May 5, 2026
MOSCOW (Sputnik) – Colombian President Gustavo Petro said that 7,000 Colombian mercenaries were fighting and dying senselessly in Ukraine, and stressed that his country did not want to be an “exporter of death.”
“There are 7,000 Colombian men, trained militarily, fighting in a foreign war and dying without cause in Ukraine. We do not want to export death,” Petro said on X.
He further noted that mercenary activity is prohibited under Colombian law.
In March, amid the large-scale participation of Colombians in combat operations on the side of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Colombia ratified a bill acceding to the 1989 International Convention against the Recruitment, Use, Financing, and Training of Mercenaries.
The Colombian president had previously hit out at mercenarism, describing it as ‘robbery of the country’—a statement made in response to Russian Ambassador to Bogota Nikolai Tavdumadze’s interview with Sputnik, in which the envoy noted that the number of Colombians traveling to Ukraine as mercenaries remained high.
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