In Lviv, a Mexican recruit known as ‘Aguila-7’ entered Ukraine’s International Legion in March 2024 on a fraudulent Salvadoran passport and trained to operate first-person-view, or FPV, drones at the Kill House Academy. The legion’s Spanish-speaking units provide such training.
He showed enough skill during the course that instructors sought an investigation, according to accounts reported by European outlets. Intelligence analysis later linked him to Mexico’s GAFE air-mobile special forces, whose former members have moved into cartel ranks.
The case has become part of a wider concern that Mexican and Colombian cartel members are entering the legion to gain experience in drone warfare. A US assessment has warned that explosive-drone expertise brought back from the Russia-Ukraine war is changing the fight against trafficking networks in Latin America.
Mexico’s National Intelligence Center sent confidential memos to Ukraine’s Security Service in the summer of 2025, warning that Mexican citizens in the legion were seeking FPV combat skills for cartels. On 30 July 2025, Ukraine’s Security Service opened a formal inquiry into suspected infiltrators in Spanish-speaking volunteer units. Ukrainian counterintelligence was also examining units including a tactical group called Ethos.
Poland and Bulgaria began separate inquiries into the smuggling routes and networks that brought cartel-linked recruits into Ukraine. Private security firms based in Cali and Medellín have been described as financiers and smugglers for recruits travelling from Colombia.
Last August, the Financial Times reported that Colombians with organised-crime ties were arriving in Ukraine with “unusual obsessions” about battlefield drone work. Three former Colombian FARC guerrillas allegedly used forged Panamanian documents to complete similar training.
The attraction is the speed with which battlefield experience can be acquired. An FPV drone operator can gain in a few months practical experience that cartels and other criminal groups might otherwise take years to develop.
Cartels are seeking people who can alter radio frequencies, counter electronic-warfare systems, extend a drone’s range and increase the payload it can carry. Mexican groups use money and coercion to recruit specialists, particularly Colombians, who have fought in Ukraine, and Mexican intelligence officials say returning Colombian drone specialists are being offered substantial sums.
The tactics are already being used in Mexico and Colombia, where cartels are fielding FPV drones against rivals and security forces. Mexican criminal groups carried out an estimated 220 drone attacks between 2021 and 2025. The Jalisco New Generation Cartel and the Sinaloa Cartel have both deployed armed drones against rivals and, in some cases, security forces.
In October 2025, a coordinated three-drone FPV attack in Tijuana destroyed six vehicles near the US border. Colombian officials have also reported Ukraine-style FPV drones in their own theatres.
The State Department is working with Ukrainian authorities to limit the transfer of battlefield skills to criminal organisations. Taras Palyanytsia, an official in the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense’s foreign personnel recruitment department, has said officials cannot truly know every foreign volunteer’s motives or guarantee that they will not work with drug cartels after returning home.
Ukrainian officials describe a four-layer screening process for foreign volunteers, including border checks and direct Security Service vetting, while acknowledging that some operatives may evade it. No public US agency has said how many cartel-linked fighters passed through Ukraine or how many drones are already in northwest Mexico.
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