Among the fighters who came from the Middle East to join the Russian army in Ukraine, there are not only volunteers from Syria.
Some “220 soldiers” belonging to the Lebanese Hezbollah would be “already in the field” after having “transited via Syria, passing through Russia, then through Belarus, before arriving in Ukraine”, reports the Lebanese media Here Beirut, hostile to the pro-Iranian Shia party, adding that “the Russians would have asked Hezbollah to keep ready 800 soldiers among its elite units”, who would be paid “up to $1,500 per month”.
This information echoes that of the Ukrainian army staff relayed two weeks earlier. On March 17, he had indeed affirmed, in a press release broadcast in particular by the pan-Arab media Sky News Arabia, what the Russians had recruited men not only from “of the army of Bashar Al-Assad”, but also of Lebanese Hezbollah, whose fighters “have experience in urban guerrilla warfare”.
The Lebanese armed pro-Iranian party has been fighting in Syria since 2013 alongside the forces of Bashar El-Assad’s regime, kept in power thanks to the muscular military intervention of Russia from 2015, in the war which has lasted since 2011.
Nasrallah denies it but…
But as of March 18, the day after the publication of the Ukrainian army statement, the leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, hastened to deny any presence of his men in Ukraine.
“No Hezbollah supporters, soldiers or experts left to fight” in Ukraine, said Nasrallah, quoted by several media including Al-Mayadeen, close to the Shiite party.
Nevertheless, the party is clearly pro-Moscow in the current war in Ukraine. As the Lebanese daily recalls The Orient-The Day, “the secretary general of Hezbollah has repeatedly castigated the position of official Lebanon” – who condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine, saying that “the official communiqué of the Lebanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs [avait] was sent to the US Embassy in Beirut, which would have changed it to be tougher on Russia”.