A girl walks past a university building adorned with a Second World War-themed patriotic banner, in Bryansk, Russia, on March 3, 2023.KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV
Four foreigners fighting for Ukraine, including at least one Canadian, were killed on Russian soil this week in a cross-border raid gone awry, sources confirmed to The Globe and Mail.
They are the first Westerners known to have been killed inside Russia since the invasion of Ukraine began more than 2½ years ago.
Russian media broadcast videos and photographs, supplied by the country’s FSB security service, showing the bodies of four men identified as “saboteurs” who had been reportedly killed in a firefight in Russia’s Bryansk region on Sunday. Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said the casualties included Canadian, U.S. and Polish citizens.
In one video distributed by Russia’s official RIA Novosti newswire, the dead fighters were shown lying beside a large amount of weapons and ammunition – including machine guns, grenades and shoulder-fired rocket launchers – as well as two Canadian flags and a Polish-language prayer book. One of the men had tattoos suggesting he had served in the U.S. military as a Ranger.
Another video, posted to social media by Russia’s National Guard, showed what looked to be a team of about 10 people being surveilled from the air as they walked through a forest. The edited footage then showed men moving toward a long warehouse-like structure, which was then shown partly destroyed.
Three sources connected to the International Legion for the Defence of Ukraine, an umbrella for foreign fighters helping the country resist the Russian invasion, say the footage of the dead fighters was real and that at least one Canadian had been killed in Bryansk. The Globe is not naming the sources because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the battle.
One of the sources said the loss of the four men was “the worst single incident I have heard of” since foreign fighters first arrived in Ukraine in the spring of 2022, responding to an appeal for help from President Volodymyr Zelensky. At least 12 Canadians are known to have died in the war.
The sources would not disclose details of the mission in Bryansk, which was described as extremely sensitive. The names of the dead are not being released until next of kin are notified, though Russian media published identification papers belonging to one of the casualties, a decorated 41-year-old former U.S. Marine. He was also carrying documents issued by Ukraine’s HUR military intelligence service.
While regular Ukrainian troops invaded and occupied part of the Kursk region this summer – and military intelligence units have conducted occasional cross-border raids into the Belgorod region – the operation carried out by the foreign fighters represents a rare incursion into the Bryansk region, which sits at the junction of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Russian reports suggested the men were killed in the village of Manev, just across the border from Ukraine’s Chernihiv region.
Sergei Mironov, a prominent pro-Kremlin deputy in Russia’s parliament, said the fact that Western fighters were killed in a battle on Russian soil represented a “serious escalation” of the West’s involvement in the war between Russia and Ukraine.
“The West has long been involved in the war against Russia. Mercenaries, retirees, second-hand soldiers, and other NATO military personnel, including U.S. military personnel, no matter in what capacity, have been fighting against the Russians in Donbas for years,” he said in a statement, referring to the war’s main front in the southeastern Donbas region of Ukraine. “But the participation of U.S. military personnel in sabotage raids on Russian land is a serious escalation of the conflict, which does not meet the true interests of the United States. It’s too risky a game.”
The Kremlin has long pointed to the existence of the International Legion as proof that it was fighting against not only the Ukrainian army but the collective West. However, the Legion has dwindled since the start of the war, when Ukraine boasted that 20,000 volunteers had arrived ready to serve, to about 1,500 battle-hardened fighters.
The deadly skirmish in Bryansk comes as the war for Ukraine takes on an increasingly international dimension. Some 12,000 North Korean troops are reportedly training inside Russia ahead of an expected deployment to the front line in the Kursk region.
North Korea has already sent large numbers of ballistic missiles and artillery shells to Russia, while Iran has supplied Moscow with thousands of Shahed explosive drones. Ukraine, for its part, is heavily reliant on weapons supplied by the NATO military alliance, though there are fears that the United States may decrease or end its support if Donald Trump wins next week’s presidential election.
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte has called the involvement of North Korean troops a “dangerous expansion” of the war. The North Korean intervention comes as Russian forces are slowly grinding forward along much of the 1,000-kilometre-long front line inside Ukraine.
U.S. President Joe Biden said Tuesday that he was “concerned” about the North Korean deployment, while South Korea has sent a delegation to Kyiv this week to share intelligence with their Ukrainian counterparts.