Sacrificed lives: on Romanian women looking after elderly people in Italy

Imagine what it’s like living the life of someone old and ill before you are old and ill yourself. Canceling your own identity and conforming to the rhythms of their lives. Waking up in the morning when they wake up, washing them, making them breakfast, keeping them company 24 hours a day.

Cooking, playing cards if asked, cleaning around the house, sometimes being criticised by them and their family, watching the TV shows they want to watch, getting them ready for bed, going to bed at the same hour as them, waking up at night if they need you or shout out because of hallucinations – some patients have dementia or Alzheimer. Day after day, year after year, for 15, 16, 20 years of your life. Years you have not lived, because there was no more room for your own life, for walks, love, music, parties, family or friends.

You only have two hours off, but not every day and only if you’re lucky enough for the Italian family that employs you to at least observe this one right you have.

You live every day in the house of strangers, some of whom treat you kindly, while others don’t. Some count the biscuits you eat and ask you why you use so much of the coffee, others keep you in the cold in winter, asking you to do the laundry by hand and treating you like a servant for the whole family, though that was not your initial agreement.

You might be doing undeclared or semi-declared work in Italy, in other words either without a contract, or with one that only declares five or six hours a day, though you work 24/7. Of course, 24/7 work is illegal in Italy, but the families are unwilling or can’t afford to pay more tax or hire two badanti,* as necessary.

You accept it all, because you are forced by the debt and poverty back in Romania. You need this job, and your family in the country needs the money you earn.

Your pension will be small, so you can expect an old age with no safety net. You can only hope your sacrifice will not be forgotten by the children you helped.

You are far from your family. Your children have grown up without you and you feel guilty for it. Sometimes, relatives in the country treat you like an ATM. You are foreign to the life you left behind. You never feel “at home” with the elderly people you look after, no matter how kind your employer family is.

You grow attached to the elderly, because you spend two, five or ten years with them. You are the only person who is by their side every day, who knows their sufferings and their habits. You take care of them as they sink deeper into their illness, you are next to them when they start to agonise. You think of the life you never had a chance to live, because you’ve lived the life and death of these old people.

If you are lucky, the Italian family will let you stay with them for a few more days or a week, until you find another job, taking care of another elderly person. If you are not lucky and have no labour contract either, the family can throw you out from one day to the next. There is no guarantee in this line of work.

You take your suitcase and move into the house of another old person, to learn their habits and get acquainted with their suffering.

You read press articles that blame you for leaving your children home alone, with offensive comments. You don’t know who these people are, those who judge your life and decisions without knowing them.

You don’t know for how long you will continue to work in Italy, because your family always needs your help. Sometimes you return home years later, after falling ill yourself, away from your children, doing the hardest job in the world.

“If I had stayed in my country, I’d be long dead”

This spring I spent a few weeks in the southern Italian region of Puglia, where I met several Romanian women working as badanti. I spoke with them in the parks in the small towns of Lecce province where they go during the two hours off which they should have each day, but which they don’t always get.

City of Cursi, Province of Lecce, Italy, May 2022. ©Cosmin Bumbuț

The reasons they left the country have been known for years and have to do with day-to-day life in Romania: unemployment, poverty, marginalisation of the vulnerable. Many Romanian women sacrificed themselves for their families when their husbands lost their jobs following the closure of factories or mines. Some are single mothers who have had to leave their children to afford raising them. Others were left without a workplace when textile workshops or various factories in Romania closed down.

In the weeks spent in Puglia, I discovered a phenomenon that should have started to worry us years ago, when a whole wave of Romanian women first left to look after elderly people in Italy: many of them fled the violence of their husbands. In the absence of programmes for survivors of domestic violence and shelters for women, migration was their solution for saving their lives.

After I published one of my articles on badante on our Facebook page, Teleleu, it gathered hundreds of comments, most of them from Romanian women looking after elderly people in Italy. Many of them said they ran away from the country because of domestic violence, but I was particularly impressed by this comment*:

“If it wasn’t for Italy, there’d be another little place in the world for me to hide from an abuser who, instead of rebuilding his life, is still looking for me to kill me for not putting up with his maltrato. I chose to live for my four children, even running away and doing honest work in this tough world, putting my life back together with someone else, because I wanted my children to be proud and happy. And today I am pleased with what I decided. If I had stayed in my country, I’d be long dead. This way I disfruto and am proud of my children, because they still have me and always had me to support them when they needed me.”

This is not the only woman who wrote to me saying she saved her life when she went to work in Italy. A. shared with me a similar story: “I was 25 when I was left to raise my child alone, after my mother told me she’d help me with her. So I left my daughter in Romania with her (biggest mistake of my life). The child’s father took drugs, beat me, was very jealous, once he wanted to drive his car off a bridge with me. He wanted to kill me. I was pregnant then, I miscarried because of the stress – and he said it wasn’t his baby. I called the police and left to work as a badante through an agency. I had no home, I had no one. I had no other choice.”

Leverano, Province of Lecce, Italy, May 2022. ©Cosmin Bumbuț

The Romanian state’s failure to build shelters, improve legislation and implement programmes supporting survivors of domestic violence has led to migration over the last few decades.

Migration is a consequence of the social problems faced by Romania, and when politicians speak of this phenomenon, they should also speak of solutions for survivors of domestic violence. 26.809 cases of domestic violence were reported in 2020, and 72 people were killed as a consequence, most of them women and children.

There is a direct link between migration and domestic violence, underage motherhood, racism, corruption, unemployment, the malfunctioning of the health and education system, as I have written before.

The number of Romanians living abroad is enormous: in Italy alone there are now 156.855 Romanian badante. The real number could be double, because DOMINA, an association for families, estimates that 57% of them do undeclared work. On the 1st of January 2021, there were 1.076.412 Romanians living in Italy.

She lost years of her life in exchange for the over 100.000 euro she earned in Italy

Eugenia was 43 in 2011, when she ran away from home because of domestic violence; she, too, saved herself by going to work in Italy. She used to live in Tulcea, in her parents’ old house, with her husband and 17-year-old daughter.

She borrowed 100 euro from a friend, packed some summer clothes and took the bus to Lecce, in southern Italy, where she had heard there was work to be found. She only had a pack of biscuits and some bagels – her food for the two-and-a-half-day ride. You can read her whole story here.

Eugenia, 54, cares for a 94-year-old woman from Leverano, Lecce province. The photo was taken in front of the house, on the street where he lives. Italy, May 2022. ©Cosmin Bumbuț

Ileana [a pseudonym] left Romania at 41 because of domestic violence: she was afraid she’d lose her life. Still, she continued sending money to her husband, because they have two children together and they built houses for them on the land they own.

Ileana often only kept 10 euro for herself, in case she fell ill and needed medicine. She did undeclared work, with no contract, because when you need money and don’t want to go back home to your violent husband, you’ll accept anything.

She was humiliated, offended and kept in the cold by the Italian families she worked for. She was treated as a servant, lost years of her life in exchange for the over 100.000 euro she sent to her family in Romania during her 16 years of work in Italy.

Now Ileana has nothing. Her husband won’t let her return to the house he has renovated with the money she earned in Italy. She has no legal recourse against him, because the land under their house and those they built for their children belongs to him, as inheritance from his parents. She wouldn’t dare take him to court anyway, because she is afraid of her violent husband.

She has no savings, because she has sent home almost all her earnings, and in a few years she will reach retirement age. This is just a manner of speaking, since Ileana will have no pension, considering she’s done almost all her work without a contract. So I reformulate: in a few years, when Ileana becomes unable to keep up with this hard work, she will have no home and no income to rely on.

She is not the only citizen in this situation, and the Romanian state is not ready for their return. Dozens of thousands of Romanian women, now badante in Italy, will return to the country in their old age. Some will come back to their violent husbands, because they have nowhere else to go. Others won’t be able to support themselves, because their work in Italy was undeclared.

How will we support these women? What is the Romanian state’s strategy for the social problems they will face – the lack of income in old age, violence from their partners, or situations like Ileana’s, in which families don’t let them come back after they sent them all the money they earned in Italy?

Their life is a series of sacrifices

Romanian women are used to sacrificing themselves, because local society has this expectation of them. And a badante’s destiny involves sacrifice, because living 15, 16, 20 years of the lives of elderly ill people whom you look after day after day until their death is no life.

Their sacrifice goes so far that some Romanian women even find extra work cleaning during the two hours off they should have every day, like Ionela told us. “Working as a badante is like being on house arrest,” a Romanian woman commented on our Facebook page.

Mioara (left) and Neta (right), both from Craiova, work as maids in the town of Cursi, province of Lecce. Italy, May 2022. ©Cosmin Bumbuț

Priest Ioan Grancea of the Eastern Orthodox church “Sfântul Cuvios Irodion de la Lainici” in Lecce, Italy, says Romanian women don’t consider underclared work and unpaid holiday overtime a breach of their rights, because they come to Italy with the thought that they must sacrifice themselves for their families.

Many of them, apart from the difficulties they face in Italy, are subject to pressure from back home: debt they need to pay off, domestic violence, relationship problems, children who don’t understand their mothers’ sacrifices.

One of the stories that stayed with priest Ioan Grancea was the case of a Romanian badante diagnosed with fast-growing cancer while she was looking after an elderly man. The priest and a few members of the Romanian community helped her file a request for financial aid from the Italian state.

The woman didn’t wait for the documents to be processed; she found work with another family, who didn’t know she was ill. She took time off once a month to go to chemotherapy. Though the priest and the Romanian community around the church tried to convince her to change her mind, she wouldn’t hear of it – she told them she had to help her son, who was having trouble back in the country.

“To ask for your rights, first you need to afford it”

When people discuss the rights of Romanian badante and the abuse they suffer, some voices continue to blame the victims: Why do they accept to work in those conditions? Why don’t they ask for their rights?

Their vulnerability begins in Romania, the first country where their rights haven’t been observed. Romanians put up with abuse abroad because no one in their own country has taught them they have rights.

Many of the women were already badly paid and exploited in Romania. Eugenia worked at a bread factory in Tulcea, where she broke a leg going down stairs holding a crate with products. Though she limps to this day because of that work accident, the factory never paid her any damages.

Marcela grew up in a community in Curtea de Argeș where many women were beaten by their husbands, as she was. There are 30 families on Marcela’s street, and 10 women there have left to work abroad. For many Romanian women, Italy was a way out, because the Romanian state never held out a helping hand in the form of proximity bracelets for aggressors or sufficient beds in shelters.

Because they have always been on their own, these women don’t know how to ask for support from institutions when they are sexually abused. They are afraid, because in Romania domestic violence has crushed their courage.

Poverty makes you vulnerable, as one of the women who left a comment on our Facebook page put it best: “Is there any stronger force that can keep you there [in poor labour conditions] than debt and the wish to give your children a better life?”

“When you have children to raise, you work and that’s that. To ask for your rights, first you need to afford it,” another Romanian woman wrote to us.

“No one’s keeping you there by force, except for the need,” someone else said.

And a Romanian woman quoted “a saying” among badante: “Their shit [the Italian patients’] is our bread.”

The stories I learned in these last weeks are heartbreaking: single mothers, abused women, a widow who lost her job when the tailoring workshop that hired her closed, a young woman who remembers she was 14 when her mother went to Italy for work and she felt abandoned.

You can’t speak of migration without speaking of all these social problems generating it. You can’t cut out a slice of Romanian reality and ignore the whole context around it.

In the last few years, Italy has seen an influx of women from the Republic of Moldova, who come from even greater, more traumatising poverty than that in Romania – if, that is, poverty and its trauma bear any ranking.

Romanian badante blame the Moldovans for “ruining the market” because they accept undeclared work in poor conditions and for less money.

Others have complained that Romanian women don’t support each other, that they steal each other’s jobs, gossip and envy each other, ask their fellow badanti for money in exchange for finding them jobs. In the community in Lecce, a few badanti wanted to rent a one-room apartment together, to have it available for emergency situations – if one of them was thrown out by the family she works for, or is exploited by her employer, she would have this safe space to spend a week or two in, until she found a solution. They would have paid 10 or 15 euro a month each (rent is low in southern Italy), but the plan eventually fell through because of arguments between them.

Lecce, Italy, May 2022. ©Cosmin Bumbuț

I was not surprised by the story, because solidarity is a value you learn when you have the privilege of a financially comfortable life. Poverty is ugly and humiliating, it mutilates many people, and its trauma remains and changes behaviours.

Victims blame each other, but the responsibility shouldn’t rest on their shoulders. The responsible parties are the Romanian and Italian state, but so far they have been accomplices to the abuse suffered by badante.

“The Italian state is an accomplice to this situation”

Silvia Dumitrache, the founder of Associazione Donne Romene in Italia, an association defending the rights of Romanian workers, says both the Romanian and the Italian state take advantage of the badante’s sacrifices: the Romanian economy grows with the money they send home, while Italy saves on expenses.

According to the DOMINA report, the overall cost of elderly care work paid by families amounts to 11,6 billion euro – which the Italian state saves, by no longer providing such care through its public assistance service.

Moreover, the Italian state gains money from the taxes paid by the families who sign employment contracts with their badante. Silvia Dumitrache says institutions turn a blind eye to many badante  working 24/7 and to breaches of their rights: “The Italian state is an accomplice to the situation.”

Mirela Videa, employment and social affairs attaché at the Romanian Embassy in Italy, believes the Italian state should implement two solutions: providing tax rebates to families caring for elderly members and creating an institution to manage “the confluence between demand and offer”, allocating jobs and eliminating black market brokers, who exploit workers.

Silvia Dumitrache says Romania has the responsibility of informing Romanian workers, who should know their rights when they go work abroad.

Ionela and Bogdan Potcovariu work as nurses in Italy. In 2011, they bought a house in installments in Neviano. May 2022. ©Cosmin Bumbuț

While I was doing interviews with Romanian badanti, I received two recurrent answers to the question “Why did you come work in Italy?” Many women told me they had debts from buying house appliances or from loans they took out when a family member died unexpectedly and they couldn’t afford the funeral.

Migration is only a slice of Romanian reality, in which women leave their children to be able to pay the installments for their washing machine.

***

Close to Easter, I published a material describing the atmosphere among Romanians spending the holiday in Lecce province. It included a few paragraphs about badanti who can’t make it to the Romanian store for their groceries nor to the Easter Vigil in the Romanian church, because they can’t leave their elderly people alone.

The material gathered many comments on Facebook – some from badanti, some from people who understand their suffering and sacrifice. Others were offensive and stunned me with their meanness and lack of empathy.

I will end with a few of these latter comments, so we can read them and feel ashamed. Because it is not just the institutions, but also us, common Romanians, who have a responsibility to see these women, to understand their suffering and to fight for their rights – rights that should be demanded not only by them, the victims, but also by us, who have the privilege of knowing solidarity.

They’re actually the Italians’ women..it’s just their citizenship that’s Romanian..😁 I know their likes 🤣

What a Bitter life better a svervant in my own country than for foreigners

Stay wherever you can make a good living but, you expats stop deciding the fate of those of us who stayed home.

Well stay there then, but stop moaning about how you miss your country ,your family.

Italian pensioners can afford “badante” while Romanian pensioners live on 5 lei a day .

We know their kind,no poso di parlare romena..🤣 Cheap women for the italians..🤣

In that case, if you’re doing so well there, they should withdraw your right to vote in the presidential and parliament elections, you’re the reason we were stuck with Basescu and Iohannis who ruined our country

You’re all sex slaves for the Italians 

Anyway, you’d better give up Romanian citizenship, so we know who’s on our side and who isn’t .

well thats because back in the country you were an illiterate bum, there at least you wash some ass and can afford panetone from lidl. fucking illiterate scum, the moment you step outside the border you start badmouthing this country like it’s the country’s fault that you didn’t finish 8 years of school and lived your whole life in rubber boots, fuck your life in italy

Yes, they look after old people, while our own old people are left to die in misury.

no one’s asking you to come back slaaves

i … on you you’re their slaves and when you come to the country you act all big and forget romanian

Stay there, since you sold yourself for a ,,paneton,,

*I have decided to use the term badante in this text; it became commonplace in Romania in the early 2000s, when căpșunari (strawberry pickers) and badante (live-in carers) were the most important waves of migrations in our country yet. I find its social and cultural semantics crucial for the story of the Romanian diaspora. In Italy, the word badante is still used informally, though in public communication terms like “domestic worker” or “family assistant” are preferred.

Suicide missions, abuse, physical threats: International Legion fighters speak out against leadership’s misconduct

Added on Dec. 1, 2022: In November, the Kyiv Independent ran a follow-up to this investigation. This second story looks into other alleged misconduct of the leadership of the International Legion, including light weapons misappropriation and physical threats toward soldiers. Read it here.

Disclaimer: The Kyiv Independent is publishing this investigation to shed light on the alleged abuse of power in the leadership of one wing of the International Legion – a legion created for foreign fighters dedicated to defending Ukraine. The members of the Legion’s unit say that they reported their commanders’ misconduct to Ukrainian law enforcement, the parliament, and President Volodymyr Zelensky’s Office, but saw no proper reaction and thus turned to journalists as a last resort. Soldiers who pointed at the problems within this unit of the Legion claim they received threats for speaking up. For their safety, we do not disclose their identities.

Top findings:

In early May, a fighter from Brazil arrived in Ukraine to join the International Legion following President Volodymyr Zelensky’s call to “citizens of the world” to come and help defend Ukraine.

He thought his vast experience in the Brazilian army had prepared him for pretty much any task.

Yet he was neither ready to carry out suicide missions by order of his command, nor to tolerate orders to loot and steal.

As a platoon commander of the International Legion, he was ordered to do just that.

The Brazilian officer recalls his subordinates saying, before resigning from the legion: “We came here to help these people to fight for this country, against this invasion. We didn’t come here to do exactly what f*cking Russian people do when they’re on Ukrainian soil.”

The Kyiv Independent’s investigation reveals endemic problems in one of the International Legion’s wings that is overseen by Ukraine’s intelligence.

Some of the unit’s commanders are implicated in arms and goods theft, sexual harassment, assault, and sending unprepared soldiers on reckless missions, according to multiple sources.

The allegations in this story are based on interviews with legionnaires, written testimonies of over a dozen former and current members of the legion, and a 78-page report they’ve put together about problems within this particular unit of the International Legion.

For about four months, foreign fighters have been knocking on the doors of high offices asking for help. The report was filed to the parliament, and written testimonies were sent to Zelensky’s office. Alyona Verbytska, the president’s commissioner for soldiers’ rights, confirmed she had received legionnaires’ complaints and passed them on to law enforcement.

But authorities, soldiers say, are reluctant to solve the issue.

Failed leadership?

 The International Legion, soldiers say, consists of two wings. Ukraine’s Ground Forces oversee one. The Defense Ministry’s Directorate for Intelligence, known under its Ukrainian acronym GUR, coordinates the other.

The allegations in this report concern the GUR-run wing of the Legion. At its strongest, this unit had up to 500 people, and comprised about one-third of the International Legion, according to the Kyiv Independent’s sources among the soldiers.

GUR did not respond to the Kyiv Independent’s request for comment by publication time.

According to members of the intelligence-run wing of the Legion, their commanders report directly to the head of GUR, Kyrylo Budanov, who Zelensky also appointed to head the intelligence committee in the president’s office in late July.

Officially, the GUR wing of the Legion is run by major Vadym Popyk. However, he is not running the unit on his own.

The power is in the hands of a few people: Popyk’s right hand, major Taras Vashuk (referred to by soldiers as “young Taras”), an intelligence officer in his late 20s or early 30s, according to the foreign fighters; Vashuk’s uncle, also Taras (referred to as “old” Taras) and also an intelligence officer; and 60-year old Sasha Kuchynsky.

“They are like best buds,” an American legionnaire told the Kyiv Independent of the three men.

Young Taras, old Taras, and Sasha run the operations of the unit. They send soldiers on missions and coordinate the intelligence wing of the Legion’s work. Sasha is also in charge of logistics and supplies.

The legionnaires accuse the trio of various wrongdoings. For the two Tarases, the major complaints concern them sending soldiers on suicide missions.

An American soldier interviewed by the Kyiv Independent described a couple of missions that took place near the southern city of Mykolaiv, one of the war’s hot spots.

Russian troops discovered their squad’s position and started to shell it heavily. The rest of the troops retreated from the secondary position behind them, leaving the squad to hold the front line alone, with no backup.

“We were literally left (behind) and they didn’t want to evacuate us,” the soldier said. His fellow soldier, Scott Sibley, was killed, while three others were severely injured on that mission.

Shortly after the squad escaped the shelling, another group from the same unit was ordered to take the same position.

“We told the commander those positions were discovered by Russians… If we go back there, we are all dead,” the American soldier told the Kyiv Independent.

The older Taras did not listen and sent another group to the very same place, the soldier said. The story repeated itself, but this time with four killed, multiple injured, and one taken captive. The captive soldier, Andrew Hill, now faces a fake “trial” and possible execution in Russian-occupied Donetsk on accusations of being a mercenary.

Sasha Kuchynsky’s actions, however, stand out in their breadth of alleged wrongdoing.

Apart from sending fighters to die, legionnaires said, Kuchynsky forced them to help him loot stores. Fighters told the Kyiv Independent that he is also a heavy drinker who abuses his subordinates.

Another soldier, an American Jew, told the Kyiv Independent that Jewish soldiers experienced antisemitism from Kuchynsky.  He emphasized that he did not encounter it from anyone else in the Ukrainian military.

The soldier also says Kuchynsky demanded to have a share of the gear and equipment that the soldier bought for his close peers from the legion. When the soldier refused to give it away, Kuchynsky pointed a gun at him.

“And then Sasha (Kuchynsky) just started yelling, screaming,” the soldier recalled. “He said, ‘I know there’s stuff here. Give me your stuff’.”

“And in front of the translator, he raises his weapon at me. And I was like: ‘You’re gonna shoot me? You’re gonna shoot me.’ And then there’s like this kind of look of, honestly, remorse, but like ‘Oh, f*ck’ and he put down his gun,” the soldier went on.

He said that he once met a legionnaire at whom Kuchynsky had also raised a gun.

According to another American legionnaire, Kuchynsky also harassed female medics in their unit, using sexually suggestive language with them. According to the American soldier, the legion’s medics complained, but nobody did anything about it. The foreign medic he knew that was harassed by Kuchynsky is no longer with the Legion and has since left Ukraine, he said.

When in trouble, legionnaires say, Kuchynsky would turn to Taras Vashuk for a cover-up.

“Sasha would call Taras and get confirmation that he can do whatever he wants to do. And Taras would constantly back him up,” a Scandinavian soldier told the Kyiv Independent.

However, to date, Kuchynsky remains in his de-facto commanding position in the Legion despite his subordinates’ complaints and despite the fact that, according to Ukrainian law, he can’t as a foreigner hold executive roles in the army.

When confronted with legionnaires’ accusations, Kuchynsky refused to address them.

“It’s up to the Military Prosecutor’s Office to address these questions,” he told the Kyiv Independent over the phone. “No comments. I’m busy.”

He then hung up.

An investigation by the Military Prosecutor’s Office wouldn’t be the first time Kuchynsky has had trouble with the law.

‘Sasha Kuchynsky’

 According to the Kyiv Independent’s sources inside the legion, Sasha Kuchynsky is not the man’s real name. He is allegedly Piotr Kapuscinski, a former member of a criminal organization from Poland, who fled to Ukraine after several run-ins with the law.

Upon request from the Kyiv Independent, our colleagues from the Bellingcat investigative journalism group ran an image comparison of the photos of Sasha Kuchynsky, provided by the legionnaires, and photos of Piotr Kapuściński from Polish media. The results support the conclusion that the photos are of the same person.

An image comparison of the photos of Sasha Kuchynsky, provided by the legionnaires, and photos of Piotr Kapuściński from Polish media, support the conclusion that the photos are of the same person. (Courtesy of The Bellingcat)

An image comparison of the photos of Sasha Kuchynsky, provided by the legionnaires, and photos of Piotr Kapuściński from Polish media, support the conclusion that the photos are of the same person. (Courtesy of The Bellingcat)

In Poland, Kapuscinski is wanted for fraud and faces up to eight years in prison. According to Polish Gazeta Wyborcza, he has previously served time.

He fled Poland in 2014, and resurfaced in Ukraine two years later. He was investigated in Ukraine for aggravated robbery and sexual assault in October 2016 but was only charged with robbery. In November 2016, he was detained and spent over a year behind bars.

Warsaw asked Kyiv to extradite Kapuscinski in 2017, but Ukrainian authorities said they would first try him themselves.

He resurfaced again in May 2021, when law enforcement searched his vehicle where they found a semi-automatic pistol and bullets and proceeded to search a building that he used, finding explosives. He faced up to seven years in prison for possession of illegal weapons but was almost immediately released on bail of nearly $2,500.

After the all-out Russian war broke out in February, Kapuscinski joined the military, at which point the courts suspended his case and then paid back his bail in May 2022.

His criminal past did not prevent Kapuscinski from getting into the Legion and obtaining an executive role there. The legislation says all foreign recruits must go through background checks before joining the Ukrainian army. It’s not clear whether a criminal record counts as a deal breaker.

In Ukraine, citizens can serve in the military if they have ongoing criminal proceedings or a spent conviction. The law, however, doesn’t refer to foreigners. So when a Ukrainian court suspended Kapuscinski’s case and paid back his bail, it was applying the same norm that applies to Ukrainians.

Piotr Kapuscinski, known in the International Legion as Sasha Kuchynsky, is seen standing at the railway station wearing a Ukrainian military uniform and a colonel’s epaulet. (Courtesy of the Legion’s fighters)

In the Legion, Kuchynsky (Kapuscinski) calls himself a colonel and wears a colonel’s epaulet, according to the soldiers’ testimonies and the photographs of Kuchynsky the legionnaires provided to the Kyiv Independent. In fact, foreigners are only allowed to serve in Ukraine’s Armed Forces in the lower ranks, as privates, sergeants, and petty officers.

Since the start of the year, the man who calls himself Sasha Kuchynsky has allegedly gone from a criminal suspect on bail to a free man and de-facto commander in a high-profile Ukrainian military unit.

Polish past: Broda, the gangster 

According to reports in Polish media, in Poland, Piotr Kapuscinski is known as “Broda” (Beard), an influential former member of the Pruszków gang, once the largest mafia in the country.

He was the right-hand man of the group’s inner leadership, “Wanka” and “Malizna,” and laundered money for them, according to Mariusz Kaminski, a vice president of the Law and Justice party and currently Interior Minister of Poland and a coordinator of Poland’s secret services.

Polish media reported that he allegedly avoided at least 71 charges, including kidnapping for ransom, by cooperating with law enforcement as a “crown witness” in 2009 in the case focusing on the Pruszkow gang.

Piotr Kapuscinski, part of the criminal gang in Poland, poses for a photograph holding a rifle. (crime.com.pl)

Some time around 2010-2011, Kapuscinski testified against the murderers of Marek Papala, the Polish police chief, assassinated in 1998. Kapuscinski reportedly confessed that he had assisted the two killers, a Russian and a Belarusian, by helping them to rent an apartment in Poland.

Following his testimonies in “various cases against organized crime,” at least 20 people, including the bosses and other members of the Pruszkow gang, were charged with participation in organized crime. Nine were sentenced while the cases against Kapuscinski were suspended, according to Polish media reviewed by the Kyiv Independent.

In February 2020, he was stripped of the “crown witness” status, in part, for failing to appear in court and when called upon to appear at the prosecutor’s office.

For his alleged wrongdoings in the International Legion, Kuchynsky has already been questioned multiple times.

First, by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) after threatening one of the American soldiers with a gun. According to the soldier, Kuchynsky didn’t face any consequences.

Then, by the Military Prosecution Office following other legionnaires’ complaints against him, according to the Kyiv Independent’s law enforcement sources. The complaints alleged abuse of power, fraud, and assault. Kuchynsky denied the accusations and kept his job. The investigation, however, is ongoing.

Sent to die

The probe into Sasha Kuchynsky, among other episodes, concerns him sending soldiers on what they call a suicide mission in Sievierodonetsk, a key city in Luhansk Oblast that Russian troops seized in late June.

According to the Brazilian fighter who spoke to the Kyiv Independent, Kuchynsky’s orders were inconsistent.

At first, the Brazilian’s unit spent two weeks preparing for a demining mission in Zaporizhzhia Oblast, a southern region.

In early June, a few days into the mission, they were suddenly moved to another location. Kuchynsky ordered them to go to Sievierodonetsk in the eastern Luhansk Oblast and hold a position close to enemy lines.

Going into one of the war’s main hotspots was very different from a demining mission. That wouldn’t have been a problem if they were prepared for it, the Brazilian officer said, but they weren’t.

“We’ve been two weeks preparing these guys with all the type of training and metal detectors and anti mines…and now you’re going to send us to the industrial zone to the urban type of combat. Sasha, this is crazy,” the legionnaire recalls telling his commander.

“I understand. I am with you there, but that’s the order,” Kuchynsky reportedly replied.

Fighters of the International Legion accuse some of their commanders of sending them on so-called suicide missions unprepared and with no information about the location of the friendly and enemy troops. (Illustration: Karolina Gulshani)

The Brazilian fighter started planning the operation in Sievierodonetsk, but neither Kuchynsky nor Taras Vashuk, the other commander, gave him any information – which he said they were supposed to – about the situation on the ground. By then, Sievierodonetsk was a center of heavy fighting. Ukrainian troops would retreat from the city a couple of weeks later.

“A lot of questions asked were not answered, like where friendly troops were,” the Brazilian officer said.

Only later did he learn that the previous group sent on this very mission came under friendly fire by Ukrainian soldiers. Another Brazilian legionnaire was killed and they had to retreat.

“We got into the field without knowing what was going on,” the officer said.

“I realized those motherf*ckers won’t let us plan,” he said of Sasha and Taras. “They would just bring us into the middle of the place, dump us there to fight, dump us there to die.”

Upon arrival, a Ukrainian special forces serviceman filled them in. He told the Brazilian that Ukrainian troops are inside the buildings along their way, but they have no established communication with them so they shoot at everyone who breaks through.

“What the f*ck? How are we gonna pass? These (Ukrainian) guys are gonna shoot at us?” the Brazilian said he asked.

“Yeah, that’s right. We need to hide,” the Ukrainian soldier reportedly told him.

They spent four days there instead of the planned two. They ran out of food and water and asked for rotation, but Kuchynsky, who sent them there, wouldn’t reply.

“Nobody slept, everybody’s super tired. Some of my guys are dehydrated, and one injured guy. And we stood there. That’s when Sasha (Kuchynsky) went off the radar,” he said.

Soon someone they didn’t know got in touch via radio saying a new group was on their way. The soldiers arrived but then left in the middle of the night without saying anything. The next day, another squad came in to replace them.

The Brazilian believes that Kuchynsky had no plan for their extraction.

“A bunch of wannabes, playing with people’s lives,” he said of the unit’s leadership. His account of suicide missions is confirmed by other soldiers – both in their conversations with the Kyiv Independent and in their official testimonies they filed to the President’s Office.

The Brazilian platoon leader and a couple of his soldiers got injured but survived. After finally getting evacuated from Sievierodonetsk, most of the squad fighters decided to quit the Legion.

“We’re not f*cking staying. We’re leaving,” the fighter recalled them saying.

The team of the Brazilian fighter is not the only one that left the Legion, disappointed.

Foreigners quitting the International Legion due to poor organization, lack of equipment, and indefinite contracts have already made headlines across international media.

Shopping mall plunder

Around the time of the Battle of Sievierodonetsk in early June, the legionnaires received a controversial task from Kuchynsky: to drive from their base to a local shopping mall in the front-line city of Lysychansk in Luhansk Oblast and take merchandise from the shops.

“I directly heard Sasha Kuchynsky’s order to the soldiers of my unit to break into the shopping center, collect the furniture and electronics as soon as possible and collect all possible valuables along the way,” a Canadian fighter wrote in his statement following the incident.

Fighters of the International Legion accuse some commanders of giving them orders to loot a shopping mall. (Illustration: Karolina Gulshani)

According to the soldiers’ official testimonies obtained by the Kyiv Independent, “Sasha” also told subordinates to take whatever they liked: shoes, women’s clothes, jewelry, watches, and electronics.

Many soldiers obeyed as they come from professional military backgrounds where they don’t question superiors’ commands.

“(Normally) you should say ‘yes, sir’ and get it done. Because you believe that your commander knows what he’s asking you to do…You just assume that this action is legal, and you’re going to go for it. You’re not supposed to question it,” the Brazilian legionnaire told the Kyiv Independent.

“Locals saw how we loaded the furniture which made me very uncomfortable. It felt like we were robbing them. I didn’t come to Ukraine for this,” a testimony of a Columbian soldier reads.

“There were local residents near the shopping mall, one of whom, seeing this, shouted insults, and the others looked at us with reproach and condemnation. I don’t know whether it was legal or not but I felt ashamed to carry out the order of Sasha Kuchynsky and take away furniture and valuables from stores during hostilities and in front of local residents who suffered from the war,” a French legionnaire wrote in his statement.

Some soldiers refused to follow the order.

In a video obtained by the Kyiv Independent, some foreigners can be heard in the shopping mall questioning the legality of “Sasha’s” orders.

“We will not be implicated by any means as looters. We will not stand for this,” an English-speaking soldier is heard saying.

He then tells the crowd that he will not stay in front of the stolen goods and is going downstairs to wait until the car picks him up and drives back to the base. “Sasha” becomes angry at the soldiers’ refusal to carry out his orders.

“Listen, (do not set) conditions for me. This is an order, to stay here and wait for the commander. This is an order. You get it? An order. This is the army,” the Polish commander says in broken Russian.

“I do not find that order lawful. We do not see this as reasonable,” the soldier replies.

The video ends with the soldier saying to his peers: “Let’s go downstairs, guys. We are not playing these games.”

According to the legionnaires, Kuchynsky ordered similar lootings on multiple occasions and Ukrainian soldiers were ordered to participate as well.

The legionnaires don’t know where the items were sent to. In a video obtained by the Kyiv Independent, one soldier is heard saying in Russian that the furniture and electronics taken from the mall were for their unit’s headquarters in Kyiv.

Theft allegations

According to the legionnaires, they regularly witnessed what they believe were suspicious arms movements.

“The car is coming, the cars going, the boxes of weapons coming, the boxes of weapons going,” one of the American soldiers said.

Despite the legion’s armory rooms being loaded with all sorts of heavy weaponry and ammunition, the soldiers say they often didn’t end up in their hands.

“During my stay in Sievierodonetsk, a civilian vehicle painted in camouflage containing thermal imagers arrived,” a Columbian soldier wrote in his testimony. “They were not distributed among the soldiers due to their alleged absence. Meanwhile, Sasha Kuchynsky proposed to the military personnel of the International Legion to buy these thermal imagers for $300.”

“I think, Sasha Kuchynsky artificially created the impression of a shortage of some ammunition to illegally enrich himself by providing it to fighters (for money) as if from himself,“ another fighter from Columbia wrote in his testimony.

According to him, two of his fellow soldiers damaged their hearing due to the lack of headphones that he knew were in their armory, under Kuchynsky’s control.

Soldiers say Kuchynsky would take away part of the ammunition they would independently receive from volunteers and donors. They called it the “Sasha tax.”

“So you have to give Sasha what he wants. And then you can give (the rest) of this stuff to your guys,” one of the American soldiers said. “Everything just seems like a cover-up. It’s very strange. It feels like an (organized) business.”

The same happened to another American soldier. His shipment arrived at the base while he was on a mission. When he returned, some parcels were gone.

“It was labeled for our team. So basically, simple as that, half of the stuff wasn’t there.”

Waiting for solution

The foreign soldiers say they did not want to publicize the crisis in the International Legion and tried to solve the issue behind the scenes.

They first complained to their commanders, then lawmakers, and finally went as far as the President’s Office. Since the Legion was created upon Zelensky’s order, foreign fighters counted on his administration’s support, but did not get much help from there, they said.

Alyona Verbytska, the president’s commissioner for soldiers’ rights, told the Kyiv Independent she had informed her superiors about the legionnaires’ complaints. She did not elaborate on who exactly she reported to.

In the President’s Office, two people oversee the Legion for Zelensky, according to the Kyiv Independent’s sources close to the Office. They are Vitaliy Martyniuk, a national security expert, and Roman Mashovets, deputy head of the Office and former employee of the GUR intelligence agency.

The President’s Office did not reply to the Kyiv Independent’s request for comment before publication.

Complaining to the President’s Office didn’t work out. Things even got worse, the soldiers said, as those who sounded an alarm about the Legion’s leadership started to feel under pressure and receive threats.

Meanwhile, many professional members left the unit due to alleged mismanagement and problems with paperwork. The Legion failed to provide some of them with official contracts.

“There were really good special (forces) guys. I mean, not from the regular military. A lot of special (forces) guys literally just said: ‘No, thank you. We can’t work like that anymore’,” an American soldier said.

Those who stayed in the unit want it to keep helping Ukraine to stand against Russia. To do it effectively, they believe, the Legion must be reformed under new leadership.

“I have a very, very, very pleasant experience with everybody in the Ukrainian military outside of Sasha and Tarases,” one of the American soldiers said.

“I’ve always just kind of kept my mouth shut. Just because people like Sasha really discredit all of this,” he said.

Note from the authors:

Hi, it’s Anna and Alexander here. We worked hard to piece the evidence together and break this story. We believe it is crucial to shed light on mismanagement in the army, especially in times of war. We wanted to help bring change to the International Legion so it continues to assist Ukraine in defending itself against Russian aggression. Now, however, many legionnaires are resigning due to the commanders’ misconduct.