Illustrative image.

On March 12, Denis Pushilin, the head of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), said that volunteers from the Middle East may arrive soon to support the armed forces of the Donbass republics.

During an interview with Russia 1, Pushilin revealed that received a large number of applications from residents of the Middle East, who faced “radicalism” that has much in common with Ukrainian “neo-Nazism”.

“There are thousands and thousands of volunteers who are ready to come. I do not rule out that in the very near future they will be with us in the neighboring trenches, shoulder to shoulder with our units for the liberation of the Donetsk People’s Republic, as well as the Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR),” Pushilin said.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu informed President Vladimir Putin during a Russian Security Council meeting on March 11 that more than 16,000 people want to voluntarily go to the DPR and LPR. The President supported the initiative to send the volunteers to the war zone in the Donbass.

Forces from the DPR and LPR have been fighting side by side with the Russian military since the beginning of the special military operation in Ukraine.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov revealed that the volunteers are mostly Syrians. This was not a surprising considering Russia’s key role in the war on terrorism in Syria.

Syrian sources confirmed that thousands have signed up to go fight in the Donbas as volunteer. The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights even put the number as high as 40,000 in a report released on March 13.

All recent reports confirm that not a single volunteer from Syria or any other Middle Eastern state has been moved to the Donbass, so far. Russia will not likely allow anyone to go fight in the region. Volunteers will likely go thought a serious vetting process. Even after this they may not fight in Donbass, but rather help with other needed issues in the war-torn region.

https://southfront.org/head-of-donetsk-republic-says-middle-eastern-volunteers-may-arrive-in-donbass-soon/