Prin Românica noastră se cam poartă memoria de scurtă durată. Atât de scurtă încât nu mai vrea (aproape) nimeni să-şi mai amintească de trecut. Poate şi pentru faptul că mediile zise "româneşti" se fac preş în faţa cauzelor susţinute de "corectitudinea politică" la putere prin unele cercuri "progresiste" (sic!) din Vest. De exemplu, nu de mult comentariile la un articol de pe Mediafax postate cu un ton favorabil Spaniei naţionaliste şi lui Franco au fost pur şi simplu eliminate - un banal "Arriba Espana! Arriba Franco" din partea mea. Deranja foarte, probabil, şi or fi avut tentă "fascistă" (?!).
Dar de ce am adus vorbă de Spania şi conflictul desfăşurat acolo între 1936-1939? Pentru că lucrurile par a fi ciudat de asemănătoare în unele privinţe cu ceea ce se petrece în zilele noastre în ţara de la extrema cealaltă a Europei, în Ucraina. Ne lovim, de exemplu, de acţiunea URSS - prin trupele trimise ca "voluntari" în ţara iberică - spre a construi acolo societatea comunistă; în Ucraina vedem cât se poate de clar că Rusia, moştenitoare declarată a URSS, şi-a trimis trupele, tot sub formă de voluntari, pentru a-i sprijini pe secesioniştii din - atenţie la termeni! - "Republicile POPULARE ale Luganskului şi ale Doneţkului", amândouă afişând simbolistică de extremă stângă. În retorica folosită se face mult caz de "pericolu faşist" ce îşi află cuibul la Kiev şi nu numai. Ca o paranteză, câţiva din cei cocoţaţi în frunte respectivelor entităţi din estul ucrainei afirmau acelaşi pericol "faşist" din partea României în vremea în care asasinau români în Transnistria.
Şi acum ajungem la un alt punct foarte asemănător: prezenţa unităţilor de adevăraţi voluntari veniţi cam din toate părţile spre a susţine o cauză ori alta. Unii, poate, pot fi încadraţi la categoria mercenari; alţii poate că sunt doar detaşaţi ca un sprijin neoficial din partea unor state. Dar grosul este constituit, totuşi, din material uman împărtăşind vederi IDEOLOGICE care îi stimulează să participe la un conflict străin patriilor lor. Practic, parcă vedem în faţă "brigăzile de internaţionalişti" care se confruntau cu diversele falange de naţionalişti la mijlocul anilor '30 ai secolului trecut.
Un material realizat de BBC credem că este edificator în această privinţă:. Remarcăm că, spre diferenţă de Mediafax, instituţia britanică de presă nu are parti-pris-uri ideologice.
31 August 2014
Last updated at 23:32 GMT
Rafa Munoz Perez, a Spaniard serving with the rebels in Donetsk, wears a Spanish Republic wristband
The non-mercenaries among them are motivated by causes which
can stretch back to the wars in the former Yugoslavia - and even further
still, to the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s.
Russia is the elephant in the room, dwarfing any other
foreign nationality, although it is increasingly hard to disentangle
Russians fighting as volunteers from regular soldiers allegedly deployed
on covert missions.
Ukraine's pro-Russian rebels like to talk up their foreign
volunteer fighters, presenting them as latter-day International Brigades
fighting "fascism". Meanwhile there has been some
debate in Kiev on the wisdom of creating a Ukrainian "Foreign Legion".
Here we look at some of the foreign fighters by country of origin, in a phenomenon which, in a small way, mirrors that of
young Muslims from Britain and other parts of Europe travelling to the Middle East to fight in its wars.
Russia
It is no secret that
Russian citizens have occupied senior posts among the rebels,
the most famous of them being Igor "Strelkov" Girkin, who reportedly
held the rank of reserve colonel in Russia's Federal Security Service as
late as last year.
There is strong
evidence that rank-and-file Russian fighters have entered east Ukraine to join the rebels,
but whether they are volunteers making common cause with ethnic
Russians in Luhansk and Donetsk, or mercenaries, is a grey area.
Rebel leader Alexander Zakharchenko has stated publicly that
between 3.000 and 4,000 Russian "volunteers" have fought for the rebels
since the start of the uprising in April.
"There are also many in the current Russian military that
prefer to spend their leave among us, brothers who are fighting for
their freedom, rather than on a beach," he said on 28 August.
Chechen fighter Ruslan Arsayev
Evidence has mounted that regular Russian soldiers are involved, with 10 paratroopers
captured inside Ukraine and
indirect evidence of military casualties at home in Russia.
Chechens, both from Russia's Republic of Chechnya and from
the anti-Russian diaspora living in exile, are believed to be involved
on both sides of the conflict, but predominantly fighting for the
rebels.
A gunman who presented himself as a Chechen called Ruslan Arsayev told the Mashable news website in an
interview he was fighting for Ukraine because he wouldn't "bend over for Putin".
At the scene: Oliver Carroll, journalist working in Ukraine
A number of foreign fighters serve in the Aidar volunteer
battalion currently fighting in east Ukraine. Chechen Ruslan Arsayev is
perhaps the most colourful example. An army veteran of six military
campaigns, Ruslan came to Ukraine to fight during the Maidan revolution.
He was injured twice, once seriously, when a bullet punctured his lung.
He comes from a well-known family of warriors. One of his
brothers was security minister in Aslan Maskhadov's rebel government.
Another was convicted of hijacking a plane en route to Moscow in 2001,
an action that resulted in the loss of three lives.
At the Aidar base near Luhansk, Ruslan explained he had come
to Ukraine because of Putin. "Putin has turned my home into Stalin's
Russia, with a dozen informants on every street," he said. He wasn't
prepared to accept Putin's rule, and predicted an uprising in Chechnya
in the "very, very near" future.
France
Some 20 French citizens have gone to Ukraine to fight on both sides, French public radio station France Info said in a
report (in French) on 11 August.
Four of them, including two former soldiers, went to Donetsk to fight for the rebels. They were
filmed by Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda posing with guns.
Their spokesman is Victor Lenta, 25, who earlier told France's Le Monde newspaper (
article
in French) he had been a corporal in the Third Marine Infantry
Paratroop Regiment and had served in Afghanistan, Ivory Coast and Chad.
Another member of the group is Nikola Perovic, also 25 and with Serbian
ancestry, who likewise reportedly fought in Afghanistan as a corporal in
France's 13th Mountain Infantry Battalion.
The French group gave Le Monde journalist
Pierre Sautreil a photo of Nikola Perovic holding up a French flag in
the southern Donetsk region on 11 August
They told Le Monde they were the founders of an
ultra-nationalist movement called Continental Unity, which has organised
demonstrations in France and Serbia in support of Syrian President
Bashar al-Assad and Serbian war crimes suspect Vojislav Seselj.
In their view, according to Le Monde, Russia is the final
bulwark against liberal globalisation which they consider "responsible
for the decline in national values and loss of French sovereignty".
Their main role among the rebels, apparently, is to provide combat training for recruits from West European countries.
Gaston Besson, on the other hand, has been fighting for the
Ukrainian government as a member of its Azov volunteer battalion, a unit
known for its far-right associations.
Aged 47, he nonetheless describes himself as a "leftwing
revolutionary", according to France Info. Reported to be a former
paratrooper, he is said to have fought in previous conflicts ranging
from Croatia to Colombia
He is known for his efforts to recruit other foreigners and, according to a Eurasianet
article,
wrote in June: "Every day I receive dozens of requests to join us by
email, especially from countries like Finland, Norway and Sweden."
At the scene: Pierre Sautreuil, French journalist working in Ukraine
I met the French volunteers for the first time on 9 July in a
bar in Budapest, Hungary. Up until then, our exchanges by phone had
been brief and their answers evasive.
The rules for this first meeting were simple: they pose the
questions. They feared I might be a French intelligence agent. "We can't
trust you yet."
After a long series of questions about my background, and my
opinions on the Ukrainian crisis, they asked for my passport and
photographed it several times.
"We have nothing but enemies in intelligence," one of them told me, handing back my passport. We said our goodbyes.
Next day I got a phone call: "Our friends have completed
their little investigation. You're clean. We'll meet at 19:00." And thus
began my investigation.
Spain
For two Spanish leftists, the conflict in east Ukraine represents a chance to repay what they see as a historic favour.
Angel Davilla-Rivas (C) and Rafa Munoz Perez (R) in Donetsk
Angel
Davilla-Rivas told Reuters news agency
he had come with his comrade Rafa Munoz Perez to fight for the rebels
in recognition of the Soviet Union's support for the Republican side in
the Spanish Civil War.
Mr Munoz, 27, is a former social worker from Madrid who has
been a member of the youth wing of the United Left political movement
since 2010, Spain's El Pais newspaper said in an
article. His friend, 22, is from Murcia and belongs to the youth wing of a branch of the Spanish Communist Party, the paper added.
Mr Davilla-Rivas showed off tattoos of Soviet leaders Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin on his torso.
"I am the only son, and it hurts my mother and father and my
family a lot that I am putting myself at risk. But... I can't sleep in
my bed knowing what's going on here," he told Reuters.
There are also reports of Spaniards fighting on the government side, according to an
article in the Kyiv Post.
Serbia
Dozens of Serbs are believed to be fighting for the rebels,
ostensibly drawn by an ethnic and nationalist sense of solidarity with
the region's Russian Orthodox Christians and residual hostility towards
Nato, regarding the Ukrainian government as its proxy.
However, Belgrade-based security expert Zoran Dragisic told German broadcaster Deutsche Welle in a
report that Serbian fighters were primarily fighting as mercenaries and could be found on both sides in Ukraine.
"It's indoctrination that draws young people - some of them almost children - to war," he said.
Meanwhile, there are moves within Serbia to stem the flow of
fighters heading east with a law that penalises participation in a
foreign war.
Sweden
In an
interview
with the BBC's Dina Newman, a Swedish sniper with far-right views,
Mikael Skillt, said he was fighting for the Ukrainian government because
he believed in the "survival of white people". Like France's Gaston
Besson, he is a member of the Azov battalion.
"I would be an idiot if I said I did not want to see survival
of white people," he said. "After World War Two, the victors wrote
their history. They decided that it's always a bad thing to say I am
white and I am proud."
At the same time, he added that he planned eventually to
fight for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad because he believed Mr Assad
was standing up to "international Zionism".
Poland
Reports that Poles were fighting in Ukraine prompted the
government in Warsaw to formally deny that Polish citizens were fighting
as mercenaries for the Ukrainian government. It went on to warn that
any Poles who go there to fight could face jail upon their return,
Deutsche Welle reports.
Leonid Smolinski, a 49-year-old Polish citizen born in
Ukraine, was killed in a rebel ambush on 12 August while serving in
Ukraine's Dnipro volunteer battalion,
according to Euromaidan Press.
At least one Pole has also sided with the rebels. In a speech in the rebel capital Donetsk,
carried by radical Polish website xportal, Bartosz Becker described himself as a representative of "Polish free people who are against Nato terrorist bases in Poland".
Germany
Margarita Zeidler is a former nurse who moved to Ukraine in
2002 for religious reasons after converting to the Russian Orthodox
Church, according to an
interview with Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper (in Russian).
Dismayed by events in Kiev during the Maidan uprising over
the winter she moved initially to Crimea, then to Donetsk region, she
said, after one of her friends was shot dead there in May. She became
the rebels' information officer in Sloviansk during its siege by
government forces.
While she describes herself as a journalist, she told the newspaper that she always keeps an assault rifle "within reach".
Speaking in Russian in a
video posted on YouTube on 11 August, she said she could not "stand by and watch Ukrainian fascists kill civilians".
USA
Despite rebel allegations to the contrary, there is little
evidence of American volunteer involvement on the ground. The exception
was a Ukrainian-American called Mark Gregory Paslawsky, who had taken
Ukrainian citizenship.
Paslawsky, or Franko as he liked to be known, was
killed fighting for the Ukrainian government side in the embattled town of Ilovaisk. In an
interview for Vice News,
the 55-year-old West Point graduate and investment banker from New York
had explained he wanted ultimately to help root out corruption in
Ukraine, saying "the political elite has to be destroyed here".
Russian media suggest that there are US citizens fighting for the rebels too.
Italy
Francesco F, 53, enrolled in the Azov battalion to "fight a
good fight against Russia", the Italian weekly Panorama reported in an
article (in Italian) in June.
Already doing business in Ukraine two years before the
violence erupted, he said he had "found his home alongside Ukrainian
nationalists" on the Maidan barricades.
Francesco, who also featured in a
video report by Il Giornale, has a past in the far right in Italy, according to Panorama.
Other countries
Other nationalities are reportedly involved in the conflict, probably in small numbers.
Citizens of Georgia, Belarus, Baltic states, Finland, Norway,
Canada, Croatia, Slovenia and the Czech Republic, as well as Russia,
are said to be involved as volunteers on the government side.
Rebel leader Alexander
Zakharchenko said on 17 August that his foreign volunteers also included a number of Turks and Romanians.
