INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
While many Georgians feel a personal connection to the war in Ukraine, a number are putting their lives on the line for it, traveling to
of the war, likely the largest death toll among any foreign contingent fighting on the Ukrainian side
The Georgian volunteers include former Georgian soldiers, poets, bloggers, and two former ministers of defense.Sniper and reserve officer
Darejan Maisuradze said she went to Ukraine to take up arms even before Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky appealed to international
died April 16 in the eastern Ukrainian town of Rubizhne.There are no reliable estimates of the number of Georgian men and women fighting in
Media reports put the figure anywhere from dozens to hundreds
international volunteer battalions
Some serve in the International Legion of Territorial Defense of Ukraine, an ad hoc battalion created specifically for foreign
volunteers.There is even a Georgian National Legion, a paramilitary unit that serves as a vehicle for seasoned soldiers from Georgia, as
well as from the United States and Europe.GeorgianNationalLegion / facebookThe founder of the legion, Georgian veteran Mamuka
showing up at these funerals.Many Georgians also believe that they need to return a favor to Ukrainians, some of whom fought on the side of
Georgians in the war in Abkhazia in the early 1990s
Russian troops during the 2008 Russian attack on Georgia.When Ukraine saw its own separatist conflict erupt in 2014, Mamulashvili, who in
He later clarified that he meant that the legion would not keep any captives itself and would hand them over to the Ukrainian forces.One
video from early April documented a group of soldiers from the Ukrainian side executing a badly wounded Russian soldier
creation of informal military formations and inciting ethnic hatred
