Fighters Without Borders: Mercenaries, Adventurers, and Volunteers in Myanmar’s Civil War

In July 2026, footage released by the Myanmar regime showed troops from Russia’s Airborne Forces, the Vozdushno-desantnye voyska Rossii (VDV), training alongside their Myanmar counterparts. The Myanmar–Russia joint exercise, named Tiger-2026, formed part of the expanding military cooperation between Naypyidaw and Moscow. The exercise was followed by a visit by the military-appointed President Min Aung Hlaing to Russia, during which the two sides signed a series of agreements and memoranda covering military and broader economic cooperation. In his meeting with President Putin, Min Aung Hlaing described Myanmar as a “reliable partner” of Russia.

Together, these developments show that the Kremlin is now an important partner for Min Aung Hlaing’s “civilian” government, despite his earlier overtures sometimes appearing to receive limited attention. The presence in Myanmar of VDV personnel, unmanned vehicles, and Russian military instructors has therefore prompted some observers to ask whether Moscow may become more deeply involved in Myanmar’s civil war in the months and years to come. But Moscow’s growing official military presence may not be the only way Russian nationals are becoming involved in Myanmar’s war. Recent evidence suggests that Russian “soldiers of fortune” may already be operating alongside Myanmar forces, raising the possibility of a more direct Russian presence on the battlefield.

An International Cause

The presence of foreign soldiers of fortune in Myanmar is hardly a new phenomenon. Indeed, it predates the founding of the modern nation itself. During the early years of the Second World War in Burma, a group of American airmen known as the American Volunteer Group, paid and equipped by the Chinese Nationalist government, briefly operated from airfields in British Burma. Popularly remembered as the Flying Tigers, these American pilots helped resist Japanese air raids over Rangoon. They were among the earliest foreign fighters to operate on this land. This is separate from the presence of the Chinese Expeditionary Force during the Burma Campaign, whose soldiers belonged to a national military and therefore cannot be categorized as mercenaries.

Under the post-independence government of U Nu, there were recurring, though often unconfirmed, reports of foreign military elements (i.e., Republican Chinese and American military advisors) connected to the remnants of Kuomintang forces that occupied parts of eastern Shan State after being driven out of China by Mao Zedong’s communist armies. The Kuomintang troops were supported through Air America, an airline covertly controlled by the United States Central Intelligence Agency. Its activities included delivering supplies to Kuomintang forces in Burma and supporting Hmong irregular forces during the “secret wars” in Laos and the wider Indochina conflict. The U Nu government formally protested these covert activities at the then newly established United Nations.

On the other side of the Cold War, revolutionary volunteers supported their ideological comrades. When the Communist Party of Burma established its Northeastern Military Region in 1968, its ranks included Chinese volunteers carrying copies of Mao’s “Little Red Book.” Some figures associated with the present-day leadership and origins of northeastern ethnic armed organizations, including the United Wa State Army, the National Democratic Alliance Army, and the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), either emerged from this Maoist revolutionary network or trace part of their political and military lineage to it.

At the other end of the country, the Karen National Union, under the leadership of General Saw Bo Mya, employed an assortment of foreign mercenaries, military contractors, and instructors in its expanding liberated areas throughout the 1980s. French mercenaries, in particular, arrived in Kawthoolei, the KNU-administered areas of southeastern Myanmar. Many were often former members of the French Foreign Legion who provided services as military instructors, advisers, and defensive planners. Commanders serving under Ne Win reportedly believed that these mercenaries contributed to the construction of the KNU’s network of major fortifications along the Thailand–Myanmar border. Myanmar military commanders also claimed to have captured letters and personal items belonging to these Frenchmen on the battlefield.

Even after major Myanmar military offensives in the 1990s brought down many of these fortifications, mercenaries and foreign volunteers continued to appear along the border. Throughout the late 1990s and 2000s, reports of foreign fighters in the region persisted. The networks and relationships created during the Cold War may have helped establish the borderlands as a potential destination for people offering military services.

During this period of military offensives, another kind of foreign participant entered Myanmar’s battlefields: the humanitarian volunteer. Following a series of missionary journeys to Myanmar’s war-ravaged borderlands and a meeting with Aung San Suu Kyi in 1996, former U.S. Special Forces officer David Eubank founded the Free Burma Rangers (FBR). Officially a humanitarian organization providing medical assistance and training, the group has worked closely with the KNU and other resistance organizations. It has transferred practical knowledge, provided training and, at times, participated in the armed protection of civilians. After the 2021 military coup, the FBR gained significantly greater visibility as large numbers of young people from Myanmar’s cities sought refuge in KNU-controlled territories. FBR helped to organize resistance forces and set up training programs for young urban evacuees.

The current international landscape has also seen an increase in foreign volunteers who are not primarily motivated by financial reward. One example is Azad and the Anti-Fascist Internationalist Front (AIF), a left-wing internationalist organization operating along the India–Myanmar border. Azad, a U.S. national and former participant in the Syrian Civil War, reportedly came to Myanmar because of an ideological commitment to fighting authoritarianism. Unlike many mercenaries from earlier periods, these internationalist volunteers appear to be motivated primarily by political conviction and solidarity. The AIF has claimed involvement in combat operations, including sniper and drone warfare, and has publicized a female-operated drone unit known as the Witch.

A series of arrests in India involving foreign nationals allegedly attempting to travel to Myanmar or support resistance organizations has offered further glimpses of this emerging international solidarity movement. Court filings from August 2026 by India’s National Investigation Agency alleged that these groups of Americans and Ukrainians were involved in training local resistance groups in drone assembly, operation, and logistics.

Khant, a People’s Defense Force trooper from southeastern Myanmar, has communicated to the authors that foreign nationals and diasporas who were sympathetic to the democratic resistance were key in fitting his company with tactical gear, night vision goggles, and other assorted equipment without the usual shades of war-profiteering and gun-running. The Australian national who was detained back in March 2026 by his own national authorities, after a trip from the Thailand-Myanmar border, was perhaps part of one of these supporter networks.

The available cases remain limited, but they show how Myanmar’s resistance has begun attracting not only members of the diaspora but also foreign volunteers motivated by anti-authoritarian politics or a personal identification with the struggle.

The post-coup conflict has also brought back another phenomenon from Myanmar’s earlier conflicts: the involvement of Chinese volunteers, veterans, and private security personnel. The MNDAA has long been reported to have recruited former members of China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA). During its first attempt to retake Laukkai in 2015, reports emerged of Chinese nationals, former PLA members, fighting alongside the group. There is considerably less evidence of Chinese mercenaries participating directly in the Operation 1027 offensive, which the MNDAA and its partners launched in October 2023, and such claims must therefore be treated cautiously.

China’s broader role in Myanmar’s security landscape has nevertheless continued to expand. Even prior to the 2021 coup, China allowed a private security company, Frontier Security Group (FSG), to protect its jade mining interests in Northern Myanmar. The FSG had the Dark Prince, Eric Prince, former head of Blackwater, as a board member.

In the aftermath of Operation 1027, China and the Min Aung Hlaing regime agreed on establishing a joint security company, formally intended to protect Chinese investments and personnel. Chinese security interests are particularly concentrated around strategic infrastructure, including Kyaukphyu in Rakhine State, where major port, pipeline and economic corridor projects are located. Whether these security arrangements will remain limited to protecting Chinese projects or become entangled in Myanmar’s wider conflict remains an important question.

Cometh the Russians?

The latest and potentially most consequential addition to this diverse collection of foreign participants is the reported presence of Russian nationals on Myanmar’s battlefield. We have been examining possible Russian links to the conflict since at least 2023, initially asking whether the Wagner Group or similar Russian military networks might eventually establish a presence in the country. This concern emerged before the latest sightings and was rooted in both personal observations and the wider pattern of Russian activity abroad.

One of us first encountered Russian personnel in Meiktila in central Myanmar in 2016, three years after the communal violence that devastated the area. These personnel said that they were working with the Myanmar Air Force and showed videos of their activities, which included the training of pilots and officers and assisting with the repair of helicopters and other military equipment. This encounter did not establish any connection to Wagner. It did, however, demonstrate that Russian advisors had already developed an operational relationship with Myanmar’s military aviation and its personnel years before the 2021 coup.

Our earlier concerns were also influenced by a report published in May 2023 by the independent Russian outlet Verstka. The report examined a map visible behind Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin during an interview with Russian political blogger Konstantin Dolgov. The map divided countries into different color-coded categories apparently related to Wagner’s international activities. Myanmar appeared in white, separate from countries where Wagner was understood to have personnel physically deployed. Although the meaning of this category was never conclusively established, it raised the possibility that Myanmar was being considered for, or was already receiving, some form of technical, strategic, or non-combat support.

At the time, there was no concrete evidence that Wagner personnel were operating inside Myanmar. We therefore treated the map and the earlier presence of Russian specialists as warning signs rather than proof. Nevertheless, they pointed towards a knowledge gap. While Wagner’s operations in Africa, the Middle East, and Ukraine have received extensive attention, far less is known about the group’s possible networks or ambitions in Southeast Asia. Myanmar’s deepening defence relationship with Russia made the possibility worthy of continued monitoring.

Our latest open-source investigation based on an anonymous tip has now identified a series of social-media posts apparently belonging to a Swedish-Estonian national, Viktor Azrael, with ties to Russian military networks and the now-defunct Wagner Group. This connection is based primarily on Azrael’s own account: in a 2023 social-media thread, he claimed that he had encountered Wagner personnel in Syria and later traveled to Russia intending to join the group. In posts from August 6, September 2, and September 5, 2025, he presents himself as conducting sniper training with Myanmar military personnel.

Later posts show him alongside a Russian national identified as Sasha. The material suggests that the two men may have operated in or traveled through a conflict area in southeastern Myanmar, possibly Karen State.

Some posts also claimed that the Russian fighters participated in sniper duels with American volunteers fighting on the resistance side. We have not independently verified this claim or established the identities and affiliations of the alleged American fighters.

What is nevertheless striking is how the journey was presented. Rather than describing himself as part of an official Russian deployment, the individual portrayed his time in Myanmar as an Asian adventure. This language points towards a long-standing but often overlooked category of foreign participant: the military adventurer motivated by a mixture of ideology, personal ambition, combat experience, and the love of the game itself.

The Wagner Group in its original form may no longer be the central question it was when these concerns were first raised. The more important issue is whether the networks, methods, and model associated with Wagner, which combine state interests, private military actors, technical specialists, and individuals whose official status remains deliberately unclear, could develop within the context of the growing Myanmar–Russia relationship.

Russian involvement in Myanmar may soon come to operate, if it does not already, at several levels: formal military cooperation between the two governments; the deployment of instructors and technical personnel; private or semi-private military networks; and individual Russian nationals traveling to the battlefield independently. If true, this simultaneous appearance raises legitimate questions about whether individual adventurers could eventually become part of a broader and more organized Russian presence.

Such a development would have consequences beyond Myanmar. A more permanent Russian military or private-security presence could alter the strategic environment of Southeast Asia and affect the security calculations of neighboring China and India. It would also deepen the international dimensions of a war that is still too often treated as an isolated domestic crisis.

Seen in this historical context, the recent reports that Russian snipers are present in Myanmar, in addition to the VDV personnel training with the Myanmar military, are less anomalous than they may initially seem. Foreigners have been participating in Myanmar’s wars for decades, although their motivations and affiliations have differed significantly. The conflict since 2021 has merely produced a new generation of foreign participants and created new routes through which they can become involved.

What remains uncertain is how far this latest wave will go. Will Russian snipers remain a handful of individual adventurers, or will they become part of a broader Russian military or private-security presence? The same questions apply to Chinese security personnel deployed to protect strategic infrastructure, and indeed to the volunteers fighting on the side of Myanmar’s resistance.

The Russians now appearing in Myanmar are only the latest chapter in a much older story. The battlefield has repeatedly drawn people from beyond the country’s borders, sometimes for money, sometimes for ideology, sometimes for adventure, and sometimes because they sincerely believed in the cause. Myanmar’s civil war may be fought primarily over the country’s future, but it has never been fought by Myanmar people alone.