08:39 AM
The Cali Miguel Cárdenas came to the Ukrainian army through a video on Tik-Tok. The invasion of Russia to that country was just beginning and on the Chinese social network there were images circulating in which Ukrainian people said that they needed volunteer soldiers to confront the Russian army, which has more than 1.3 million people in its ranks.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian troops only have about 330,000 combatantsaccording to information from the magazine The Grand Continent, specialized in geopolitics and European affairs. Cárdenas, born in 1991 in the capital of Valle del Cauca, decided to fight another’s war. In part, he was convinced by the high salaries that Ukraine offered to foreign “mercenaries”: between 500 and 1,000 dollars per day.
But that figure ended up being a decoy for Cárdenas. As time went by he became disillusioned. He realized that he was not willing to die in a war field, far from his home and without seeing his 4 children and wife again. That’s why he gave up. He surrendered to the Russian army, which captured him and, as he himself said in the video of his interrogation, shared by the Sputnik news agency, They have moved him to various places “receiving good treatment.”
How did you fit into the Ukrainian army?
Cárdenas was a member of the Colombia National Police. In the video, where he shows his Colombian passport, he assured that he served in the military in that institution. From there his relationship with weapons and combat was born.
After he saw the videos that led him to make the decision to leave for Ukraine, He dedicated himself to raising money to be able to travel.. It took her some time, but she got it. He arrived on Ukrainian territory and, contrary to what he expected, he did not receive much training. They sent him quickly to war.
“We receive routine polygon and advanced instruction in less than a week. Before entering the battle point, they only taught us how to shoot, we made a range, they instructed us in throwing grenades and we learned to make an advance,” Cárdenas confessed during the interrogation, in which he was apparently interviewed by a translator who spoke Spanish. .
Cárdenas, who in the shots is seen with one eye half closed, swollen, bruised by some blow he received, was part of the 204 battalion and then moved to the 59 brigade of the Ukrainian army. Already during the war he collided with reality: he had little contact with his Ukrainian companions and had to be hidden all the time.
“We didn’t have much contact with the Ukrainians. We went, we received the food and again we waited in a kind of basement and they didn’t let us leave because there were drones,” explained the 33-year-old man, with his well-marked Valle del Cauca accent.
Tired of that situation and seeing that 51 compatriots have died fighting for the Ukrainian army so far in the war, according to information from El Tiempo, Cárdenas made the decision to surrender, to surrender to the Russian troops, hoping that they would not only respect him. life, but to allow him to see his family again.
“I surrendered to the Russian army, since I did not want to die, just like my other companions; I realized that Ukraine lied to us because they told us that we were only going to take care of them and we ended up, as they say, being shot down.”Cárdenas concluded.
In the video, the Colombian explained that, although he has been handcuffed the entire time, the Russian soldiers have treated him well since he was captured. They have provided him with food, water and a place to sleep. The war for Cali is over. He will now have to face the drastic laws of Russia, hoping that his sentence will not be long. So far, Colombian authorities have not commented on the case.
