By Adolfo Quizon Paglinawan

 

Part 33: Where the Philippines sees War, China seeks Diplomacy

The meaning of the acronym OFW may soon be desecrated.

President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr ‘s press release has not yet found its mark after speaking with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to explore deeper cooperation in food security, agriculture, and digitalization, and to reaffirm brouhaha about opening doors for expanded collaboration in priority sectors, when Russia Today sent an information projectile to Manila painting what those priority sectors could include.

In a press  briefing in Moscow, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova alleged that RMS International, a Florida-based contractor, has been actively seeking Filipino recruits by offering US$5,000 in monthly pay for those willing to join combat operations on behalf of Kyiv. She said the supposed recruitment scheme includes transportation, training, and assistance with travel documents.

Zakharova explained further U.S. military instructors are allegedly conducting combat and tactical training at a facility near San Fernando, although she did not specify whether the site was in the Philippines or another location bearing the same name. She also claimed that prospective recruits receive Schengen visas through the German Embassy in Manila, supposedly allowing them to travel to Europe before deployment.

Crossing the Russia’s redline?

Triggered by this revelation, Anna Malindog-Uy, Asian Century Institute’s thermostat in Beijing rattled an alert, “Is Marcos dragging the Philippines again into Russia’s crosshairs?”

“If my reading is correct, firstly Moscow would see this as direct participation in the Ukraine conflict – a red line it has repeatedly stated. Russia does not make accusations like this lightly. When Russia signals a red line, it means: We are watching you very closely,” she said.

In July of last year, President Vladimir Putin warned the Philippines that its being a “US satellite-like” status puts it under Russia’s nuclear cross hairs, noting the deployment of the Typhon Weapon System in Northern Luzon facing China, North Korea and Russia.

The Typhon launches both the defensive SM6 interceptor Mach 3.5 supersonic missile and the offensive subsonic Tomahawk cruise missile that has a range of up to 2,500 kilometers.

Opposition leaders in the Philippines have warned that President Marcos Jr’s security alliance with the US is helping to push the world to “the brink of a renewed nuclear arms race” after Putin warned US weapon systems in the Southeast Asian country could lead to Moscow’s missile deployments abroad and prompt response.

Russia has resumed production of intermediate and shorter range nuclear-capable missiles and reserved the right to consider where to deploy them after the United States brought similar missiles to Denmark for exercises and also to the Philippines. “We need to respond to this and start manufacturing these strike systems, then based on the actual situation, make decisions about where  to place them to ensure our safety”, Putin told Russia’s Security Council on state television.

Malindog-Uy who is finishing her PhD studies in Economics at the Institute of South-South Cooperation and Development (ISSCAD) at Peking University in China, added Russia could call troop recruitment out as foreign interference — and as an American operation using Philippine soil.

For Moscow, foreign fighters in Ukraine are not “volunteers.” They are mercenaries acting on behalf of the host state. And in this regard, Manila could be considered and labeled “a participant” in a European war we have zero business entangling ourselves in.

Enlarging PH theatre?

She said secondly, this paints the Philippines  as a proxy playground, as if being a chess piece in the U.S.–China rivalry wasn’t risky enough; and now we’re inserting ourselves into the U.S.-Ukraine–Russia confrontation, too. What’s next under a Marcos Jr. presidency?? North Korea? Iran?

“Thirdly, under a Marcos presidency, the Philippines is now perceived by the world at large as aligning with every U.S. military agenda on the planet: South China Sea – Check! Taiwan Strait? – Check! Ukraine front – Check!”

Since February 2023 after signing four additional US bases in the Philippines, the sitting president has been mishandling the South China Sea, antagonizing China and ASEAN, shooing away foreign direct investments and tourism, fumbling the economy, drowning in massive corruption scandals and as if hemorrhaging domestic legitimacy weren’t enough — now we may be adding Russia to the list of offended major powers.”

Russia’s spokesperson Maria Zakharova did not mince words. Her narrative is straightforward: The Philippines is letting U.S. private military recruiters operate freely, train Filipinos, ship them to Ukraine, and issue European visas through Western embassies, officially stamped, broadcast on RT, and circulated globally.

What’s wrong with this move? Absolutely everything! It drags the Philippines into Europe’s bloodiest conflict since WWII. It threatens our diplomatic ties with Russia. It risks retaliation. It shows the Marcos Jr. government doesn’t even understand the basics of foreign policy risk management, and it makes Manila appear reckless, unserious, and manipulable.

And worst of all: Filipinos — already desperate under a collapsing economy — are the ones being pushed into dangerous foreign battlefields by geopolitical games they don’t even understand. So, is this yet another catastrophe after another under a Marcos Jr. presidency?

Denials

German Ambassador Andreas Pfaffernoschke, however, dismissed Russian allegations that its embassy in Manila hands out Schengen visas to Filipinos recruited to fight in Ukraine’s war, as baseless allegations. The embassy also stressed that its visa program is limited to Schengen travel and is not used for any deployment to Ukraine.

The problem is once in Europe, your Schengen visa allows entry to Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Moldova, where land border crossings with Ukraine is possible.

The Ukraine Embassy in Manila has also denied Filipino nationals were being recruited to join Ukrainian troops in the ongoing Ukraine-Russia war saying it was a fabrication.

Again, just saying this is part of “Russian propaganda” in Southeast Asia doesn’t really mean anything. Ukraine double speaks – it denies recruiting mercenaries but an analysis of foreign fighters by Arkadiusz Legieć, a Senior Analyst at the Polish Institute of International Affairs, estimated that about 17,241 foreign fighters fought in Ukraine between 2014 and 2019. On February 2022, Zelensky created the Ukrainian Foreign Legion a military unit composed of foreign volunteers.

Part of West Palm Beach-based RMS International Group is a security company founded by intelligence and military veterans that offers varied personal and corporate security services including executive protection, cyber defense, travel management and 24/7 monitoring. So why not recruitment for foreign mercenaries?

Claims of Ukraine’s supposed recruitment of foreign mercenaries also surfaced this week in South Korea. According to The Korea Herald, there have been sightings of posters in Seongnam urging locals to join Ukraine’s military, listing benefits including “the legal right to kill North Koreans.”

Again, Ukraine’s Center for Strategic Communication dismissed the news as part of Russia’s “disinformation campaign.”

The war in Ukraine, now in its fourth year, began in February 2022 when Russia launched a full-scale invasion of the country. By November 2025, 400,000 casualties and 1.5 million injured  have been estimated; about 3.7 million people are internally displaced within Ukraine, while another 6.9 million have sought refuge as refugees abroad.

There are 342 OFWs in Ukraine, but only one Filipino fighter has been reported by Reddit.com to have died in the war on the side of Ukraine. Bryan Sapanta Pascual Wilsid identity was disclosed by The Philippine Defense Forces Forum last June 28.

Naïve or lying

Yet the claim exposes how easily Southeast Asian nations can be drawn into the information crossfire of global conflicts – becoming unwitting pawns in great-power narratives that shape opinions far beyond the battlefield.

AFP Chief of Staff Romeo Brawner Jr has confirmed that the United States’ Typhon missile system, temporarily deployed in the Philippines, has a medium-range capability that can reach mainland China. He clarified that this was a technical fact about the system’s range and that its deployment is for training purposes, not to target any specific country like China.

The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) stated that the deployment strengthens national defense and is not aimed at serving foreign interests.

Read: https://www.facebook.com/robrances/posts/there-are-statements-that-build-national-strength-and-there-are-statements-that-/10231812169390435/

Brawner is either naïve or lying. Why is the Philippines training to use it when it can ill afford even a single Tomahawk missile priced at about $2 million?

The United States is the primary operator of Tomahawk missiles, which are also used by the United Kingdom, Australia, and the Netherlands. Japan has bought 400 Tomahawks, half delivered this year and the remaining half until 2027.

These countries can launch the missiles from their naval ships and submarines, and turn over control to Philippine guidance for its final destination, coordinated by Global Positioning System (GPS). The Typhon is a land-based weapons system that is capable of not only launching but monitoring and controlling Tomahawk missiles can be shared with any country possessing the hardware and technology.

This means that controlling any Tomahawk launched by the US and its allies can be transferred to a land-based joystick anywhere in Luzon.  

While the American conventional thinking goes on arms marketing, China has already gone three steps ahead. After the US struck three nuclear facilities in Iran – Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan – with a first volley of “bunker buster” bombs capable of penetrating 18m (60ft) of concrete or 61m (200ft) of earth before exploding 30,000lb (14,000kg) of massive ordnance was thought to be the only weapon capable of destroying Iran’s underground enrichment facilities, the Americans and Israelis were dumbfounded because they only created a damage that would take a few months to repair.

When they prepared to make a second attempt, they noticed that the skies were no longer friendly. Iran turned on China’s Beidou-3 satellite and radar and neutralized the US-GPS. It did not only protect Iran from further being attacked, it opened the aerospace to neutralize Israeli’s Iron Dome allowing Iran to land more projectiles inside Israel.

While Brawner primarily admits Tomahawks can reach China, the probability is that it even won’t leave the Philippine area of responsibility without being shot down. Our neighbors are already aware the US and its allies can also use it to leverage any of the ASEAN countries within its radial range. That is what interoperability is all about.

But the black US-arms salesman forgot that China has already offered Beidou-3 to our ASEAN neighbors as an alternative to being blackmailed by any of its former white colonizers, as a protective shield if they joined its Belt-and-Road Initiative.

Significantly for the Philippines, Marcos’ bend-the-law regime has forgotten that the Typhon is not just offensive weaponry in violation of the Philippine Constitution that prohibits war as an instrument of national policy but also of the ASEAN treaties on neutrality and non-nuclear proliferation.

            Marcos does not seem perturbed by a possible breach of international law, so long as he pursues the United States rules-based order, as another bozo, former magistrate Antonio Carpio plays armchair general and calls for an increase in nuclear-capable missiles to boost the country’s defense capability against China over the SCS.

Read: https://www.manilatimes.net/2025/11/29/opinion/columns/carpios-reckless-nuclear-missile-madness/2233233

Conclusion

It is best that we allow the smoke of the information war to clear before we jump into conclusions as whom to believe – Russia’s usually reliable intelligence network, or the Ukrainian and German embassies.

What increases the haze is that the Philippine president no longer enjoys the trust of his people, as survey shows a negative net approval and trust ratings for many months now. Marcos recent narratives have proven slimy and incoherent.

At present he is still trying, pointlessly, to get over the hump prosecuting looting of the national treasury for a national budget that he himself authorized, and the admission of his sister, Senator Imee Marcos, that he is a cocaine addict.

What fans the flame is President Marcos Jr. recently affirmed the Philippines’ continued “warm” relations with Ukraine in a phone call with Ukrainian President. It would help clear the air if the minutes and actual recording of the recent conversation between Zelenskyy and Marcos, could be made public.

The employment deal is attractive indeed, with the US dollar breaching the 58-peso mark, the P290,000 monthly pay can make an adventurous Pinoy a millionaire in three-and-a-half months.

That is if you are still alive by then.

To be continued

   

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