Mercenaries

Moscow already helped by Pyongyang; Zelenskyy says fighters from China, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and African also on board.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy claimed that his country’s troops in the northeast are battling foreign “mercenaries” recruited by Russia from various countries, vowing to “respond”.

The Ukrainian president visited front-line troops in the Kharkiv region on Monday, hearing reports from his “warriors” that fighters from China, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, and African countries were on board with Russia.

Russia is already known to have been assisted by thousands of North Korean troops in the defence of its Kursk region, and Ukraine had already accused Moscow of recruiting Chinese fighters – a charge denied by Beijing.

At the time of reporting, there was no comment from the additional countries accused by Zelenskyy of joining Russia’s war effort.

Reporting from Kyiv, Al Jazeera’s Charles Stratford said there was no way of verifying Zelenskyy’s claims.

Conversely, he added, “lots of foreign fighters” had also volunteered to fight for Ukraine and were still on the front lines.

Zelenskyy had met front-line fighters with Ukraine’s 17th Separate Motorised Infantry Battalion of the 57th Brigade near the front-line town of Vovchansk.

He said in a post in X that he had held discussions with commanders on “the frontline situation, the defence of Vovchansk, and the dynamics of the battles”, and was also looking at “drone supply and deployment, recruitment, and direct funding for the brigades”.

As Ukraine battled to repel Russian forces in the Kharkiv region, its troops were also engaged in “ongoing heavy fighting” around the town of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region, said Stratford.

As fighting has continued, Russian and Ukrainian officials have held several meetings in recent months in Istanbul, Turkiye.

The latest meeting secured an agreement to exchange 1,200 prisoners, Zelenskyy announced on Sunday.

That day, United States President Donald Trump said his special envoy Steve Witkoff would fly to Russia to continue talks on the war in Ukraine.

On Monday, Russian state news agency TASS cited sources saying the visit would take place on Wednesday.

Trump has threatened to impose “very severe tariffs” on Russia if it fails to reach a ceasefire deal with Ukraine soon, recently shortening his initial deadline of 50 days to within 10-12 days.

Venezuela’s aviation authority said flights will resume a day after Sunday’s parliamentary elections.

Venezuela has suspended flights from neighbouring Colombia after authorities detained more than 30 people allegedly plotting activities to destabilise the country before Sunday’s parliamentary election.

Venezuelan Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello announced on state television on Monday that the flight ban was “immediate” and would last for a week.

The arrests were announced just as an independent panel of experts released a report documenting serious human rights abuses committed in Venezuela in the aftermath of the July 28, 2024 presidential election.

Cabello said the antigovernment plans involved placing explosives at embassies, hospitals and police stations in Venezuela. He said authorities had detained 21 Venezuelans and 17 foreigners, some of whom hold Colombian, Mexican and Ukrainian citizenship. Cabello said those detained arrived from Colombia, some by plane, others over land, but had set out originally from other – unnamed – countries.

Cabello, without offering any evidence, said the group included experts in explosive devices, human smugglers and mercenaries, and was working with members of Venezuela’s political opposition.

“The scenario they want to present is that there are no conditions in Venezuela for holding an election,” Cabello said, referring to the opposition.

Colombia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement it had not received any information from Venezuela’s government regarding the detention of Colombian citizens.

Colombia’s civil aviation authority confirmed that commercial flights between the countries had been suspended, while Venezuela’s aviation authority said the measure will last until Monday, May 26 at 6pm local time.

‘Political repression’

The government of President Nicolas Maduro, whose re-election in July 2024 to a third term was rejected by much of the international community as fraudulent, frequently claims to be the target of US and Colombian-backed coup plots.

In an interview over Zoom with the AFP news agency last week, opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who went into hiding after last year’s presidential election, pledged a voter boycott on Sunday that would leave “all the [voting] centres empty”.

The opposition says its tally of results from the July vote showed a clear victory for its candidate, former diplomat Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, who went into exile in Spain after a crackdown on dissent.

The independent panel of experts backed by the Organization of American States on Monday wrote in their report that Venezuela’s post-election period has seen “the most severe and sophisticated phase of political repression in Venezuela’s modern history”. This included the execution of unarmed protesters, enforced disappearances and an increase in arbitrary detentions. They also noted that the state had expanded its repression targets beyond political opponents and human rights defenders to include poll workers, election witnesses, relatives of opposition members, minors and others.

The diplomatic outcry that followed last year’s election saw Venezuela break off ties and flight routes with several countries. Some airlines have also cancelled operations to and from the country due to unpaid debts.

Venezuela and Colombia reopened flight routes in November 2022, after the election of Colombia’s first-ever leftist President Gustavo Petro, who reinstated bilateral ties broken off in 2019 when then-leader Ivan Duque refused to acknowledge Maduro’s re-election to a second term.