Will soldiers from Yemen soon fight in Ukraine?

2024-11-27 08:36:00, Kosova & Bota CNA

According to the "Financial Times" newspaper, Russia will also engage soldiers from Yemen in the war in Ukraine. The Prime Minister of Poland, Donald Tusk, thinks that the risk of a "global war" is "serious and real".

In its war of aggression against Ukraine, Russia is using not only combat drones from China and Iran, but also ballistic missiles from Pyongyang. Russia has also engaged soldiers from North Korea, and soon soldiers from Yemen may also participate in the war. According to the Financial Times, the Huthi Islamic militia is recruiting mercenaries to serve in the Russian army. We are talking about several hundred Yemeni mercenaries who have been sent to Russia through a dubious "human trafficking" system.

Citing affected persons, the newspaper writes that some of the men had lured them to Yemen with the prospect of working in Russia and obtaining Russian citizenship. The moment they arrived in Russia, they were forcibly recruited into the Russian armed forces and immediately sent to the front in Ukraine.

Recruitment by a Huthi politician

Recruitment in Yemen is carried out by a company founded by a prominent Houthi politician. The "Financial Times" has obtained a recruitment contract from which it is understood that Yemeni men have been recruited for the Russian army since July. Iran-backed Houthi militias have repeatedly attacked Western tankers in areas such as the Gulf of Aden since the start of the Middle East war about a year ago.

Warning of a "global war"

If these reports are true, "this is extremely worrying", says the Foreign Ministry in Berlin. The risk of a "global war" is "serious and real", warns the Prime Minister of Poland, Donald Tusk. Is there a risk of further internationalization of the war?

Or is this already a reality? Valeriy Zalushnyi, the former head of Ukraine's armed forces, now Ukraine's ambassador to the UK, says he believes World War III has already begun - because many countries have long been embroiled in the conflict.

What seems clear is that according to recent estimates, Russia has already lost 700,000 soldiers, either killed or wounded in the war in Ukraine. This is probably one of the reasons why some 12,000 soldiers from North Korea, which the ruler Kim Jong Un sent to Russia, are currently fighting, especially in the Kursk region.

Russia has big problems with resources

In an interview with DW, Roderich Kiesewetter, a foreign policy expert in the parliamentary group of the CDU party, said that this news does not surprise him, because "Russia has had big problems with resources for some time, both materially in the fields of certain and human. Russia now has to pay large sums of money to mobilize Russian soldiers and is now luring soldiers with debt forgiveness."

President Putin has long worked closely with the Islamic terrorist group Hamas or the Houthi militias, both of which are supported by Iran: "So it is not surprising that now soldiers are being recruited from Yemen. They are said not to be Houthi terrorists , but citizens from Yemen who lure them to Russia with false promises and then practically recruit them by force."/ DW