Manuel Ferley Barrios is the name of the fifth Colombian who lost his life in the middle of the invasion of Ukraine. He is a Huilense father of four children and pensioner of the National Armywhere she worked as a nursing assistant. Apparently, the man had joined the Ukrainian Foreign Legionwith a monetary motivation.
The Colombian saw in the international conflict a job opportunity that would allow him to assume a debt of 80 million pesos, product of a mortgage, according to the Diary of Huila. international media such as Spain country They report that a foreign soldier who participates in the battlefront can earn up to 3,000 euros per month. Currently, the foreign legion It is made up of citizens from more than 50 different countries.
“He said that he was going to work for nine months, he would recover the house and come to settle his obligation, but now he is not here, the debt continues and we are worse off,” the wife told the newspaper. the bornNo. of Neiva.
The withdrawal would have been presented on March 27 in the capital of Ukraine, kyiv, victim of a bomb attack. In an extensive interview with The nationthe widow narrated how the man was surprised by the harshness of the fighting, which is why he had thought of returning to Colombia.
However, the pressure from the financial institution and the denial of options to refinance the debt led the man to make the decision. The widow’s sister asked for help both for the family and for the distribution of the body.
Another of the difficulties expressed by the family of the deceased is the repatriation of the body, because although the process would be free of charge, if it is extremely delayed, since the body must be transferred to Warsaw, where the paperwork is processed by the Colombian Embassy in Poland and can take up to three months.
Barrios worked in the country as a nursing assistant for a health center in Neiva. He carried out different tasks, and was even one of the covid-19 vaccinators, before making the decision to join the conflict in Eastern Europe. It is not clear what were the channels through which the man was recruited.
Several weeks ago, the president Gustavo Petro He assured that from the United States he was asked to cooperate with weapons to assist the Ukrainian forces; However, the national president demonstrated his non-conformity and categorically refused to deliver war material, to be used in the framework of the European conflict.
“The United States asked me that, to solve the problem of our inability to sustain these active elements, we hand them over to them and they took it to Ukraine. I told him that our Constitution has as an order in the international arena, peace, and that is how it will remain as scrap metal in Colombia, we did not hand over Russian weapons so that they could take them to Ukraine to continue a war, “said the president.
Petro’s invitation was not only for the United States, but urged all Latin American countries to continue forging ideals of peace, because according to him, they should refrain from taking sides about what is happening between Ukraine and Russia.
“Instead of playing in which military bloc remains, its Russian or NATO, peace must be demanded first of all, that pertinent dialogues be built, it should be noted that in Colombia we are not with any, we are with peace, that’s why no Russian weapons are going to be used,” Petro stressed.
