Thousands of Colombian veterans are fighting in Ukraine's armed forces, drawn by salaries up to eight times their domestic military pensions, a flow of combat labour that has made Colombia the single largest source of foreign fighters on Kyiv's front lines since Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022. They account for an estimated 40% of all foreigners serving with Ukrainian forces, according to Ukrainian military sources.

An investigation by the Ukrainian publication NV found that more than 7,000 Colombians have served in Ukraine since 2022, with Ukrainian brigades now covering their travel costs given the acute demand for frontline personnel. Colombia's President, Gustavo Petro, puts the total serving on both sides of the conflict at roughly the same figure. On the Russian side, an international report presented in Kyiv in late April, produced by the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), Truth Hounds and the Kazakhstan International Bureau for Human Rights, estimates that between 1,000 and 8,000 Latin Americans are fighting for Moscow, many having been deceived into service. The FIDH report calculates that Russia has recruited at least 27,000 foreigners from more than 130 countries since February 2022, with that foreign contingent growing by more than 30% between September 2025 and February 2026. Cuba, a close Kremlin ally, leads Latin American recruitment, with at least 20,000 citizens reportedly deployed since 2023.

The economic logic is stark. A mid-level Colombian officer earns around $1,000 (COP4mn) a month in active service, falling to roughly $700 on retirement at 70 % of final salary. Frontline pay in Ukraine runs from $3,000 to $5,000 a month, with a potential $25,000 signing bonus and a $350,000 death benefit.

“We are quite satisfied with the citizens of Colombia,” said Merle, the Ukrainian second-in-command of the 4th Battalion of Khartiia – a brigade of the National Guard of Ukraine, according to the Kyiv Post.

“They are coming here to protect and defend our motherland and are effective fighters. From the beginning of Khartiia, Colombians have been involved with the most difficult missions alongside some special force units of HUR [Ukraine’s military intelligence].” 

But Ukraine is not the only theatre drawing veterans from the South American nation. Up to 380 Colombians have been deployed to Sudan since 2024, serving alongside the Rapid Support Forces in a battalion known as the Desert Wolves, according to an investigation by the Colombian outlet La Silla Vacía. An AFP investigation identified an Abu Dhabi-based security firm as a central node in the recruitment operation, with many veterans lured by salaries of up to six times their military pension, only to disappear into a war thousands of miles from home. The pattern reflects a broader market dynamic. "Colombians are excellent value," Sean McFate, a professor at the National Defense University in Washington, told Middle East Eye. "They have a lot of combat experience and they're very good warriors. They obey chains of command, have good discipline, and cost a quarter of what an American mercenary would cost."

Colombia's 2016 peace settlement with the FARC guerrilla group left a large pool of seasoned counterinsurgency specialists underemployed. Under Colombian law, most soldiers retire by 45, often in their late thirties, with limited civilian prospects in a saturated private security market. Ukraine, as one participant at a Bogotá forum put it, becomes "the first real door that opens."

The Petro administration, which was rebuked by Russia's ambassador to Colombia last year over its lax approach to mercenarism, has responded with criminalisation rather than structural reform. Colombia's Congress ratified the 1989 UN Convention against mercenarism in December 2025, though legal experts warn the legislation does not apply to Colombians formally enrolled in Ukraine's regular armed forces, who receive equivalent pay to local soldiers. Bogotá is also advancing a dedicated bill to penalise participation in foreign conflicts.

Researchers at Bogotá's Universidad del Rosario warn that prohibition without investment in reintegration risks turning returning veterans into stigmatised, legally exposed individuals, prime recruits for criminal organisations seeking drone-warfare expertise.

Between 300 and 550 Colombians have been killed fighting for Ukraine, according to estimates cited by the Corioli Institute, a Bogotá-based conflict research body. For a country still processing the wounds of its own half-century war, the figure points to an uncomfortable question Bogotá has yet to answer: whether the state's failure to provide for those it trained to fight has simply exported the problem, one veteran at a time.