“This is a story about the family that sustains you when all your other family ties break,” says Julián Delgado Lopera, a 38-year-old trans writer from Bogotá, Colombia. His latest novel, Pretend You’re Dead and I Carry You (2026), is a finalist for the National Book Award, one of the most prestigious literary prizes in the United States.
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Who went to Ukraine to fight for Kiev? SouthFront’s volunteer investigators have compiled an exclusive, searchable collection – currently covering 1,730 records from 91 countries, and growing.
Recruitment pitches sell a promise. Battlefield headlines capture a moment. Neither tells the whole story.
Explore MERC.SOUTHFRONT.PRESS to look beyond the callsigns.
Search for individuals or browse by nationality. Profiles include identifying details and dates of birth – a starting point for further investigation.
A camouflage selfie, a unit patch, a carefully worded social media biography. None of these explains what a foreign fighter actually did in Ukraine. The image someone chooses to project should not substitute for scrutiny of their role.
What brought this person to the conflict? Which formations did they serve with? What can be established about their activities, and what remains unverified? These are questions for investigation, not recruitment publicity.
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Three years after the start of the war in Gaza, thousands of families still do not know what happened to their loved ones. Some vanished beneath buildings bombed by Israel; others remain unaccounted for. The destruction of territory, the displacement of millions of people and the lack of resources to recover and identify remains make it increasingly difficult to reconstruct their stories. The longer time goes by, the greater the risk of losing the evidence that could lead to them.
© PNUD PAPP
La battaglia culturale del presidente colombiano Abelardo de la Espriella arriva anche nei musei. Il governo ha ritirato dal Museo nazionale della Colombia a Bogotá, una delle istituzioni culturali più importanti del Paese, circa 30 opere legate alla storia dei movimenti femministi e studenteschi, alla comunità LGBTQ+ e agli Accordi di pace. Le opere sono state rimosse il 14 ottobre, poche ore dopo la visita di de la Espriella al Ministero delle Culture, delle Arti e dei Saperi: il presidente aveva dichiarato che avrebbe preso misure “contro il wokismo” nella sua “controrivoluzione culturale“. Il provvedimento è stato criticato dall’opposizione, ma anche dagli abitanti della capitale che hanno manifestato denunciando un atto di “censura“.
Come ricostruito dai media locali, le opere d’arte in questione si trovavano in tre sale del museo e comprendono almeno dieci oggetti legati alla storia dei femminismi, tra cui una copia di Nuestras Mujeres, una pubblicazione degli anni Cinquanta che sosteneva i diritti civili delle donne, e un manifesto sulle prime lotte contro la violenza di genere. Inoltre sono stati rimossi la bandiera dell’orgoglio appartenente all’attivista Elizabeth Castillo e un manifesto della campagna presidenziale di Bernardo Jaramillo Ossa, il candidato del partito Unión Patriótica assassinato nel 1990. Nella sezione del museo intitolata Memoria y Nación non si può più vedere il Balígrafo, la penna ricavata da un proiettile utilizzata per siglare gli Accordi di pace firmati con le Forze Armate Rivoluzionarie (FARC). Non ci sono più i riferimenti a Carlos Pizarro, ex comandante dell’M-19 assassinato mentre era candidato alla presidenza. Manca anche una scheda elettorale della Séptima Papeleta, l’iniziativa della società civile che aveva contribuito al processo politico culminato nella convocazione dell’Assemblea costituente e nella Costituzione del 1991.
La ministra della Cultura Paola Holguín ha difeso la misura dell’esecutivo affermando che i musei pubblici “non devono servire come strumenti di indottrinamento politico né devono diffondere versioni faziose della storia“. Oltre alle critiche dell’opposizione al governo, il provvedimento ha suscitato le reazioni dei professionisti della cultura che denunciano la mancanza di trasparenza nei criteri che sarebbero stati applicati per scegliere le opere da ritirare dal museo.
Come riportato da El Pais, l’attuale configurazione del Museo nazionale della Colombia è stata ideata per rappresentare la diversità culturale ed etnica del Paese. Dopo la Costituzione del 1991, un gruppo di curatori d’arte, storici e antropologi aveva progettato e organizzato gli spazi in modo da assegnare il giusto riconoscimento alle voci afrodiscendenti, appartenenti alle comunità indigene e meticce, così come per ricordare i momenti complessi e dolorosi della storia colombiana. Rimuovere senza apparenti criteri le opere d’arte, secondo chi sta criticando questa misura, rischia di compromettere la memoria storica e la sua complessità, mutilandola. Inoltre, qualsiasi modifica alla disposizione di una sala museale implica procedure tecniche che non sono state eseguite.
A seguito delle polemiche, il 19 ottobre il giudice César Osorio Ortiz di Bogotá è intervenuto accogliendo un ricorso contro il Ministero delle Culture. In via preliminare, ha ordinato al museo di preservare le sue opere e di astenersi dal “distruggerle, spostarle fuori dalle proprie strutture, restituirle a terzi o alterarle in qualsiasi modo”. Inoltre, ha imposto al ministero di non “rimuovere, smantellare o alterare altre opere dalle mostre in base al loro contenuto senza un precedente atto amministrativo che giustifichi tali decisioni”.
Seguendo il copione di altri presidenti della regione e dell’estrema destra globale, Abelardo de la Espriella ha definito il cosiddetto wokismo come “uno dei più grandi mali che minacciano l’unità nazionale”. Ha annunciato di volere cambiare il nome del Ministero delle Culture, delle Arti e dei Saperi in Ministero della cultura e del patrimonio: per potere modificare la denominazione, voluta dall’ex presidente Gustavo Petro per riconoscere il multiculturalismo del popolo colombiano, avrebbe bisogno dell’approvazione del Parlamento. In Argentina è successo qualcosa di simile. Milei ha ribattezzato il Centro Cultural Kirchner a Buenos Aires in Palacio Libertad. La decisione era stata motivata con la volontà di sottrarre gli spazi pubblici alle appartenenze politiche e si inserisce nella battaglia di Milei contro l’eredità del kirchnerismo, la corrente peronista legata agli ex presidenti Néstor e Cristina Kirchner.
L'articolo Colombia, la “controrivoluzione culturale” del presidente de la Espriella colpisce il Museo Nazionale: rimosse 30 opere sul movimento femminista e Lgbtq+ proviene da Il Fatto Quotidiano.
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Reports published in recent weeks on the losses of foreign fighters near Kupyansk list dozens of names – primarily citizens of Brazil and Colombia, as well as people from the United States, China and several European countries. Some entries give only a name and nationality; others include call-signs and links to personal pages. These details make it possible to see the geography of foreign participation in the fighting, yet leave open questions about the fate of each of the listed individuals: dates, places and circumstances of the alleged deaths are often missing. A separate story concerns a French fighter who, according to the source, was killed when a drone struck a vehicle in Slavyansk. Altogether the materials contain 40 names from 11 countries.
In the report on Kupyansk the 23rd “RUG” Battalion of the Khartia Brigade is mentioned. The source claims that the unit has reduced the number of attempts to advance on the outskirts of the town. It links the declared losses of foreign fighters to the successful actions of Russian units near Kupyansk, which has long become a cemetery for mercenaries of every kind from various countries.
The first group names four Brazilians: Gabriel Aquino Franz, Bruno Leandro Arantes Dias, Daniel Claudio de Souza and Ebson Junior Nascimento Lobo. Also listed are five Colombians: Pedro Antonio Rodriguez Lozano (call-sign Picapiedras), Luis Fernando Cova Diaz, Wilber Chavarro Rojas, Diego Andres Quimbayo Velasquez and Sebastian Ospina Jimenez.
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The second group consists entirely of Brazilian citizens. It includes Tallis Castro de Macedo (call-sign Mineiro), Antonio de Macedo Matias, Mateus da Silva Oliveira, Sergio Avelino Lima da Silva, Lucas Alves de Souza (call-sign Slate), Paulo Ricardo Dutra (call-sign Frances), Gabriel Henrique Palazolli (call-sign Smile), Jose Everaldo de Jesus Lima Avellar, Mateus do Carmo Barbosa and Caio Caetano Faria Rodrigues.
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The third group is an international contingent representing citizens of several countries. Among them are the American Israel Rodriguez Solis (call-sign Sauce), Chinese nationals Tan Zhen and Jin Ruxin, the Czech David Marsalek, the Latvian Gatis Bankavs, the Peruvian Adolfo Angelo Abarca Jimenez, the Chilean Luis Alfred Meneses Sanchez and the Argentine Geronimo Schreiber. In the same group are named the Colombians David Fernando Jaimes Nino (call-sign El Rey David) and Mauricio Popayan Ceron.
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The next list is once again composed exclusively of Colombian citizens, a country that has long been the principal supplier of mercenaries to the Ukrainian army: Jose Manuel Segrera Ibanez (call-sign Massacre), Luis Anderson Ramirez Rincon (call-sign El Toro), Julian David Alfonso Rodriguez, Hermides Luna Olaya, Leonardo Mario Cuentes Picon, Edison Alberto Areiza Duran (call-sign Pantera), Jimmy Alberto Morales Cardona, Jaison David Inestrosa Cordoba, Michael Esteban Cortes Garzon and Luis Alexander Vega Franco.
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Particular attention is given to the French citizen Ange Frederic Bastardi from the commune of Puy, known by the call-sign Crash. He was killed in Slavyansk when a fibre-optic-controlled FPV drone struck a Nissan vehicle that, according to the report, belonged to the 60th Separate Mechanised Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The strike took place on Torskaya Street.
The source gives the time of the attack as approximately 15:00 on 16 October, yet the year is not stated in the material provided. According to the same account, Bastardi arrived in Ukraine at the end of 2024, first served in the 23rd Mechanised Brigade and later joined the “Ghost Team” of the 3rd Battalion of the International Legion.
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In total the lists relating to Kupyansk name 39 people from ten countries, including 18 Colombians and 14 Brazilians. Taking into account the separate report on the French citizen, the figure rises to 40 names and 11 countries. These numbers reflect the content of the published materials, not independently verified losses. Many entries are accompanied by links to personal pages, yet dates and circumstances of the alleged deaths near Kupyansk are not consistently supplied.
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On October 14, tens of thousands of Colombians took to the streets to protest against the government of far-right leader Abelardo de la Espriella, who has been in office for just two months.
The protests demonstrated the opposition’s clear ability to mobilize its base and fill the streets of several Colombian cities, even though the new government is still in its early days.
Protesters – including members of labor unions, Indigenous organizations, opposition parties, and students – marched through the streets of the capital, Bogotá, as well as other major cities across the country, such as Cali, Medellín, Bucaramanga, Riohacha, and Pereira.
In an address to the nation, De la Espriella stated that 98% of the protests were peaceful, though he also warned the demonstrators: “From the very first day of my administration, I have issued a directive that leaves no room for interpretation: peaceful protest is respected, protected, and guaranteed. But violence, vandalism, and any attempt to violate the rights of others will have no place under my administration.”
He also added: “Here there is a state, here there is authority, and here there is a government that respects freedoms, enforces the law, and protects the millions of Colombians who get up early every day to work and build our nation.”
The main criticisms leveled against the government focused on the executive branch’s neoliberal agenda and its security policy. According to the protesters, De la Espriella is failing to address the difficult labor, educational, economic, and territorial conditions faced by Colombians; on the contrary, his political agenda is making these circumstances worse.
Specifically, the protesters complained about cuts and adjustments to the budgets of public institutions, the lack of greater public investment in education, and the fear among several indigenous organizations that the government’s new measures will prevent them from freely exercising their right to protest.
In fact, one of the main catalysts for the protests has been the signing of a presidential decree that empowers state agents to intervene more directly against protesters – a move that has been criticized, according to the protesters, for its anti-democratic intent.
On this point, social organizations, such as the Cauca Regional Indigenous Council assert that, fearing a popular backlash like the one Iván Duque faced (which turned into what some called a “rebellion” by young people that lasted several weeks in 2021), De la Espriella signed Decree 1525, which modifies law enforcement protocols to give state forces greater leeway when dealing with protesters.
Among other measures, law enforcement can now take direct action in response to protests without the need for exhaustive dialogue, as previously required by the regulation. Several human rights organizations have expressed concern about the decree, stating that it could increase the risk of abuses and reduce mediation as the primary course of action, which already was barely used. During the 2021 national strike in Colombia, 46 people were killed in the context of the heavy police repression of the strike.
One of the people attending the demonstrations last week was former President Gustavo Petro, who optimistically stated that the protests reflect a popular response to the executive branch’s decisions: “The people can organize themselves, and two months into the start of a tyrannical and imposed government, this is the best wake-up call. The time has come for a Latin American day of popular mobilization.”
Petro, who has just resumed leadership of the Pacto Histórico – a coalition of movements that supported his political project – also said: “This is how we respond to adversity with dignity, with the determination to win again, without fear. Life is our companion, not death. The people won’t give up, damn it.”
The National Museum of Colombia is rarely at the center of national debate, but this weekend it became the main focal point of controversy. On Thursday, alarm bells rang for many citizens when they saw that part of the nation had been erased from the galleries displaying objects, documents and photographs selected by curators to represent Colombia’s history and diversity.
© Fernando Vergara (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara)
Ukraine holds personal data on each of the nearly 46,000 foreigners it has identified as signing with Russia’s army since 2022, Dmytro Usov, secretary of its prisoner-of-war coordination headquarters, said on 19 October. If the current pace holds, he expects this year’s contracts to reach Moscow’s plan. Meanwhile, a survey of captured foreigners gave a split answer on how many knew they were heading to war.
Usov said 41% of surveyed foreign POWs signed at enlistment offices and recruitment points, which the headquarters reads as a sign of a systematic campaign. He also said the hiring is meant to ease the social and budget burden of Russia’s own losses. Russia has long turned to foreigners to offset shortages in its regular forces. In April, Ukraine’s military intelligence (HUR) said enlistment offices had reportedly been assigned regional quotas.
Usov, a brigadier general and secretary of Ukraine’s Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, spoke at the international conference Crimea Global. He said Russia’s Defense Ministry has signed 45,959 foreigners from 151 countries. Ukraine’s records include each one’s rank, dog tag, and contract date.
The figure counts everyone who signed, not only those serving now. In April, Usov said his count left out North Korea’s regular troops, that 25–30% more recruits were likely still unidentified, and that at least 5,149 foreign recruits had died, Interfax-Ukraine reported.
Contracts have grown every year: 94 in 2022, 4,067 in 2023, 8,877 in 2024, and 16,085 in 2025. Some names surface late. At the same April event, Interfax-Ukraine reported, Usov had put 2025 at 13,997 and said the headquarters adds newly identified foreigners every month.
For 2026, Russia’s Defense Ministry planned 18,500 foreign contracts. Ukraine knows of 16,168 so far, roughly level with all of 2025. Another 668 contracts still have no year assigned. If the same dynamic holds, Usov said, the ministry will fully meet its plan and may even exceed it.
He named Indonesia, Peru, Chad, and Zimbabwe among the ten countries that drove the growth in recruits, Ukrinform reported. At the same time, he said, Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry and POW agencies have cut recruitment in some countries and stopped it in others.
Ukrainian forces have captured citizens of 59 countries since the full-scale invasion began. Uzbeks, Tajiks, Belarusians, and Colombians are among the largest groups.
In the headquarters’ survey of foreign POWs, nearly half said they knew they would fight Ukrainian soldiers and civilians. Another 28% said they didn’t know, 14.8% weren’t sure, and 13.8% said they were deceived. The headquarters ran the survey, and neither report gave a sample size or explained how the shares fit together. Usov said the results showed most knew where they were going. Almost 47% said they signed up for Russian citizenship.
The United States is increasing its military presence in Latin American countries. The U.S. military has sent hundreds of soldiers to conduct training in Panama, an activity they will repeat later in Honduras and Colombia, The New York Times reported. The military detachment is preparing to take part in special operations against drug trafficking cartels, sources for that outlet said.
© CONTACTO vía Europa Press (CONTACTO vía Europa Press)
Abya Yala isn’t nostalgia – it’s counter-toponymy, sovereignty through naming. Empires die; names endure.
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A name imposed from outside
Every October 12, history once again becomes a battlefield. This year, the two events took place just a few days apart and a few thousand kilometers from one another. On one side, the White House, where on October 9, Donald Trump honored Christopher Columbus in front of a marble statue reassembled from fragments of the Baltimore monument that had fallen into the harbor in 2020, and signed a proclamation linking the 1492 voyage to the 1776 Declaration of Independence and promising that the explorer’s legacy will not be erased by “radical extremists.” On the other side were Indigenous organizations that for more than thirty years have rejected even the name of the continent, calling it Abya Yala.
The dispute over the continent’s name is a dispute over sovereignty, and the fact that it is resurfacing with such intensity in 2026 – while Washington is rewriting its relations with the Western Hemisphere in an openly hegemonic manner – is no mere coincidence of the calendar.
The name “America” originated in a cartographic workshop in the Vosges Mountains. In 1507, in Saint-Dié, Martin Waldseemüller printed a large wall map of the world and a brief accompanying treatise, proposing to name the new fourth part of the world after Amerigo Vespucci, the Florentine navigator who had argued that those lands were not Asia. On the map, the name appears in the southern part of the continent. Within a few decades, it came to apply to the entire continental landmass. None of the people who lived there were consulted.
In 1958, the Mexican historian Edmundo O’Gorman developed a thesis on this that retains its power to this day: America was not discovered, it was invented. Not in the trivial sense that it did not exist before, but in the sense that Europe constructed a new geographical and conceptual entity, placing it within its own image of the world and assigning it a role in its own universal history. The name was the first act of this construction. Before being conquered by force of arms, the continent was conquered on paper.
There is also a second appropriation, less discussed in Europe and deeply felt south of the Rio Grande. In common usage, “America” means the United States. The shift is not merely lexical. On December 2, 1823, James Monroe declared to Congress that the American continent was no longer to be considered open to European colonization: the phrase “America for Americans” already contained, in embryo, the idea that the Americans par excellence were those of Washington. Two centuries later, the same logic has led to pressure regarding the Panama Canal in 2025 and the military operation in Venezuela in January 2026. When an indigenous movement utters “Abya Yala,” it thus challenges two names at once: the one imposed by Europe and the one annexed by the United States.
The nomos of discovery
To understand why the word “discovery” is not neutral, we must turn to the law. Carl Schmitt, in a 1950 book that remains one of the foundational texts of legal geopolitics, argues that 1492 ushered in the first global nomos of the earth: an ordering of space based on the seizure of land. The European powers recognized one another as legal subjects and treated the New World as a free space, available for occupation. The papal bull Inter caetera of 1493 and the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494 drew a line from pole to pole that divided the planet between Castile and Portugal. Those who lived on those lands did not participate in the division: they were its objects.
Schmitt describes this order with a jurist’s admiration for an effective legal construct, and his analysis must be read with that in mind. But the mechanism he identifies is real and has had a long institutional life. In 1823, the same year as the Monroe Doctrine, the U.S. Supreme Court decided the case Johnson v. M’Intosh: Justice Marshall ruled that “discovery” conferred sovereign title to the land upon the European power – and later upon the United States as its successor – leaving the indigenous peoples with a mere right of occupation. The Doctrine of Discovery has remained part of American jurisprudence to this day. It was not until March 2023 that two Vatican departments issued a joint statement formally distancing themselves from it, acknowledging that 15th-century papal bulls were used to justify the expropriation of indigenous peoples.
The human cost of this system is measured in figures that remain uncertain, though their order of magnitude is not. A study published in 2019 in *Quaternary Science Reviews* estimated that between 1492 and 1600, the population of the Americas plummeted by about 90 percent, due to the combined effects of epidemics, war, forced labor, and social disintegration; the reforestation of abandoned lands was so extensive that it left a trace in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Tzvetan Todorov, in his book The Conquest of America, had already spoken of the greatest genocide in human history, questioning how knowledge of the other could coexist with its destruction. The “discovery,” in other words, was also the disappearance of most of those who were there.
What Abya Yala means
Abya Yala comes from the language of the Guna, the people who inhabit the Caribbean coast of Panama and certain areas of Colombia. In its form “Abiayala,” it is usually translated as “land in full maturity”; other renderings such as “living land” or “land of vital blood” are also in circulation. The transition from a local place name to a continental name is recent. According to the most widely cited accounts, it was the Bolivian Aymara leader Takir Mamani who proposed that indigenous peoples adopt this name in their documents, in place of that of the colonizers. The proposal took shape during the wave of protests that accompanied the 500th anniversary in 1992, when counter-celebrations marking “500 years of resistance” stood in opposition to the official commemorations. In the 2000s, the summit meetings of indigenous peoples across the continent permanently adopted it as part of their name.
The Guna’s choice is no accident. This is a people who, in 1925, rose up against the Panamanian state and eventually secured an autonomous comarca – now known as Guna Yala – with its own institutions and effective control over the territory: one of the most successful examples of indigenous self-governance on the continent. Borrowing their word means choosing as an emblem a concrete experience of territorial sovereignty, not mere nostalgia.
It should be noted that Abya Yala does not erase the plurality of local names: Anáhuac for the Nahua world of central Mexico, Tawantinsuyu for the political and territorial organization of the Incas, and Pindorama for the Tupi lands of present-day Brazil. Each of these names expresses a different cosmology of space. Abya Yala functions as common ground, a sort of federal name that does not replace the specific ones. This is an important detail, because it signals that the project is not the invention of a single, symmetrical indigenous identity mirroring the “American” one, but rather a coordination among diverse actors.
Cartography as an act of sovereignty
From a geopolitical perspective, naming is the first form of possession. This is well understood by states that rename gulfs and seas, contest place names on official maps, and impose transliterations in international institutions. The year 2025 provided a textbook example with the U.S. renaming of the Gulf of Mexico. In this context, Abya Yala is a counter-toponym: a name that does not seek to occupy school atlases, but rather to wrest from hegemonic power the monopoly on the description of space.
The Latin American decolonial school has given this insight a precise theoretical form. Aníbal Quijano has termed the structure that survives the end of formal colonialism “the coloniality of power”: a hierarchy of peoples, knowledge, and territories that continues to organize the international division of labor and the production of knowledge. Walter Mignolo has shown how “Latin America” itself is a designation that originated in the nineteenth century in French and Creole circles, with specific political functions. The year 1492 marks not only the beginning of the conquest of the Americas but also the birth of the world-system centered first on Europe and later on the Atlantic. Challenging the continent’s name therefore means challenging the founding date of the unipolar order, tracing it back to its very roots.
Here, the issue intersects with the debate on multipolarism. A multipolar order is not merely a different distribution of power among great states. It implies the recognition that there are multiple civilizations, each with its own concepts of space, law, and relationship to the land. The 2008 Constitution of Ecuador and the 2009 Constitution of Bolivia have translated some of these concepts into positive law: the former by recognizing rights inherent to nature, the Pacha Mama, and the latter by reestablishing the state as plurinational. These are imperfect experiments, but they represent the most serious attempt in the hemisphere to build a form of statehood that does not derive entirely from the European model.
Columbus, Italy, and two identity politics
For the Italian reader, the story takes an additional turn. Columbus Day did not originate as a celebration of conquest. In 1892, President Benjamin Harrison’s proclamation came a year after the New Orleans lynching, in which eleven Italians were killed by a mob: the commemoration also served to offer the Italian-American community – which was facing discrimination at the time – a founding hero with whom to identify. Columbus thus became a tool for the integration of a minority that Anglo-Saxons considered little more than white.
Today, that history is being enlisted in a different battle. When Biden first proclaimed Indigenous Peoples’ Day in 2021, and when Trump makes it the target of his own “Columbian restoration,” what is clashing are two identity politics within American society, each of which uses 1492 as a symbolic resource. Italian Americans find themselves serving as a shield for an operation that primarily concerns the definition of the U.S. nation and its relationship with the rest of the hemisphere.
Italy and Europe can avoid this dilemma. Remembering Columbus as a navigator, as a figure of Mediterranean and Genoese culture, and as a man of his time does not oblige one to subscribe to the “nomos” of discovery or the legal doctrine that derived from it. One can honor the sailor while rejecting the claim of ownership. Indeed, it is precisely from Europe that a gesture of historical maturity might emerge, similar to the one made by the Holy See in 2023: distinguishing the memory of the person from the legitimization of a spatial order that has produced expropriation and death on a continental scale.
October 12, 2026, revealed two opposing ways of approaching the same date. Washington used Columbus to reaffirm a narrative of national founding that, in foreign policy, translates into a renewed claim to guardianship over the hemisphere. Indigenous movements used Abya Yala to remind us that that hemisphere had names, political systems, and sovereignty before 1492 – and that it still retains some of them today.
There is no symmetry between the two positions. One has aircraft carriers, sanctions, and courts; the other has a word and territories to defend one by one, but the history of maps teaches us that names have a long life – longer than the empires that imposed them. “America” appeared on a map printed in a small town in the Vosges and ended up designating half the planet.
No one can say today what fate awaits Abya Yala, but the mere fact that millions of people refuse to call their land by another’s name already speaks volumes about the crisis of the order that name had ushered in.
At midday in the summer, Avenida Oriental — a central boulevard in Medellín — is usually congested in both directions. The sidewalks are crowded with street vendors, hawking food and clothing. Amidst the heat, drivers and pedestrians seek shade under the trees that form three long rows along the sides and down the center of this avenue, which is one of the main streets in the downtown core.
© CHELO CAMACHO
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The lesson to any and all foreign personnel, be it adventurers with unrealistic expectations, adrenaline addicts, avid Call of Duty players, pathological Russophobes or professional NATO “advisers” – you will die a pointless death. Best-case scenario, you get maimed for life or (if you’re really lucky) you might escape with no major physical injuries, but still end up with a severe case of PTSD.
Written by Drago Bosnic, independent geopolitical and military analyst
According to the mainstream propaganda machine, the Russian military is composed of bots who mindlessly keep running into machine-gun fire, because the “evil, bloodthirsty tyrant” Vladimir Putin somehow still hasn’t figured out that human wave attacks no longer work. Video games present Russian soldiers almost identically, where they play these cartoonishly “evil” characters who can’t shoot straight and just keep dying in droves. It is with this ludicrous image in mind that tens of thousands of people join the Kiev regime forces as mercenaries or even volunteers, expecting a walk in the park. Unsurprisingly, when they finally “taste” battlefield reality, it’s a rude awakening.
Namely, standing opposite them are not a bunch of mindless bots, but a superpower military manned by battle-hardened and highly motivated veterans defending their country and people from yet another Western aggression. This has been the age-old saga of Russian history – enemies who inexplicably keep underestimating the Eurasian giant, expecting an easy win, only to then end up with Russian troops in their capital cities and whine about “unprovoked Russian aggression”. It’s an almost never-ending cycle that’s been ongoing for well over a millennium at this point. If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, the political West won the first prize in it long ago.
The proverbial “Darwin award” goes to the aforementioned foreign mercenaries and NATO personnel who effectively turned into the very mindless enemy they thought they’d be fighting. Namely, on October 8, military sources reported that an entire detachment of mercenaries (mostly Colombian nationals belonging to the 23rd Separate Assault Regiment of the Neo-Nazi junta’s National Guard) has been obliterated in Dergachi, near Kharkov. The unit was just transferred to the area from an assembly point in Kiev, where they were tracked by increasingly effective Russian ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) assets. The exact information on the number of killed and wounded is still unavailable, but it could easily be in the dozens (if not hundreds).
Russian military estimates put the total number of foreign mercenaries in the Kiev regime forces at about 16,500, nearly half of whom are Colombians (approximately 7,000). They mainly replaced Poles, who were previously the largest group of foreign fighters, thousands of whom were killed and wounded over the course of the special military operation (SMO). Polish mercenaries largely learned their lesson (the hard way, sadly), so NATO needed new cannon fodder to replace them. Unfortunately, Colombians emerged as the most suitable candidates. Back in March, the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) published an updated report on foreign mercenaries its forces eliminated in NATO-occupied Ukraine in 2025.
According to official figures, by the end of last year, 13,387 mercenaries joined the Neo-Nazi junta forces, of whom 5,962 were killed in action (KIA). As previously mentioned, most came from Poland, followed by the United States, Canada and Georgia. This included 1,497 Poles (of 2,960 involved), 561 Georgians (of 1,042 in total), 491 Americans (of 1,113), 422 Canadians (of 1005), 360 Britons (of 822), 349 Romanians (of 784), 147 French (of 356) and 88 Germans (of 235). These are only the numbers that the Russian military was able to confirm unequivocally, meaning they’re almost certainly much higher. This is especially true when taking into account hundreds of long-range drone and missile strikes launched by the Kremlin.
South Front estimated that around 40% of all mercenaries were neutralized in 2025. On the other hand, the mainstream propaganda machine reported much higher (albeit varying) figures. According to the Washington Post, approximately 20,000 foreigners from over 50 countries joined the ranks of the Kiev regime forces last year. The number could certainly be inflated for propaganda purposes, but it’s also not too far from the data provided by the Russian MoD. Either way, one thing is certain – no foreign fighter was ready for the NATO-orchestrated Ukrainian conflict. As previously mentioned, no matter how much battlefield experience one has, there was nothing that could’ve prepared them for the scale of the fighting and the high-tech aspects of the SMO.
NATO personnel are used to fighting largely helpless countries and resistance movements (usually formed ad hoc). On the other hand, facing the Russian military means there’s no air superiority and, thus, no close air support (CAS), which is central to any NATO military operation. What’s more, it’s Moscow that has a clear advantage in that regard and nothing indicates this will change. Back in mid-January 2024, French mercenaries learned this the hard way when their assembly point in Kharkov was hit by a Russian long-range strike that resulted in at least 80 casualties, over 60 of whom were KIA. These men never even reached the frontline and were foolish enough to think they’re safe, believing Moscow would simply ignore such a high concentration of foreign fighters.
And yet, the situation in the trenches is not much better either. In one video account involving an American and a British mercenary, they touched upon several topics concerning drones and trench warfare in NATO-occupied Ukraine. Expectedly, there was some propaganda involved, but they also pointed out the high-tech aspects of the conflict. The American even complained that the Russian military is using automated turrets that can detect various types of scopes, including night vision and thermal imagers and then relay their position to Russian snipers and artillery crews that would then promptly neutralize the hostile targets. Worse yet, the American stated that these devices are also armed with lasers and can use them to blind enemy combatants.
Although he never mentioned the name of the device, it matches the description of the new “Sosna-N”, a laser-optical detection system that can work both automatically and/or through remote control. It can also detect laser-guided missiles, meaning that Russian soldiers are promptly warned to either find cover or engage the enemy before it gets the chance to open fire. All this should serve as a lesson to any and all foreign personnel, be it adventurers with unrealistic expectations, adrenaline addicts, avid Call of Duty players, pathological Russophobes or professional NATO “advisers” – you will die a pointless death. Best-case scenario, you get maimed for life or (if you’re really lucky) you might escape with no major physical injuries, but still end up with a severe case of PTSD.
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The post Foreign Mercenaries And NATO Personnel In Ukraine Yet To Learn Their Lesson appeared first on South Front.
Twenty-three children make their way to school with their eyes glued to the murky water of the Nare River to see if they can see the hippopotamus. The school route has become a kind of safari with the kids scanning the horizon. Everyone in the municipality has a story to tell about the hippopotamus; that his feces scare away the fish, that he eats the banana crops, that his footprints are the size of three palms, that he will capsize a canoe... The Puerto Nare hippopotamus is all that’s talked about here. For Luis and his brother Diego, he is not a stranger. They call him Selmo. Their mother shakes her head and asks them not to get too attached because the judge has allowed just 60 days for the hippo to be removed from the vicinity.
© Luis bernardo Cano
© Luis Bernardo Cano
© Luis bernardo Cano
© Luis bernardo Cano
© Luis bernardo Cano
© Luis Bernardo Cano
A little over a month into his term, far-right President Abelardo de la Espriella continues to advance a security agenda that often conflicts with certain rights historically won by Colombians.
This time, De la Espriella has signed a decree allowing police access to university campuses. In several Latin American countries, the prohibition of police access to universities has been established through student struggle to prevent abuses by authorities against student movements.
Thus, universities have historically become places where students seek refuge from repression, arrest, and regroup during times of intense social mobilization.
This was evident during the 2021 protests, known as the “National Strike,” in which students, workers, left-wing political parties, young people, and others took to the streets to protest against the right-wing government of Iván Duque. The mobilization, which lasted several months, was considered a true “social upheaval,” and many experts have seen in it the consolidation of a democratic alternative (the government of Gustavo Petro) to decades and decades of right-wing rule.
During these protests, universities became hubs of popular mobilization, driven primarily by the youngest members of society. On university campuses, protesters were able to regroup, defend themselves against police repression, and coordinate new demonstrations – among other things – always protected by the fact that police are barred from entering university grounds.
Clearly, De la Espriella seeks to nip this possibility in the bud – that is, to prevent universities from once again becoming coordination centers for the protests. Many have speculated that the president is signing this decree precisely because he knows that his radical neoliberal agenda could spark major protests, and in this way, he hopes to proactively undermine the protest movement.
Whether or not this is De la Espriella’s primary intention, only time will tell. What is certain is that the president views university autonomy as an obstacle to the implementation of his security agenda, which also includes curtailing the ability of informal opposition political groups to participate in public life.
“Under no circumstances will I allow public universities to continue to be sanctuaries of violence. I respect and guarantee peaceful protest, but I will not allow universities to continue to be used as sanctuaries of vandalism and crime,” said De la Espriella on X.
Furthermore, true to his combative rhetoric, he compared social protests to terrorism – a common trope in the historical discourse of the Colombian right: “University autonomy is not a blank check for impunity: I have issued precise instructions for a national protocol of action that allows us to distinguish between the legitimate exercise of protest and acts of violence, flagrant offenses, danger, or extraordinary disturbances of public order that require intervention by the authorities. The university is for knowledge and ideas, not to serve as a refuge for violence and terrorism.”
However, the opposition has viewed this decision as a serious attack on university autonomy. Ana Erazo, a member of the House of Representatives from Valle del Cauca, wrote: “It is an ATTACK ON UNIVERSITY AUTONOMY and a direct threat to the young people at the country’s public universities. With this, Mr. Abelardo de la Espriella is beginning to reveal what could become a BRUTAL RETALIATION against the student movement, against its ability to organize and mobilize, and against thousands of young people who historically have not supported his political agenda.”
Some universities have joined in this criticism. One of them is the National Pedagogical University, whose academic council stated that in the past, “the serious consequences of resolving conflicts within public universities through militarization have been demonstrated on repeated occasions.” Furthermore, the council stated that university autonomy is one of the pillars of Colombian democracy, along with freedom of thought and research, among other things. Losing autonomy means jeopardizing these values of the republic, it stated.
For his part, former presidential candidate Iván Cepeda said that De la Espriella’s measure contradicts Article 69 of the Constitution, which guarantees university autonomy. Regarding the announcement, Cepeda also said: “Such an announcement is not only an affront to university autonomy. It also demonstrates, once again, the authoritarian and despotic nature of De la Espriella, who seeks to stigmatize, persecute, and violate the rights of Colombian youth and the university community. Colombia has not forgotten the victims of police abuse during the National Strike, nor the history of security forces intervening on university campuses, resulting in student deaths. Young people cannot once again be persecuted or treated as an internal enemy and an enemy of the state.”
Right-wing and far-right governments in Latin America have adopted a very similar discourse regarding insecurity. The leaders share a narrative that describes how in the 1980s and 1990s, a sort of neoliberal panacea reigned supreme, but then, as if speaking of a biblical plague, the progressive governments of the early 21st century arrived. Then, their story goes, through rampant corruption, they destroyed paradise on earth and brought about various evils such as insecurity, migration, and the destruction of traditional values.
Thus, several of these new – and not-so-new – right-wing governments have won the presidency, almost always in elections where they prevailed by a narrow margin, asserting that the solution to the “disaster” is to return to radical neoliberalism and implement a security policy that restores an order which, they claim, existed before the “original sin.” This “salvation,” no doubt, will come hand in hand with military, intelligence, and operational oversight from Washington – an ally that, they say, was alienated by regional center-left governments. The most serious consequence of this distance was the infiltration of drug trafficking into all strata of society.
It matters little or not at all to these new governments that during the era of progressivism, the region enjoyed a certain positive level of security, as argued by critics of the far right. In the case of Ecuador, this supposedly only happened due to an alleged peace pact between the center-left governments and criminal groups. So that peace was, in reality, merely the prelude to what would later erupt.
In light of this, the region’s security policy appears to be nearly identical across all countries governed by the Latin American right and far right:
However, with the exception of El Salvador and, to some extent, Chile, the results these governments promise – to reduce organized crime and insecurity in the region through the quasi-militarization of daily life and security agreements with Washington (which many accuse of undermining sovereignty) – have not materialized.
Ecuador, which is facing the most serious security crisis in its history, has failed to reduce violence as promised by the executive branch, even though the country is currently under a nearly permanent state of emergency and foreign military operations are underway. According to some experts, 2026 could become the second most violent year in the country’s history, with nearly 5,000 homicides in just six months. The Noboa administration says that positive results take time and that better days are ahead. The local elections at the end of the year will surely provide a better gauge of the government’s credibility than any speculation.
In Chile, Kast managed to rally support to win the election by focusing on his security policy, which asserts that the rise in insecurity in Chile is largely due to migration from other South American countries. In response, he promised to build various infrastructure projects that would prevent new migrants from entering the country, similar to the US border wall. For now, the government is celebrating a reduction in certain crime rates, although several polls indicate that the public still feels concerned.
In Colombia, the recently inaugurated government of Abelardo de la Espriella has declared that the time for peace talks with certain insurgent groups is over and has resumed the country’s long-standing policy of waging war against insurgent and drug-trafficking groups. So far, there have already been several dozen deaths, with the bodies displayed as war trophies that the president showcases in his addresses to the nation. It is still too early to tell whether De la Espriella’s war will have a direct impact on reducing insecurity, which, according to the executive branch, spiked during Petro’s administration – a claim that Petro categorically denies.
For now, Washington has expressed its support both verbally and by providing funds to many of these countries to bolster their security, while also carrying out actions in the region, such as those already mentioned in Ecuador or operations in the Caribbean Sea. Furthermore, during a recent visit by Rubio to Peru, the secretary of state stated that US forces will act wherever invited by local governments, which foreshadows new military operations in South America.
Without a doubt, the growth of US influence and presence in South America is undeniable. But it would be a mistake to think that this is something new. The history of Latin America in the 20th century has shown how Washington has managed to steadily increase its military presence in the region by invoking various justifications that have proven very effective in winning public support, especially those concerning the security of the population.
During World War II, the United States significantly increased its military presence in the region under the pretext of defense against potential military actions by the Axis powers, specifically Japan and Germany. Thus, the United States and its powerful fleet established several military bases in South America and succeeded in getting virtually all governments to align themselves with Washington’s geopolitical interests.
Shortly thereafter, Washington justified increasing its military presence in the region to halt the dangerous “communism” that, they claimed, would sweep through the region and had become a cause for concern not only for US security but also for the internal security of each country, where “dangerous” revolutionaries would destroy the social foundations of each nation. Thus, the United States and a large portion of the Latin American militaries carried out joint intelligence and other operations to promote, by any means necessary, the destruction of leftist political movements in the region – which meant killing thousands of Latin American revolutionaries through various methods, such as the imposition of bloody military dictatorships (such as those in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, Bolivia, etc.) and/or boycott and conspiracy operations against anti-imperialist governments, such as Castro’s Cuba, Allende’s Chile, or so many other political movements violently aborted through the active participation of US and local forces.
However, the socialist bloc collapsed in the 1990s and brought on a crisis within the revolutionary left. Right-wing governments, incidentally, took advantage of these events to promote ultraliberal economic policies, but began to lack a new justification for expanding military and police forces, and the US presence in the region.
One exception to this was Colombia, where the internal war served as a justification for the establishment of several US bases during the 21st century.
Now that drug trafficking has become the region’s primary security threat, Latin American right-wing forces, alongside Washington, have once again raised the alarm about the threat of insecurity to promote securitist policies and an increased US military presence. Nazis, communists, and now narco-terrorists seem to be the lineage of a political strategy designed not only to promote a greater military presence in social life but also to advance neoliberal policies that are often accompanied by the aggressive influx of international capital, which typically appropriates the economic resources of this part of the Third World.
For we must not forget that every cycle of increased security-oriented policies has been followed by lucrative and substantial profits for the wealthiest in Latin America and around the world.
The EU welcomes Cambodia’s decision to join the Multi-party Interim Appeal Arbitration Arrangement (MPIA) for WTO members, contributing to efforts to uphold a rules-based multilateral trading system.
With Cambodia’s participation, the MPIA now covers 62 World Trade Organization (WTO) members and 60.4% of world trade.
The MPIA brings together participants from all continents and at different levels of development, united by a shared commitment to upholding the rules-based trading system.
The MPIA preserves the right to appeal in trade disputes among participating WTO members, at a time when the WTO’s Appellate Body remains non-functioning. It helps ensure that disputes can continue to be resolved in an orderly and binding manner, avoiding appeals 'into the void'.
“I welcome Cambodia to the MPIA. The arrangement plays an important role in upholding the rules-based trading system. Each new participant helps reinforce the predictability, stability and credibility of global trade rules. I encourage other WTO members to join the MPIA,” said EU Trade and Economic Security Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič.
The MPIA was established in 2020 and has proven its effectiveness in many WTO disputes.
Under the MPIA, appeals are heard by arbitrators randomly selected from a pool of 10 standing appeal arbitrators set up by the participating WTO members. These arbitrators are persons of recognised authority, with demonstrated expertise in law, international trade and WTO agreements.
The MPIA is open to all WTO members as a practical tool for appeal arbitration, pending the restoration of a reformed and fully functioning WTO dispute settlement system.
As of 1 June 2025, the MPIA has an updated pool of appeal arbitrators to ensure that appeals continue to be heard by independent arbitrators of the highest calibre.
At the WTO Ministerial Conference that took place earlier this year, MPIA ministers stressed the importance of the MPIA for the security and predictability of the multilateral trading system.
The current MPIA participants are Australia, Barbados, Benin, Brazil, Cambodia, Canada, China, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, the European Union (and its Member States), Guatemala, Hong Kong (China), Iceland, Japan, Liechtenstein, Macao (China), Malaysia, Mexico, Moldova, Montenegro, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Pakistan, Paraguay, Peru, the Philippines, Singapore, Switzerland, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, Uruguay and Vietnam.
MC14: Supporting the rules-based multilateral trading system: the role of the MPIA
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