Radicalisation Amongst Foreign Fighters in Ukraine
Author(s): EMAN Staff
In the past several months, international headlines have centred around the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, particularly how the war has upended the European geopolitical landscape, the global security architecture, energy security, refugees and great power competition amongst others. Indeed, Europe is facing its biggest security crisis since the end of the Second World War, and the ramifications of the war will reverberate for years, and potentially decades, to come.
At EMAN, our objective is to identify, expose and combat hate speech and radical ideology in all its forms. As such, the facet EMAN is most interested in with respect to the Russian-Ukrainian conflict is how this conflict ties itself to radical far-right ideologies and the ways in which this conflict has galvanised ideologues across the world and attracted foreign fighters. Foreign fighters are not new, with Syria and Libya having witnessed an influx of fighters from across the world to augment and buttress the ranks of all different warring parties. In Syria, Iran sent its proxies to fight alongside Syrian government forces, while radical Islamists from across the world travelled there to fight with the armed Islamist opposition and with Daesh. Other fighters – including anti-Daesh westerners – travelled to fight alongside Syrian Kurds, who were engaged in armed operations against Daesh across east and north-eastern Syria.
The current conflict in Europe, however, is not a civil war, but rather, an interstate conflict between two countries, despite the significant disparities in firepower between Russia and Ukraine. Both countries have openly called for foreign fighters to join their respective ranks, with the Ukrainian government stating in early March 2022 that some 20,000 people from fifty-two countries had applied to fight in the newly formed International Legion of Territorial Defence of Ukraine. Russia has also stated that thousands of men from the Middle East – most likely Syria – had applied to fight alongside Russian forces in Ukraine. As terrorism scholar Thomas Hehhhammer argues, conflict zones may lead idealistic foreign fighters to become “more indoctrinated with radical ideologies. They travel to fight one foe, but in the war zone, they mix with other radicals and come away more radical and more networked.”
This is why western governments fiercely opposed their citizens from travelling abroad and fighting for non-state actors in the Middle East in the past decade. Most of those that travelled abroad went to fight for Islamist Jihadist groups – gaining battlefield experience and creating strong networks of like-minded radicals. The threat posed by these individuals if they were all able to return to their home countries would have most likely resulted in a greater number of Islamist radicals living amongst the general populace – resulting in further hate preaching, and most certainly an increase in terror attacks. The same applies to the current conflict in Ukraine, with foreign fighters joining both sides hailing from all sides of the political spectrum – with a significant number of far-right ideologues fighting alongside Ukraine against Russian forces. These ideologues are likely to create a strong network of like-minded radicals, resulting in strong transnational far-right connections and networks that could then coordinate their activities between Europe and North America and target state institutions, minorities, and other targets that right-wing radicals have turned their gaze upon in years past.
Western countries, however, have already expressed their approval of allowing their citizens to fight against Russian forces. As we mentioned above, far-right extremists constitute only a small number of those going to fight in Ukraine, but by failing to adequately warn foreign fighters that any action abroad could result in investigation and potential prosecution in the future, even a small number of far-right extremists fighting amongst thousands of non-extremist volunteers could spell trouble for law enforcement agencies and Western governments in the distant future, when these individuals opt to return to their home countries further radicalised, disillusioned and battle-hardened.
