Mamuka Mamulashvili is the commander of the Georgian Legion of the Ukrainian army and has been fighting Russian invasions since the 1990s.
REUTERS/Serhii Nuzhnenko
The commander of one of Ukraine's international fighting units has a message for the world: Give us more guns.
Mamuka Mamulashvili, the founder and leader of the Georgian Legion of the Ukrainian army, told Insider in an interview that the United States should recall how former President Franklin D. Roosevelt said the US must give Europe "the arsenal of democracy."
Weapons, along with more support and relentless sanctions for Russia, are the only way Ukraine can avoid the fate that befell Georgia in 2008, when international reaction to Putin's invasion was muted, Mamulashvili said.
"Ukraine is the only country today physically fighting for freedom and democratic ideals," Mamulashvili told Insider. "Everybody should get more engaged, because it is the only place now where you can see the real fighting for real freedom."
Mamulashvili founded the legion in 2014 along with a group of other Georgian nationals to fight Russia-backed separatist forces in Ukraine's Donbas region. It later made a contract with the Ukrainian government to become part of the Ukrainian army. Since it welcomes conscripts from other countries, it has been the de-facto international legion of the Ukrainian military.
Mamulashvili has personally been fighting against Moscow's expansion in wars since he was 14 years old, beginning with the separatist war in Georgia's Abkhazia region, which began in 1992. He said that witnessing the resolve of Ukrainian civilians has made him prouder to fight alongside them, and that he has been impressed with the leadership of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during the crisis.
"I see now, the guy is really hard. They could not break him," he said. "I'm very skeptical about politicians generally. And I did not expect that this guy has the iron, or nerves, let's say."
Mamulashvili said that, for years, he was anticipating Russia's widespread attack on Ukraine. He has used his group to train civilians across Ukraine to learn how to handle arms and protect themselves from gunfire. He said Putin's interest isn't just in geographical expansion, but to suck the country's soul.
"Russia depends on Ukraine historically because Russia has not got its own history," he said. "It has only the mist of the history, and it is connected to Ukraine. So they want stolen history [more] than they want Ukrainian soil."
In February, as Russia's invasion began, Zelensky called for "every friend of Ukraine" to join the fight. He said his administration would form a new foreign legion, officially called the International Legion of Territorial Defense of Ukraine.
But details about the new legion remain scarce. Ukrainian officials haven't said who will lead the group, what kind of training they will receive, and how many years fighters will be expected to serve. Several foreign fighters interviewed by Insider said they plan to join Mamulashvili's legion instead. Zelensky, Mamulashvili said, should have simply designated his group as the international legion instead of creating a new one under a different commander. He believed that would happen eventually.
"All the foreigners anyways are coming to Georgia Legion and not to some other place," he said. "So whether the government wants it or not they have to say we are the international legion because we are the international legion."
The Georgian Legion had 250 fighters before Russia's invasion, Mamulashvili told Insider. In the weeks since, he said, thousands of more people have sent messages to him on WhatsApp and other channels in the past week telling him they planned to join the fight.
REUTERS/Serhii Nuzhnenko
He said around 1,000 more people planned to join from Georgia, 150 from the United Kingdom, and 50 from the United States. (Last week, the government of Georgia blocked a group of 400 fighters from joining the legion, according to Vice.) The battalion, Mamulashvili said, could easily absorb new foreigners because it's composed of relatively small groups and already has a process in place for taking newcomers from different backgrounds.
"We have a reputation of a good unit, a good battalion, professional. So they're trying to reach us," he said.
Mamulashvili said he speaks with every person joining his unit personally and makes sure they're fighting for the right reasons. He won't accept extremists or "bloodthirsty guys that are coming and saying, 'let's kill somebody,'" he said. Mamulashvili also drew a distinction between his group and the Azov Battalion, another segment of the Ukrainian army, which has welcomed neo-Nazis and other white supremacists and has also cultivated international ties.
"I have to exclude the radical views. I have to exclude some religious fanatics or extremism or Nazis or racism or whatever," he said.
The collective response from Ukrainians and the rest of the world to Russia's invasion has made Mamulashvili think there will be "no problem" defeating Putin's forces, he said. Putin, he said, has no moral standing in the war.
"It must be unacceptable for any civilized men to tolerate what Russia does in Ukraine," Mamulashvili said. "They're killing children, they're killing women, they're killing everybody, they're killing good people in the street. Putin is a pure war criminal and his place is in Hague."
