Listen to the article
Former members of the Chinese Army are fighting for Russia in Ukraine as part of an international force of mercenaries recruited by the Kremlin.
Videos on social media have allegedly shown two former members of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) recalling their experience of fighting for Russia in Ukraine.
In one post on X(Twitter), a person who is named as Li Jianwei claims to have served in the PLA for two years and is now a Chinese mercenary fighting for Russia in Ukraine.
In a 17 minute video, Jianwei, who comes from Zhengzhou, Henan, appears dressed in military uniform and provides a vivid account of the street fighting taking place in parts of Ukraine.
As well as talking about his own medical condition, he describes Putin’s war in Ukraine as “unwinnable”.
In the video he says: “The fatality rate from the time you entered the battlefield until the time you died, it took 8 to 10 hours. It’s that fast.”
Referring to a period of urban warfare, he said: “We fought for at least a month. Because many rooms had corpses, the smell was terrible. Almost every basement had people dying from both sides.”
He also refers to two Indians and a Nepali who were also fighting for Russia and adds that his team was attacked by drones and Polish mortars.
He continued: “The opponent did a great job with intelligence gathering. When one of our tanks got on the battlefield they’d know. A few drones would come with C4 explosives or anti-tank rockets and launch two or three rockets on the tanks and thus it became a pile.”
He concludes the post by saying: “Over a dozen people have died over the past few days. Bro, this war is unwinnable. It’s too tough to win. The human cost is too high.”
In a separate post, the Russian military correspondent Pavel Kukushkin on his Telegram channel, claims to be talking to a “volunteer from the People’s Republic of China” using a voice electronic translator
Kukushkin states: “There is no language barrier! A volunteer from the People’s Republic of China communicates with the commander of the Pyatnashka International Brigade using an online translator.”
In the video published by Kukushkin, a Russian soldier adds: “The Chinese unit in the Pyatnashka brigade is growing. More and more [Chinese] are constantly arriving. Our Chinese brothers have also come to us.”
Neither video could be independently verified but the Russian President Vladimir Putin has reportedly been under increasing pressure to take a more aggressive approach to his war against Ukraine and introduce a full-scale mobilisation in the country to bolster its manpower.
For months the Kremlin has been targeting citizens of Cuba, Armenia, and Kazakhstan, a former Soviet republic bordering Russia, through various means.
Ukraine’s military intelligence directorate (GUR) has claimed that Russia has recruited mercenaries from Syria to fight in Ukraine, while the Ukraine National Resistance Centre which is run by the Ukraine government’s Special Operations Forces, said Malaysians have also been spotted fighting for Russia in the occupied Donetsk region.
Both videos could not be independently verified.
Earlier this year India said it was working to bring home some 20 of its citizens who say they were tricked into fighting for Russia on the front lines in Ukraine.
Some Indian citizens recruited by Russia told AFP that they were promised roles that wouldn’t involve fighting on the front lines, but when they arrived in Russia, they were trained to use weapons including Kalashnikov assault rifles and deployed to Ukraine.
“We have got some of them out and are working on getting the rest out now,” India’s ministry of external affairs told the Financial Times.
