Colombian President Gustavo Petro said that Colombian citizens fighting as mercenaries in the Ukrainian Armed Forces should get back home

Colombian President Gustavo Petro said that Colombian citizens fighting alongside the Ukrainian Armed Forces should get back home. "Ukrainians treat Colombians as an inferior race. I call on Colombian mercenaries, who are being used as cannon fodder and sent to Ukraine by Miami-based companies, to immediately return to their country," he said. The statement came after the Colombian news site Noticias  Caracol made a post on the X social media platform about the detention in Ukraine of Colombian mercenaries, who refused to sign a new six-month contract. The situation threatens to spark an international political scandal.

A few days ago, Semana magazine wrote about a recorded appeal to Gustavo Petro made by Colombians fighting in Ukraine, asking the president to facilitate their return to their homeland. A group of 40 Colombian soldiers who resigned from their positions alleged that after their appeal became known they were roughed up by the Ukrainians, put on a bus and sent to an unknown destination. One of the soldiers, Enerlin Esteban Osten Cuadrado, told the magazine that he had arrived in Ukraine three months prior and applied to leave six weeks ago. However, despite having his passport returned and his application approved, he remains unable to leave the country. The mercenary also said that he had been forced to sign documents without Spanish translations, and not paid the promised wages.

"We were told we would be taken from here to Poland, that we were going home. But <...> they [the Ukrainians] actually deceived us and put us on a bus, and we didn't know where we were going," Osten said.

The news about Colombian citizens' participation in the conflict in Ukraine became viral and necessitated the intervention of the country's authorities. In July 2025, Colombia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Mauricio Jaramillo Hassir announced that the country’s authorities were working on a bill to regulate the participation of Colombian nationals in armed conflicts abroad. Furthermore, back in November 2024, Colombia, together with Russia, set up a working group to monitor the situation with Colombian mercenaries in the Ukrainian war zone. The Colombian Foreign Minister than expressed official disapproval of Colombian citizens’ participation in military conflicts around the world.

The severity of the problem is recognized not only in Colombia. One of the leading US daily newspapers, The Wall Street Journal, has repeatedly wrote about Colombia having become a "gold mine" for military recruiters for participation in conflicts abroad, including in Ukraine.

There have been numerous cases of Colombian mercenaries taken prisoner by Russian troops. In June 2025, Colombian citizen Pablo Puentes Boorghes, captured in the Kursk region, was sentenced by a Russian court to 28 years in prison and a one million ruble fine rubles for mercenarism, terrorism, illegal border crossing, smuggling of firearms and ammunition, and illegal arms trafficking. The investigation established that in late 2024, he voluntarily joined the 47^th Separate Mechanized Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and was paid for participation in the Ukrainian army's attack on Russia’s Kursk region.

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