Foreign Recruits in Ukraine Are Killed in a Strike on a Training Camp

Russia has repeatedly targeted soldiers assembled at military academies, barracks and parade grounds.

Thousands of flags and portraits of fallen Ukrainian soldiers and volunteer fighters from foreign countries at a makeshift memorial in Kyiv, Ukraine, in March.Credit...Nicole Tung for The New York Times

Andrew E. Kramer

By Andrew E. Kramer

Reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine

Aug. 12, 2025, 12:01 a.m. ET

At least a dozen foreign volunteers in Ukraine’s military were killed late last month when a Russian missile struck a training camp’s mess hall during lunchtime, in one of the deadliest attacks on foreign fighters of the war, according to soldiers with knowledge of the incident.

The Ukrainian Army, which only occasionally acknowledges missile strikes on military sites, confirmed that the attack had killed and wounded soldiers but declined to disclose details. Three soldiers, including one who witnessed the strike, described a harrowing assault that hit fresh recruits from the United States, Colombia, Taiwan, Denmark and other places.

The attack showed the risks that Ukraine has faced throughout the war when it has assembled soldiers at places like military academies, barracks and parade grounds, making them targets for Russian attacks.

Ukraine has been deploying foreign troops to bolster its forces against Russia’s larger and better-armed military, which has bombarded the country daily even as President Vladimir V. Putin plans to meet with President Trump on Friday in Alaska to discuss an end to the war.

The missile attack on the training camp, which took place near the central Ukrainian city of Kropyvnytskyi on July 21, was timed for when recruits sat down at picnic tables for lunch, the soldiers said.

An American recruit from Florida, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak publicly, said the explosion was the loudest he had ever heard. In a telephone interview, he said the blast had sent debris flying around him and had shaken nearby trees.

After the explosion, dead and dismembered bodies and gravely wounded soldiers were lying on the ground near the mess hall, he said. He saw at least 15 dead soldiers and more than 100 others who were wounded, he added.

The strike also set fire to an ammunition depot, the soldier said, triggering more explosions and sending debris and shrapnel whistling through the air, as survivors tried to tend to the wounded. He said he had applied tourniquets to some gravely wounded soldiers and had carried them to ambulances, trucks and private cars that then raced to hospitals.

The base’s air raid alarm did not sound before the strike, the soldier said, and afterward, he was dismayed to discover that first aid kits were nowhere to be found around the mess hall.

A spokesman for the international legion of the Ukrainian military intelligence agency, the unit that was hit, said that an investigation into the strike was underway. The spokesman, Volodymyr Kaminskyi, said the toll could not be revealed while it continued.

Foreigners serve in regular Ukrainian Army units or in two dedicated international legions, one subordinate to the army and the other to the military intelligence agency, known as HUR.

Inspired by Ukraine’s scrappy resistance to Russia’s invasion in the early years of the war, veterans from America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan turned up to fight alongside Ukrainians.

More recently, many of the recruits have been from South America. Colombian men have been drawn to Ukraine for salaries far higher than what they can earn at home, though the risks in trench fighting are severe.

Foreign soldiers earn the same salary as Ukrainians, from $1,000 to $1,750 in base pay per month, plus combat bonuses that can exceed $3,000 per month. Russia has also drawn foreign soldiers to its ranks, including thousands of North Koreans.

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Since the start of the full-scale war in 2022, hundreds of foreigners have passed through the HUR site, known as Camp Krop.

Lax security had been a source of grumbling at the camp before last month’s strike, two foreign soldiers who trained at the site said. Gathering soldiers for common meals posed a danger, they said.

In another deadly attack on foreign recruits, Russian missiles hit a training base at Yavoriv, a town near the Polish border, in the first month of the war in 2022, killing or injuring dozens.

Ukrainians, too, have died in strikes on training bases. Last year, a missile attack killed more than 50 cadets and soldiers and injured many others in Poltava, in eastern Ukraine. On July 29, three recruits were killed and 18 were wounded in a strike on a training academy.

Attacks on assembled soldiers have provoked calls for investigations to determine whether they had been put at undue risk.

Ukraine’s commanding general, Oleksandr Syrsky, said in a statement that soldiers at training sites “must respond to air raid alerts and enemy drones immediately.” He said the military would move training to sheltered underground sites “as much as possible.”

The recruit from Florida had been at the base in central Ukraine for less than a week and had yet to be issued a rifle when Russia struck, Mr. Syrsky said. He said he had felt safe at the picturesque base, which is tucked into sunflower fields and forests.

He had accepted risks in joining the Ukrainian Army, he said, motivated by a desire to assist a struggling democracy, but had never thought people would be killed in training.

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