@ijatz_La_Hojita I speak English, not Ukrainian, so pretty much all the GoPro camera footage stuff I run into is from the foreign volunteers. The Ukrainians filming themselves are mainly speaking Ukrainian or Russian so I don't run into this style of video from them.

@ijatz_La_Hojita Wager is not all Russian. They recruit from many different countries. Apparently a few days ago Ukrainian forces even captured some Germans who had joined Wagner.

Though I wouldn't be surprised if there are a lot more foreign volunteers fighting for Ukraine than foreigners fighting for Russia. People like to fight for the good guys.

@pete Well, that tag as "good" is highly subjective 🙂. Here in El Salvador I know very (very) few people, even in our network of daily Bitcoiners, who identify the U.S. Deep State and their NATO tool as being the "good guys". And most of my European friends have understood that this war is the implementation of Brzezinski's strategy: to cut Ukraine from Russia, to weaken it as a world power, and ruin the E.U. economy.

Thanks for the data about Wagner, I'll look for more sources about them.

@ijatz_La_Hojita Talk to some Ukrainians rather than people who live 10,000km away from the war.

@pete It would for sure be enriching. At the same time, their story and interpretation seem to be quite different depending on their culture: the almost 9 million Russian-speaking Ukrainians tend to not see the Russian presence the same way as the Kievians and Western Ukrainians, or as the Hungarian-speaking minority.

I'm down to talk to them if they reflect the real Ukraine diversity.

@ijatz_La_Hojita “: the almost 9 million Russian-speaking Ukrainians tend to not see the Russian presence”

😂😂😂😂

As I said, go talk to some actual Ukrainians rather than spout off a bunch of Russian propaganda. For starters, there's a lot more Russian speaking Ukrainians than that... and Russia has done a great job of destroying any remaining support. It's the eastern, so-called "Russian" parts of Ukraine that have been the most devastated by Russian atrocities.

@ijatz_La_Hojita if anything, Russia's invasion has made Ukraine more united than ever. United against Russia.

@pete It'd be a long debate (I frankly doubt the 2.8 million Ukrainian refugees who fled to Russia - outside of the Donbass - unite against Russia).

The point is that now more than 50% of the troops fighting under the NATO flag in Ukraine aren't Ukrainans. That war is now the NATO States vs the other 130 States (i.e. 80% of the world population). The European Union will have to ask for peace, or live in war for the next 10 years.

@ijatz_La_Hojita No one is fighting under a NATO flag, and foreign volunteers are a tiny % of the total. I've been in Ukraine a few weeks during the war. I've seen first hand how there's Ukrainian military everywhere; foreigners are a tiny %.

Huge numbers of Ukrainians didn't have a choice about going to Russia, and there's a steady stream of them finding their way out of Russia. Hell, Russia has straight up kidnapped children, an extremely grave violation of human rights.

@pete On the basis of what I've seen, there's a consensus to admit that the Ukrainian army losses are over 100k men (deaths + out of combat). From an initial 300k men strong army, it'd logical to call more & more foreigners now.

The most frequently mentioned figures of Polish mercenaries dead in combat are between 2k & 3k. [I use the term "mercenaries", cause if they receive around USD 5k as a monthly wage - and it seems to often be higher than that - they're not "volunteers" anymore].

@pete By the way, thanks for being open to debate! It's not always the case, even on Mastodon 😃.