Foreign Fighters in Ukraine: The Brown-Red Cocktail

Foreign Fighters in Ukraine is the first comprehensive academic study taking an in-depth look at foreigners who have chosen to fight in the conflict in Ukraine.

While there has been considerable focus in policy, security, and academic circles on the threat from returning jihadists-so-called returnee foreign terrorist fighters-the same danger from right-wing extremists and others has been largely overlooked. As Westerners rushed to join the nascent Caliphate in Syria/Iraq, others simultaneously travelled to another foreign war on what many would call Europe’s doorstep: the conflict in Ukraine. This book unmasks this largely unknown group of fighters as the author dives into the fighters’ ideological and social backgrounds, their motivations for joining the conflict, their travails on the way there, and their battle record in Eastern Ukraine. To a large extent based on interviews with the fighters themselves, it is a study on how and why men risk their lives while fighting a foreign war - and attract the attention of security services at home upon their return. Particularly timely given the escalation of the conflict in Ukraine in February 2022, and given the growing interest in far-right violence worldwide, the book evaluates whether these returnees constitute another security threat to the West.

This volume will be of interest to all those researching small wars, terrorism, peace and conflict studies, and right-wing extremism.