The facts
The New York Post reported on Sept. 28, 2026 that Russia is recruiting Americans for the front in Ukraine, and that Ukrainian officials have identified at least 18 US men who enlisted. The reported pay is a $26,000 signing bonus and $2,000 a month. That figure is what recruits are typically offered. It is not a contract the Post printed.
Vitaliy Matvienko runs "I Want to Live," the Ukrainian intelligence hotline that tries to get Russian soldiers to surrender. He told the Post the foreign-recruitment trade "has become an entire industry and is very profitable." He said Russia takes 30,000 to 40,000 casualties a month and can no longer cover the losses with its own men. That monthly number is his. The Post also cited a UK estimate of 1.5 million Russian casualties since February 2022, including 500,000 deaths. Wartime counts from both sides should be read as claims.
Matvienko's description of the business is blunt. Recruiters find foreigners, send them to the war, and when they are killed it makes no stir inside Russia. In most cases, he said, the families never get the compensation they were promised. Ukrainian officials say the middlemen can make about $24,000 a head, plus a cut of the recruit's pay. The ads run online, including on Facebook, TikTok, and Telegram. An American in a Russian uniform is also useful on television. Matvienko said Russian media treat that as close to sacred, and put the man on TV as proof that ordinary Americans are with Moscow.
Ukrainian security officials told the Post they have identified nearly 29,000 foreigners from 135 countries fighting for Russia, including people from North Korea, Kenya, and Ghana, and that the real number is higher. They say many were pulled in through online ads.
One of the Americans is dead. Seth William Baker was a lance corporal from Gilbert, Arizona, a bulk fuel specialist with the 4th Marine Logistics Group. He joined the Marines at 18 and earned the National Defense Service Medal. He was discharged after he refused the COVID vaccine when the Pentagon required it. He was killed on the front at 23, three months after he signed up with Russia. Matvienko said Baker had also failed to get into a police academy and "was obviously a young man who was susceptible to influence."
The Post names a second American, separately. Michael Gloss, 21, the son of a high-ranking CIA official, was killed in the war in April 2024. The Post does not say he took the same $26,000 offer now being advertised.
Our take
Moscow put a price on an American and found a market.
Twenty-six thousand to sign, two thousand a month, and a trench. The man who talks you into it clears about twenty-four thousand just for delivering you, then a slice of your pay on top. That is not a cause. That is a bounty. The customer is the recruiter. The product gets a rifle and a place in the next assault, and if the product dies, Matvienko says the family often never sees the check. A business that pays the salesman more cleanly than the widow is a business that already knows the ending.
Ukraine's count is 18 Americans so far, inside a foreign legion it puts at nearly 29,000 people from 135 countries. Those are Kyiv's numbers, from the same service that runs a surrender hotline, so they are not neutral. They are also the only people publishing a headcount. The Kremlin is not posting a roster. It is posting ads.
Baker was 23. He had already been thrown out of the Marines over a shot, and he still went. He is not the punchline. The punchline is a superpower buying other countries' spare young men by the head because its own casualty list, whoever's estimate you trust, is too long to fill at home. Thirty thousand a month is Matvienko talking. Half a million dead is London's estimate, via the Post. Either number makes a $26,000 coupon look like what it is. A clearance price.
The signing bonus is $26,000. The recruiter's cut is $24,000. The American keeps the trench.
