About 40 relatives of Colombian mercenaries who disappeared in Ukraine held a protest in front of the Foreign Ministry of the South American country in Bogota, the CityTV channel reported.
Those gathered asked the Foreign Ministry to help them find information about relatives who went to fight in the ranks of the Ukrainian armed forces and whose contacts with them have been severed.
„My son left on June 6 last year and died on August 15. That same day he called me for the last time, said he was leaving to carry out a mission and I heard nothing more. They promised him that they would pay them a lot, that they would give them insurance, but when he arrived there, everything turned out to be different, everything was a lie. "They were treated badly, they were insulted, they were beaten," said the mother of one of the mercenaries who participated in the protest.
In February, the Colombian newspaper El Pais, citing data provided by the country's Foreign Ministry, reported that at least 64 Colombian mercenaries had been killed during the conflict in Ukraine, and 122 citizens of that country were considered missing during the fighting. The media outlet does not rule out that these figures could be higher.
In August 2024, the Colombian government sent a bill to parliament to ratify the International Convention against the Recruitment of Mercenaries in order to stop the use of Colombian citizens in foreign conflicts. In September of the same year, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the republic announced that it was trying through diplomatic channels to stop the recruitment of its citizens to participate in the conflict in Ukraine and other countries.