There’s A Logic To American PMCs Allegedly Recruiting Latin American Convicts To Fight In Ukraine

This alleged recruitment scheme entails considerable risk of blowback.

Russia’s foreign intelligence service SVR reported on Tuesday that American PMCs are recruiting convicted Mexican and Colombian drug dealers from prison with the support of the DEA and FBI. They’re offered complete amnesty if they survive, but the talks apparently aren’t going well since the cartel members don’t want to agree without the approval of their bosses, who SVR claimed are haggling with the American security agencies to sell their members to those PMCs at the highest price possible.

It’s impossible to verify this scandalous claim but there’s a logic to it that makes this report credible. American prisons are overpacked so there’s an obvious interest in reducing capacity by funneling some of the most violent foreign inmates to American PMCs for deployment to Ukraine. Latin American convicts also tend to form powerful gangs that terrorize other inmates and even sometimes the guards too. Removing them from the prison system therefore makes a lot of sense.

Ukraine needs all the manpower that it can get too, especially those with experience handling firearms like most cartel members have. A bill was introduced into the Rada last month for legalizing the mobilization of prisoners while the Land Forces Commander said earlier in the week that nobody is allowed to sit out the conflict. This followed Ukraine lowering its draft age from 27 to 25 in order to replenish its depleted forces after Russia claimed in February that they already lost over 444,000 troops.

For as logical as this alleged recruitment scheme might seem, it entails considerable risk of blowback since those who survive could constitute an unprecedentedly dangerous threat to their homelands upon return. The region is already reeling from cartel violence, which is driven by Mexican and Colombian groups, and Ecuador almost fell to the cartels in early January. Those members with battlefield experience could train others with a view towards one day successfully seizing control of a state.

Of course, the American security agencies are counting on those prisoners being killed by Russia if they agree to go to Ukraine to participate in NATO’s proxy war, but even the survival of just a handful could eventually destabilize Latin America even more with time upon them passing along their experience. Another interesting point to dwell upon is why these PMCs are allegedly recruiting foreign convicts in the first place. SVR’s report therefore suggests that not enough average people are joining on their own.

This includes Americans and Latin Americans alike, hence why prisoners are supposedly being recruited, and not regular ones either but only those foreign ones with likely experience handling firearms. Local gangbangers from the inner city are probably considered too undisciplined and their possible return to the streets could cause a major political scandal if word spreads about what they had to do in order to be released. The security agencies also don’t want them training other gangbangers either.

All told, this alleged recruitment scheme isn’t expected to change the military-strategic dynamics of the Ukrainian Conflict, exactly as SVR concluded in their press release. Its only significance is that it reinforces just how desperate the West is to perpetuate their proxy war by helping Kiev replenish some of its forces in order to prevent a possible Russian breakthrough by sometime later this year. That might be inevitable, however, which would make this scheme all for naught.