Russia is trying to recruit former Afghan commandos for the war in Ukraine, writes the American magazine Foreign Policy, citing its sources.
According to the magazine, former servicemen of the Commando Corps, the most combat-ready unit of the Afghan National Army, trained by American and British instructors based in Afghanistan, receive messages from Russian recruiters promising generous rewards for participating in the war in Ukraine. It is not known on whose behalf the recruiters are acting, but the magazine's sources assume that Wagner's PMC is behind these attempts. As one of the interlocutors of the magazine, a 35-year-old former commando captain, told, he helped several former comrades in the service to contact the recruiter, who organized their flight to Tehran, from where they flew to Russia.
There may be 20,000 to 30,000 former commandos in Afghanistan who failed to evacuate to Western countries. Many of them are forced to hide from the Taliban. Not all of them are ready to fight on the side of Russia, which they consider an enemy, but, as the interlocutors of the publication say, the fierce situation in which they found themselves can force several thousand people to take such a step.
The Afghan military, abandoned, in fact, by their Western partners after their withdrawal from Afghanistan, could become natural allies of Ukraine if they were given such an opportunity, the publication notes.