BEIRUT —
Russia has drawn up lists of 40,000 fighters
from Syrian army and allied militia ranks to be put on standby for deployment
in Ukraine, a war monitor reported Tuesday.
اضافة اعلان
The Kremlin said
last week that volunteers, including from Syria, were welcome to fight
alongside the Russian army in Ukraine.
The
Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Russian officers, in coordination with the
Syrian military and allied militia, had set up registration offices in
regime-held areas.
“More than
40,000 Syrians have registered to fight alongside Russia in
Ukraine so far,”
said Rami Abdel Rahman who heads the UK-based monitor, which has a wide network
of sources in Syria.
Moscow is
recruiting Syrians who have acquired combat experience during Syria’s
11-year-old civil war to bolster the invasion of Ukraine it launched on
February 24.
Russian officers
deployed as part of the force Moscow sent to Syria in 2015 to support Damascus
have approved 22,000 of them, Abdel Rahman said.
Those fighters
are either combatants drawn from units of the regular army or from pro-regime
militia groups who have experience in street warfare and received Russian
training.
In a country
where soldiers earn between $15 and $35 per month, Russia has promised them a
salary of $1,100 to fight in Ukraine, the observatory reported.
They are also
entitled to $7,700 in compensation for injuries and their families to $16,500
if they are killed in combat.
Another 18,000
men have registered with the
Syrian regime’s ruling Baath party and will be
screened by the Wagner Group, a Russian private military contractor with links
to the Kremlin, the monitor said.
The observatory
said it had no confirmed reports yet of any Syrian recruits leaving for
Ukraine.
A Syrian
government representative denied the recruitment drive detailed by the
observatory.
“Until now no
names have been written down, no soldiers registered in any centers. nor has
anyone travelled to Russia to fight in Ukraine,” Omar Rahmoun of the National
Reconciliation Committee told AFP.
Syrian mercenaries
have already fought on opposing sides of foreign conflicts in Libya and
Nagorno-Karabakh.
Syria has served
as a testing ground for Russia’s military strategy in Ukraine, with many of
Moscow’s tactics there drawing from its war experience in Syria, where it
tested most of its weapons systems.
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