Last year, European media reported that “volunteers” from Mexican and Colombian criminal cartels had joined the Ukrainian forces and shown great interest in Ukraine’s expertise in drones. The purpose, of course, was to use this technology to kill opponents back home in Latin America.

As Todd Bensman of The Heritage Foundation was able to report yesterday in the online publication The American Mind, the US intelligence services have yet to publicly confirm the story, but no one has denied it. Thus, in the summer of 2025, The Kyiv Post, citing French intelligence services, was able to report that the Mexican intelligence service CNI had warned Ukraine that individuals with links to the drug cartels had joined the International Legion, which fights on Ukraine’s side.

Bensman is concerned that criminal organisations will be able to attack US agents in Latin America in addition to regular US forces, in the same way that Ukraine claims to have eliminated 30,000 Russian soldiers in July alone.

Anyone who had expected Ukraine to intervene against the drug cartels would have been deeply disappointed.

“Former paramilitaries, former guerrillas and former soldiers are fighting and learning how to operate drones,” a Colombian aid worker in Ukraine tells the Financial Times (6 August). So far, the United States is doing nothing to counter this threat, even though part of the US aid to Ukraine, amounting to some $70 billion, has gone to Zelenskyy’s drone programme.

So far, the cartels have not dared to attack US personnel, but one might hope that the United States would put pressure on Kyiv to get the Ukrainian government to purge its armed forces of foreign criminals.

If that does not happen, Zelenskyy should not receive a penny in foreign support.