ABSTRACT
This chapter provides the first in-depth stock-taking exercise of the phenomenon of foreign volunteering for Ukraine in 2022. As the war reignited on February 24 that year, Ukraine called for volunteers to augment its military efforts against Russia. These individuals, coming from different walks of life, and initially numbering thousands of wannabe volunteers, were joining formal Ukrainian military structures and not some ad-hoc volunteer battalions. Thus, they were volunteers and not fighters who fought in sub-state formations eight years earlier. Their mobilization, which looked like that for the Spanish international brigades in terms of number, however, has in reality been less impressive in size as many volunteers never made it to the front lines. This happened because of a variety of reasons which are outlined in this chapter. The chapter also finds that the 2022 postscript to the story of foreigners in this war is not brown-red in nature, as relatively few Western extremists bothered to trek eastward.
