Europol warns that criminal organizations are increasingly recruiting veterans from Ukrainian war to carry out kidnappings, assassinations, and other violent ‘jobs.’ Europol chief Andy Kraag calls it a “worrying trend,” saying criminal groups are now seeking out battle-hardened fighters shaped by nearly four years of war—some of whom were deliberately sent there by drug cartels to gain battlefield experience.
Kraag notes that nearly all Western European countries have citizens serving as mercenaries in Ukraine—but cartel members from Latin America have joined as well.
Spain’s El Mundo recently reported that smugglers in Latin America are funnelling Mexican, Brazilian, and Colombian men into Ukrainian units, “traded like cattle,” as the paper put it.
Kraag says Europol recently helped several Western European countries dismantle a criminal group that was preparing to kidnap a major crime boss. Among those arrested were former members of the French Foreign Legion, which itself has fighters in Ukraine.
According to a July report by French outlet Intelligence Online, Mexican volunteers had joined the International Legion not out of solidarity, but to acquire advanced combat drone training for drug cartels back home.
A Dutch veteran, using the pseudonym Hendrik, told De Telegraaf that the threat is real. “At one point, I was more afraid of Colombians than of Russians,” he said, adding that Colombian fighters were everywhere. “We saw thousands of them. They were in the Foreign Fighters Legion, but they were basically a private army,” he says. According to him, many openly admitted they worked for cartels. He describes being attacked in his sleep and recalls a German comrade stabbed by six Colombian fighters over an unpaid sum worth just four euros. The German soldier survived after being found by a patrol.
Hendrik says many Ukrainian units eventually refused to take Colombians, claiming they were used as expendable “cannon fodder” in hopeless trenches. “They’d check their phones to see if their salary had arrived. If not, they’d drop everything and walk away. If a commander didn’t pay, they’d stab him. I was more scared of them than of the Russians.”
He also claims that security checks by Ukraine’s SBU focused only on links to Russia. “Whatever else you’ve done doesn’t matter. The Legion was full of criminals and lunatics.”
Brussels has poured millions into training drone operators and advancing weaponized drone technology—programs that now risk empowering criminal networks far from Europe. As Kraag warns, the combination of hardened veterans and evolving drone warfare is already spilling over into criminal markets.
