The Cuban was sent to the front in Ukraine even with an injured leg.
MIAMI, United States. — Ukrainian forces captured “another Cuban mercenary” who was fighting on the Russian side in eastern Ukraine, according to a statement from the Assembly of the Cuban Resistance (ARC) sent to CubaNet. The prisoner, who was identified as Yoandi de la Paz Lara, would have deserted from the Russian side after reporting mistreatment at the front.
According to the ARC, De la Paz Lara was found “shot wound.” The statement also assures that a Ukrainian soldier transferred him “in a humanitarian attitude” to his home to treat him, and that the Cuban fears for his wife and son who live in Cuba, in addition to fearing imprisonment upon his return for having allowed himself to be captured, according to the organization.
Although there is no confirmation that it is the same person, the official Ukrainian media ArmyInforman information agency of the Ministry of Defense, reported on January 4 that members of the 127th Kharkiv Heavy Mechanized Brigade had captured a Cuban citizen in the Kupyansk area.
ArmyInform He indicated that the man first worked in Moscow and was then detained by the Russian police; Later, according to that report, he was threatened with deportation and sent to the front. The same text adds that the Cuban claimed to have been sent to fight against his will and that, despite having an injured leg, he was sent to Kupyansk.
Along the same lines, Euromaidan Press public On January 6, the captured man was detained “near Kupyansk”, in the Kharkiv region.
«I worked in Moscow for seven months. It was very hard. I worked every day, every night. I didn’t know what it was like to sleep. “I didn’t know what it was to eat,” says De la Paz Lara himself in a video released by the National Guard of Ukraine. “Being illegal in Moscow is not easy, because the Police clean the city every day,” he added.
According to his testimony, he would have been detained by the Russian Police, whom he accused of blackmailing him. “They say, ‘Give us money, or we will deport you or send you to war,'” he said.
However, the young man assures that he did not agree to fight against Ukraine. «I did not sign any contract. I was supposed to be deported to Cuba. I asked about that. I asked if that document was a deportation to Cuba,” he explained. «I was supposed to be deported to Cuba, but that was not true. “I was going to war,” he lamented.
The ARC, for its part, stated that “Ukrainian military intelligence” shared with the organization information that it described as “confidential” about the capture and the young man’s emotional state.
In the statement, the secretary general of the ARC, Orlando Gutiérrez-Boronat, said: “Enough of sending dozens of our young people to fight in an alien and opprobrious war. There are already Cubans dead defending Maduro, today we received this infamous news and who knows what will happen tomorrow. The regime crosses all limits day after day.”
The organization added: “The deaths in combat, the captures and desertions of Castro-communist Cuban mercenaries in Ukraine and Venezuela constitute an international scandal and clearly show the threat of the Castro regime to the security of the United States.”
