Ukraine publishes video of interrogation of captured Cuban mercenary

Ukrainian troops published a video of the interrogation to which a man was subjectedcuban mercenary captured among Russian troops who were in the Marinka area, Donetsk region.

“A Cuban mercenary who was recently captured in the Marinka area. It is identified asFrank Darío Jarrosay Manfuga. The prisoner had 35 Cuban citizens in his unit. He went to serve because he was promised citizenship. And about three thousand dollars in salary,” indicated profiles ofTelegram linked to the Ukrainian army.

The interrogation of the Cuban mercenary revealed that he had been enlisted in the Russian army troops since January 16. Frank Darío, whose last name was unintelligible in the video, was born on September 6, 1989 in Guantánamo, the city where he lived until his trip to Russia.

As he explained, he was contacted by other Cubans who were in Russia, who told him that the Russians were looking for people “to work in construction.” In exchange, they offered him a contract of 250,000 rubles a month (more than $2,700 a month) and Russian nationality. Frank Dario accepted and ended up on the front line captured by the Ukrainians.

The Russian authorities paid him his February pay and an initial aid of 100,000 rubles. During the interrogation, Frank Darío acknowledged his nervousness and related that there were about 35 Cubans in his unit.

“At no time did we know that we had to go to war, do you understand me? We came to do masonry work. They gave us a contract in Russian, which we did not understand… When you realize it, you are in a bunker firing shots,” said the mercenary, while considering that “the Cubans who come here do not have military training.”

In his story, the young man acknowledged that the attitude of the Russian bosses towards the Cubans was “very negative.” In that sense, he explained that they were never told clearly what the mission was and they spoke to them in Russian without translation. As an example, he gave the last one in which he was captured, in which he got lost in the middle of a forest. “Thank goodness the Ukrainians didn't shoot me,” he said.

“Mercenaries from Cuba, Syria, Egypt, Nigeria. And there will be useful fools who will say that these like-minded ‘ideological’ Cubans returned in 2014 to defend Pushkin and Dostoevsky in the schools of Donetsk. And they will not see them as poor cattle that came to earn a cent, because in their own country they are donkeys," he denounced inTelegram a profile similar to the Ukrainian troops.

Frank Darío was taken prisoner on a mission that consisted of transporting portable solar energy panels. He was in the company of two Cubans and three Russians when they began to bombard them. At that moment they dispersed and he got lost in the forest, until he saw a Ukrainian soldier whom he initially mistook for a Russian and ended up surrendering.

According to his testimony, there have been cases of mistreatment of Cuban mercenaries among Russian troops, including beatings. Frank Darío did not experience it in person.

Born two months before the fall of the Berlin Wall and informed of world events through theofficial media and thepropaganda of the Cuban regime, this young Cuban at the service of the Kremlin had no idea where he was going, nor the implications of his actions.

Driven by poverty and the need for money, Frank Darío did not end up dead by a miracle.Other Cuban mercenaries have lost their lives in the Ukrainian war. The fate of this prisoner of war is unknown, although the Ukrainians have stated on several occasions that all those captured mercenaries will be subjected to a military trial.which can have fatal consequences.

At the end of December, the General Staff of the Ukrainian army confirmed the capture of Marinka by the Russian Army. According toEuropa Press, the commander in chief of the Armed Forces,Valery Zaluzhni, noted that the Ukrainian forces defended the city under the trenches "street by street" and "block by block" for almost two years, and that the method used by the Russians to take the city was the same applied in Bakhmut (bombing until it was reduced to ashes).

A month after the fall, Frank Darío arrived in Marinka, a Ukrainian territory now occupied by the Russians. However, two months later, the Cuban mercenary was captured by Ukrainian troops.

In addition to the interrogation shared by the Telegram channel related to the Ukrainian army, anothervideo in which Cuban mercenaries appear harangued by a Russian officer.

Evidence accumulates of the presence of Cuban mercenaries in Ukraine while Havana remains silent in the face of this bloodletting of young people who leave the Island under the tacit consent of the authorities, and under the indolent gaze of the Western allies ofVolodymyr Zelensky, who continue to maintain normal relations witha Moscow-allied dictatorship and subject to the designs ofVladimir Putin.