Comign Soon: The Russian Foreign Legion

[Ryan Ruck]

Comign Soon: The Russian Foreign Legion

January 5, 2015

While French military prowess has ebbed and flowed across the ages, one of its most important and most recognizable features has long been the Foreign Legion - Legion Etrangere - a service wing that allows foreign nationals to serve in the French armed forces. Anyone can participate, with very few questions asked - take the American serviceman recently convicted for ditching his military post to serve in the Legion.

Russia's military involvement in Eastern Ukraine currently consists of soldiers and mercenaries from far-flung federal republics such as Chechnya, as well as Ukrainian citizens who are ethnic Russians and wish to support Moscow's efforts to create pro-Russian political entities in the Donbas region. If Ukraine is to serve as a model of Russia's new mode of hybrid warfare, combining special forces and regular military personnel with "rebel" or "militia" formations in areas Moscow deems militarily important, it should be logical to assume that numerous volunteers could be recruited for other such missions. Which brings Russia to the next logical step in its emerging military strategy: allowing foreigners to serve in the Russian armed forces. The main criterium for such service is knowledge of the Russian language.

Back in 2010, the Russian Defense Ministry announced on its website that "according to the Federal Law On Military Duty and Military Service, foreign citizens aged 18 to 30 years old, who are lawfully residing in the territory of the Russian Federation and are Russian-speaking, may enter into the initial contract for military service in the military posts to be filled by soldiers, sailors, sergeants and petty officers in the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, as well as other troops, military formations and bodies, for a period of 5 years." There were several reasons given for allowing foreigners to serve. According to an analysis published in the Russian daily Komsomolskaya Pravda, Russia's deep demographic deficit had caused "an acute shortage of able-bodied recruits. More than a third of them cannot serve because of various illnesses."

The analysis also noted draft dodgers numbering around 200,000, with nearly 15,000 holed up abroad under various pretexts. Further, the low level of education of many recruits is giving Russian commanders headaches, "considering the increasing complexity of military equipment in the Russian military."

At that time, the proposal generated some interesting comments from Russian civilians and former military members. Retired Vice Adm. Yuri Boyarkin, a former deputy commander of the Northern Fleet, confirmed that the Russian military needs foreign fighters: Boyarkin, noting that the navy in particular needed specialists, said that Tajiks, Uzbeks, Belorussians and Ukrainians served together in Soviet times, and that the decision to open up service to foreigners would allow Russia to benefit from their return.

Others disagreed, saying that Russia has enough able-bodied men, and that such foreigners must at least undergo thorough background checks. One military pensioner remarked: "How many armies throughout the ages were destroyed by mercenaries? During the Russian-Polish war in 1633, Russia suffered a lot from mercenaries. As soon as it got really cold, their spirits fell and they gave us up to the Poles. In our harsh climate, only the true Russian spirit grows stronger."

The analysis concluded that "a lot of young men from near and far abroad, who know the Russian language and had time to get a higher education, are a welcome boon for the General Staff ... According to our data, volunteers are already available. So it is very possible that in the near future, the Russian military will have its own foreign legion."


The future has arrived: On Jan. 2, President Vladimir Putin signed a law allowing foreigners to serve in the Russian military as contract personnel. Said Putin: "In accordance with universally recognized principles and norms of international law, international treaties undersigned by the Russian Federation, and the legislation of the Russian Federation, all military personnel who are foreign nationals can carry out military tasks under martial law, as well as in situations of armed conflict."

Russia has many sympathizers around the world, and it is not unreasonable to believe that we will soon observe military formations made up of foreigners participating in Russia's wars.

[American Patriot]

Gosh, if there is anyone out there who really has an affinity for Russia... now's your chance.

[Avvakum]

Gosh, if there is anyone out there who really has an affinity for Russia... now's your chance.

Lol, I felt that possibly directed at me, but as much as I respect V. Putin, I am an American, and America is my homeland and needs me more to help defend her in my own fashion. And, Russia hasn't returned to the Tsars yet. 'Russia without the Tsars is a stinking corpse', one of the Saints once said. Russia still has a ways to go towards rebirth and renewal. America? America isn't quite as bad off-but should learn from Russia's mistakes.

They wouldn't even be doing this if there wasn't a demographic problem.

[American Patriot]

It might have been directed at you.

I mean, after all.... there's also the French Foreign Legion that folks join, and they can't be French....

[vector7]

Wonder if there is a connection...

Ex-Soviet nations seal new alliance with Russia

23 December 2014
Russia and four other ex-Soviet nations have completed the creation of an ambitious new alliance intended to bolster their economic integration.

The Eurasian Economic Union, which includes Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia and Kyrgyzstan, comes into existence on January 1.

In addition to free trade, it aims to co-ordinate the members' financial systems and regulate industrial and agricultural policies along with labour markets and transportation networks.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said the new union will have a combined economic output of 4.5 trillion US dollars (£2.9 trillion) and bring together 170 million people.

Russia tried to encourage Ukraine to join the alliance, but Kiev's former pro-Moscow president was ousted in February following months of protests.

Russia then annexed Ukraine's Black Sea Crimean peninsula, and a pro-Russia mutiny has engulfed eastern Ukraine.

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/ne...-30859346.html

[American Patriot]

Sure seems to be an easy way to pull in people "loyal to Russia" without sucking up the whole country - right away at least.

After all, if you're a sovereign country but you have some affinity to another and you eventually ally with them, then eventually your people fight for them, eventually... easily and without firing a shot, you become absorbed by them when, say your economy tanks.

No, there are few if any examples of this happening.

But, this is a new day and age isn't it?

ANYTHING could Happen.

Anything....

[Avvakum]

AP, you said;

Sure seems to be an easy way to pull in people "loyal to Russia" without sucking up the whole country - right away at least.

But as I've said before and i'll say again, these 'countries' WERE part of Russia, some of them for centuries and longer then we've been a Country ourselves, and still have many Russians there, 'stranded' in these newly independent lands. Many of the non-ethnic Russians in these countries have a poorly developed nationalism or sense of identity separate from Russia, and are poorly developed in many other ways as it is, being administrative sub-divisions of the 'Soviet Union' and now have little means of going it alone without Russian support anyway. Russia subsidizes all of them, including the Ukraine....

Are we seriously going to fight for lines on a map drawn by Vladimir Lenin all the way up to Nikita Kruschev? This is the same problem we have in the Middle East with the Sikes-Picot lines in the sand we call; 'Iraq', 'Syria', 'Saudi Arabia' etc. If Ukraine can have it's duly elected and legal government overthrown, and choose it's own path (crazy as it is) why can't the Crimea (which wanted to be part of Russia since Ukraine got independence in 1991 from the Soviet Union, but which was ignored) or Novorossiya get independence too, from Ukraine?

After all, if you're a sovereign country but you have some affinity to another and you eventually ally with them, then eventually your people fight for them, eventually... easily and without firing a shot, you become absorbed by them when, say your economy tanks.

As I said, not one of these 'countries' is so constituted that it can survive on it's own without becoming a Third-World hellhole. They were prospering as part of Czarist Russia, which was the fastest growing industrial and agricultural nation in the world until WWI, when the PTB had to crush and dismember it....

No, there are few if any examples of this happening.

But, this is a new day and age isn't it?

ANYTHING could Happen.

Nothing sinister about this, it easily compares to our own American story, which has likewise been vilified by the same sort of people who vilify Russia AND America now. People piss and moan about Black Slavery and the treatment of the American Indians, about American Imperialism (Imperialism, not a bad thing really... ) and dropping the Atom Bomb, etc... And these same people piss and moan about the Russian treatment of indigenous Siberian tribes and Muslims in the Caucasus and Central Asia, Serfdom, Russian foreign policy up to WWI, 'Reactionary Christian politics' and so forth....

I support America and Russia for many of the same reasons, I love both countries, always have. Funny thing, the mystical bond between the two at critical times in the lives of both nations. When we face the menace of the prophesied Islamic 'Third Antichrist', Russia and America will stand as One against him, just as we did against Napoleon, against Hitler, and then him.

Anything....

You bet.

[American Patriot]

AP, you said;


But as I've said before and i'll say again, these 'countries' WERE part of Russia, some of them for centuries and longer then we've been a Country ourselves, and still have many Russians there, 'stranded' in these newly independent lands. Many of the non-ethnic Russians in these countries have a poorly developed nationalism or sense of identity separate from Russia, and are poorly developed in many other ways as it is, being administrative sub-divisions of the 'Soviet Union' and now have little means of going it alone without Russian support anyway. Russia subsidizes all of them, including the Ukraine....

Are we seriously going to fight for lines on a map drawn by Vladimir Lenin all the way up to Nikita Kruschev? This is the same problem we have in the Middle East with the Sikes-Picot lines in the sand we call; 'Iraq', 'Syria', 'Saudi Arabia' etc. If Ukraine can have it's duly elected and legal government overthrown, and choose it's own path (crazy as it is) why can't the Crimea (which wanted to be part of Russia since Ukraine got independence in 1991 from the Soviet Union, but which was ignored) or Novorossiya get independence too, from Ukraine?

Yes, we're seriously going to fight for lines on a map.

As I said, not one of these 'countries' is so constituted that it can survive on it's own without becoming a Third-World hellhole. They were prospering as part of Czarist Russia, which was the fastest growing industrial and agricultural nation in the world until WWI, when the PTB had to crush and dismember it....

Seems like they have been doing fine on their own. Now... what you're advocating is the same as the US absorbing Canada and Mexico, as well as most of Central America because "they can't stand on their own".

Nothing sinister about this, it easily compares to our own American story, which has likewise been vilified by the same sort of people who vilify Russia AND America now. People piss and moan about Black Slavery and the treatment of the American Indians, about American Imperialism (Imperialism, not a bad thing really... ) and dropping the Atom Bomb, etc... And these same people piss and moan about the Russian treatment of indigenous Siberian tribes and Muslims in the Caucasus and Central Asia, Serfdom, Russian foreign policy up to WWI, 'Reactionary Christian politics' and so forth....

I support America and Russia for many of the same reasons, I love both countries, always have. Funny thing, the mystical bond between the two at critical times in the lives of both nations. When we face the menace of the prophesied Islamic 'Third Antichrist', Russia and America will stand as One against him, just as we did against Napoleon, against Hitler, and then him.



You bet.

Yes it IS SINISTER. If you can't see it then you are either blind or completely ignorant of history. It appears you like to pull bits and pieces out of historical events and twist them in such a manner that you sound like you know what you're talking about.

No one says that the destruction of indigenous populations is a GOOD thing. Except you.

[Avvakum]

Yes, we're seriously going to fight for lines on a map.

Boggles my mind that you say that, because you accuse falsely the Russian government of Communism and yet you defend the frontiers of the former administrative regions of the Soviet Union, lines drawn by Communist slavers. Don't sound very anti-soviet or anti-communist to me, but maybe I'm the one missing something.

Seems like they have been doing fine on their own.

No, they aren't, but these poverty stricken regions are-some of them-getting smart and associating with Russia in a new CAPITALIST FREE TRADE ZONE called the Eurasian Economic Union.

Now... what you're advocating is the same as the US absorbing Canada and Mexico, as well as most of Central America because "they can't stand on their own".

No, it isn't that at all. As I recall, Canada and Mexico are still quite independent of the US, even though they are associated with us militarily and also economically, through NAFTA, NATO, and the OAS, for example. With Russia it is the same, with the SCO and the Eurasian Union.

Yes it IS SINISTER. If you can't see it then you are either blind or completely ignorant of history.

If you happen to be anti-Russian more than you were anti-Soviet or anti-Communist, you might think that, and then the blindness and ignorance would be all your own. History will prove one of us right, and is pitiless when it comes to the facts.

It appears you like to pull bits and pieces out of historical events and twist them in such a manner that you sound like you know what you're talking about.

No, I don't, otherwise I wouldn't be so ready, as I've shown, to change direction when I'm proven to be wrong. I don't recall you EVER having that humility.

No one says that the destruction of indigenous populations is a GOOD thing. Except you.

And I never said that either, what I have said is that those grievances are exaggerated and blown out of proportion by America haters and Russia haters, which are usually the same people, and often Leftist and Muslim provoceteurs.

The events in France PROVE what the REAL THREAT is, and you know it.