Colombian Cartels Send Fighters To Ukraine To Master Drone Tactics, Threatening Bogotá’s Air Supremacy – JP
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Colombian drug cartels and illegal armed groups are secretly dispatching operatives to the Ukrainian front lines to acquire advanced drone warfare skills, which they are now turning against the Colombian state, according to recent reporting.
Over the past year, Colombia has seen a sharp rise in sophisticated drone attacks that closely resemble tactics developed in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Armed factions aim to undermine the Colombian military’s long-held dominance of the skies over jungle territory.
Criminal organizations are focusing particularly on first-person-view (FPV) attack drones. Their goals include learning how to defeat electronic jamming, improve explosive payloads, and secure communications between operators and aircraft.
“The recruitment schemes are very complex, but what worries me most is the level of specialization they’re acquiring,” an anonymous Colombian aid worker based in Ukraine told the Financial Times. “Former paramilitaries, former guerrillas and former soldiers are fighting and learning together here how to operate drones.”
Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense has acknowledged the risk. Taras Palianytsia, an officer at the Foreign Recruiting Center, said commanders actively screen for and expel recruits linked to organized crime when identified.
Clash Report has highlighted how these returning fighters are already applying lessons from eastern European battlefields inside Colombia, accelerating the shift in local security dynamics.
The Colombian Defense Ministry recorded 264 hostile drone attacks between 2024 and 2025. Many involved commercial drones modified with explosives and have caused steady casualties among security forces. Notable incidents include a December attack on a military base that killed seven soldiers and an April strike on a radar site near the Ecuadorian border that left three dead.
“The drone industry has exploded, and criminals have adapted the technology for attacks, which is a major challenge to battlefield aerial supremacy,” outgoing Defense Minister Pedro Sánchez said.
Colombia neutralized 96 percent of incoming drone threats last year through jamming and kinetic intercepts. Returning operatives, however, are developing countermeasures drawn from Ukrainian experience. Intelligence points to efforts to obtain fiber-optic-controlled drones—technology refined in the Russia-Ukraine war and previously employed by groups such as Hezbollah—that are immune to conventional radio-frequency jammers.
In response, the government launched a $1.6 billion anti-drone program in January featuring fixed and mobile detection systems, while tightening import controls on civilian and commercial drones.
Colombia’s long internal conflict has produced a large pool of experienced fighters. Attracted by salaries far higher than domestic military pensions, many have served as mercenaries in Yemen, South Sudan, and Ukraine. At least 500 Colombians have died fighting in Ukraine over the past four years.
President Gustavo Petro has criticized the outflow, raising military pay and ratifying a 1989 UN convention aimed at curbing mercenary activity. The emerging aerial threat now confronts incoming President Abelardo de la Espriella, a hardline conservative who takes office Friday, as cartel-operated drone swarms increasingly challenge the military’s traditional control of the skies over rebel-held areas.