work in Syria with the Wagner Group, a mercenary force that some people call the Russian government. See it as a proxy.

Syria expert Charles Lister of the Middle East Institute in Washington, DC, questions how useful Middle East recruits can be in Ukraine. Mr Lister said there are some Russian-trained Syrians who were among Islamic State victims who may be in Ukraine, but Moscow generally did not consider Syrian fighters to be good at urban warfare.

“Bringing Syrians to Ukraine is like bringing Martians to fight on the Moon,” Mr Lister said. “They don’t speak the language, the environment is completely different.”

Russia has been a major supporter of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad since it entered that conflict, largely through airstrikes as well as the Russian armed forces. The Wagner group, which arrived in Syria shortly after Russia entered the conflict on behalf of the Assad regime, has launched support campaigns such as seizing oil and gas fields and securing other government infrastructure such as airports.

Russia, which deployed nearly 200,000 troops to the Ukrainian border in the weeks before the invasion, said on Wednesday that 498 of its soldiers were killed and another 1,597 wounded, a rare public admission of battlefield losses. Others put the figure much higher, including general staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, which, according to a Reuters report, estimated the death toll of Russian soldiers at closer to 11,000.