Новомова How Russia blurs reality with a newspeak: “foreign mercenaries”
““Foreign mercenaries” are NATO envoys”, “Russia is fighting against the West” - such messages are promoted by Russian propaganda in relation to foreign fighters who have come to the defense of Ukraine. They say that everything is bad in Ukraine, there is no one to fight, and therefore they recruit “mercenaries”.
However, Russian propaganda substitutes the concept and calls the foreign legion mercenaries. The Foreign Legion is legally part of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the exact number of its members is not reported, like all other fighters. Accordingly, propaganda wants to downplay the importance of the Ukrainian army, opposing it to the so-called mercenaries, who allegedly outnumber them on the battlefield. At the same time, Moscow equates “mercenaries” with criminals in the context of Ukraine. However, mercenaries are really fighting on the part of Russia, for example, the Wagner group.
In general, the term “mercenary” means that a person participates in a war, but is not part of the armed forces of a particular country. Mercenaries are usually recruited by third parties and are subsequently paid for their work. Article 47 of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions of August 12, 1949 states that the mercenary is guided by the basic principle of receiving a monetary reward that is significantly higher than the remuneration of fighters of the same rank officially included in the armed forces. So, Russian propaganda is trying to show that Ukraine is recruiting foreigners to fight for it. However, the International Legion is a military unit of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, in which only military volunteers serve.
The propagandists claimed that the military from the EU countries fought on the territory of Ukraine even before the full-scale invasion, or that the number of foreigners in the Ukrainian army would soon exceed 50%. Thus, propaganda wants to create an appearance that is actually at war not with Ukraine, but with the so-called “collective West”. Analysts of Detector Media in their study analyzed the tactics by which Russian propaganda forms the image of a “foreign mercenary” in Ukraine.