By Stefanos Skamagas

The Labor Market 

When a conflict or a war erupts, usually between two actors with contradicted interests, there is a justified base for the actions, such an ethical cause, the protection of minorities or even a female presence, such as the Helen of Troy. But, in an extended point of view, the most common reason lies in the geopolitical reality and the underlying drivers are usually more dull, such as energy, financial and pure interests of the state. 

What is less discussed is how quickly a bilateral war becomes a multinational one. A conflict of sufficient scale and duration doesn’t just draw in allies and advisors but also becomes a labor market. And like any labor market with high demand, low wages, and a workforce that can be diluted into anonymity, it attracts people whose economies have already failed them, the underemployed, the criminalized, and the specialized alike.

This article looks at how the Russia-Ukraine war has become exactly that kind of market for Colombian, Cuban, Nepali, North Korean, and African recruits, and more specifically, for cartel and gang linked individuals who appear to be treating the front line less as a paycheck and more as a training ground.

Statistics and Workforce

Russia’s recruitment of foreign nationals has created a pattern of a systematized plan. Since the full-scale invasion began in February 2022, Russia has recruited at least 27,000 foreign nationals from more than 130 countries and Ukrainian military intelligence projects the Kremlin will recruit at least 18,500 more foreigners in 2026 alone.

The pattern recurs across continents. In sub-Saharan Africa, Nepal, Cuba, and Yemen intermediaries have approached recruits with promises of well-paid civilian jobs, such as construction, security, cleaning, with perks to claim Russian citizenship, only for the recruits to find themselves in uniform and at the front within days of arrival. A recent legal analysis frames it in far harsher terms. A joint report concludes that Russia’s recruitment practices support a prima facie finding that Russia bears responsibility for operating a global human trafficking scheme targeting vulnerable individuals through coercion or deception, distinct from North Korea’s state-to-state troop deployment. 

In detail, Russia, based on Ukrainian intelligence estimates, has recruited at least 20,000 Cuban citizens, ranking Cuba at the very top of source countries, with recruits averaging 35 years old and paid roughly $2,000 per month. On the other side of the ocean, Nepal is topping the list of foreign recruits, as a leaked Moscow medical database showed that at least 603 nationals passed through Russia’s Moscow selection point between April 2023 and May 2024. Finally, regarding the African continent, Russia has disguised recruitment as humanitarian outreach, opening a Russian cultural center in Togo that Ukraine’s countering disinformation center says doubles as a covert recruitment hub. Kenya alone estimates over 1,000 of its citizens have been recruited, with at least 89 confirmed on the front lines as of February 2026, and has charged one recruiter with human trafficking.

Not for the Paycheck, but for the Skillset

The Colombian case is where this story becomes something more specific than economic desperation. President Gustavo Petro has said nearly 7,000 Colombians are fighting for money in the frontline in eastern Europe, while the UN put the number closer to 10,00, with most of the documented recruits are former Colombian soldiers, trained in a counter-guerrilla doctrine that maps unusually well onto the drone and infantry warfare Ukraine has become known for.

In a deeper look, a Ukrainian Security Service investigation from July 2025 found that drug traffickers from Central and South America were specifically infiltrating Ukrainian Foreign Legion units in order to gain experience operating FPV drones, not for the paycheck, but for the skillset. The transfer of the knowledge to their own theater of operation is already visible. Latin American armed groups have treated footage from the Ukraine war as a turning point, reportedly increasing drone use in Mexico and Brazil, while Colombian groups, such as the ELN and the Gulf Clan, have measurably improved their own drone capabilities, a shift with a documented human cost. Specifically, a 10 year old boy was killed in a drone attack attributed to FARC dissidents as early as 2024, and Colombian security forces have since logged small-unit drone attacks up to and including strikes against a military Black Hawk helicopter.

Prison recruitment, as well

The economic desperation model isn’t the only pipeline. Reporting has also surfaced a coercive variant closer to the frontline. Convicted individuals in Russia’s own prison system, and reportedly elsewhere, being offered reduced sentences or outright freedom in exchange for combat service. For gang members and convicts already acclimated to a violent, hierarchical daily existence, the front line functions less as an economic opportunity than as an alternative to imprisonment, or as a controlled environment in which to operate with impunity.

The day after tomorrow 

The mechanism that should worry policymakers isn’t the recruitment pipeline itself, it’s what recruits bring home. Drone warfare in Ukraine has demonstrated a simple economic truth, the cheaper and more accessible a technology becomes, the faster it proliferates into contexts far removed from its original battlefield.

A gang’s arsenal has historically escalated in fairly predictable steps , a knife, a 9mm, a black-market AK egyptian variant, maybe an FN FAL or an RPG. Drones break that pattern. They are commercially available, semi-disposable, cheap to 3D-print or modify, and require only modest hands-on experience to operate effectively, experience that is now being acquired, free of charge to the cartel, on an active battlefield.

This is not theoretical. Drone tactics are already being used by cartels against rival cartels, against state security forces, and to move products across borders or into prisons. Given how thoroughly this tradecraft is now documented and shared in open-source spaces online, it is a reasonable projection that these tactics migrate further, into urban gang conflict, into low-level criminal enterprises and into asymmetric confrontations with state actors, a trajectory Latin America is already living through.