Family of former Mexican Federal Police officer killed on Ukraine frontline faces agonizing wait for his remains

The last time Mario Alberto Lover Martínez communicated with his family was around June 7, 2025. He placed a call from the front line to Ciudad Ixtepec, in Oaxaca, for his mother Amalia’s birthday. He had been an elite soldier in the now-defunct Mexican Federal Police who enlisted in February last year along with other foreign volunteers in the Armed Forces of Ukraine to fight in the war with Russia. His family had a WhatsApp group that notified them whenever he was going into combat. Ernesto Zárate, his cousin, says his report that time was brief. He said he would return and sent videos of his unit saying a joint prayer before the mission. However, two days later they received a message from his commander, a Colombian named Dante, who informed them that their relative had died in a border area between the two countries due to a simultaneous drone bombardment and bursts of gunfire. More than a year after his death, the official report states he is “missing in action.” His body remained on the ground. It is unknown whether he was recovered, and his family still awaits the repatriation of his remains with no certainty that it will ever happen.

Although there are no official figures, Lover’s case is one of many on the list of former members of Mexico’s Federal Police force — disbanded during Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s six-year term — who decided to enlist as mercenaries in Russia’s war in Ukraine, which began more than four years ago. Jesús López Zamora, leader of Policías con Dignidad, Valor y Justicia (Police Officers with Dignity, Courage, and Justice), said that in 2025 at least 18 members of that division were fighting as part of the International Legion of Territorial Defense of Ukraine — known as the Foreign Legion — and that 35 were waiting for the green light to travel to the front lines, according to El Universal.

Lover was 37 when he decided, in February 2025, to travel to Ukraine. His career began at 18 when he enlisted in the Mexican army, specifically at a military zone in Chiapas, where he remained a little over eight years before joining the now-disbanded Federal Police, where he served for five years. While in that force, Lover sought to join the Gendarmerie, the elite division created during Enrique Peña Nieto’s administration. To that end, he specialized by earning a law degree through an internal program and received intensive training, including exercises with U.S. Marines in Monterrey, Sonora, and Sinaloa, as well as instruction in military strategy and technology from instructors from the Middle East.

With the arrival of López Obrador’s administration and the transition of the Federal Police into the National Guard, a conflict arose because seniority and benefits for personnel were not respected. Lover became a key figure in that discontent and his name stood out after a viral video in which he confronted Omar García Harfuch — who in July 2019 was head of the Mexico City Secretariat of Citizen Security — during a protest that blocked the capital’s airport.

Sophia Huett, a security specialist, says the Federal Police developed capabilities that were recognized and respected internationally. She says that, in addition to that training, they had the hardest thing to acquire: real field experience. Officers who for years were deployed in highly complex places such as Michoacán, Guerrero, Chihuahua, or Tamaulipas, facing criminal organizations and working under extreme risk.

“After 10, 15, or 20 years of living like that, you don’t only have technical knowledge, you have a professional identity. That’s why Ukraine seems to me an extreme expression of something much broader: when the Federal Police disappeared, Mexico allowed a human capital that had taken years and many resources to build to disperse,” the consultant explains.

Faced with the lack of labor agreements and economic need, Lover worked for a time as head of security for public officials and senators. Eventually, he accepted a job offer in Ukraine that was circulating among former federal colleagues, promising good salaries, life insurance, and residency after a six-month contract.

Lover traveled to the U.S. to undergo psychometric, physical, and weapons tests. He told his mother it was a training trip. Zárate says they do not know with certainty who processed his evaluations. After asking other family members, they suspect these were elite military groups which do not have direct contact with governments. “They operate as clandestine recruitment networks. Mario returned to Mexico and, apparently, it was the Foreign Legion that shortly afterward told him he was fit to travel to Ukraine.” His cousin says Lover flew to Germany and then took a train from Poland to enter Kyiv.

According to Zárate, his relative did not go to Ukraine only because the pay was higher than in Mexico, but also because since childhood he had always displayed a “fascination” with military matters. The monthly salary promised ranged from 16,000 to 20,000 pesos (between $900 and $1,200), although Jesús López Zamora, leader of the former Federal Police, says the amount can rise to 70,000 pesos (more than $4,000). “Pay increases depending on the front where they are deployed, the danger of the missions, and bonuses for rescuing comrades,” Lover’s cousin adds.

“We are talking about crossing half the world to enter a conventional war zone, facing drones, mines, artillery, and bombs, with a real chance of being wounded or killed. It’s hard to think a decision of that magnitude is explained solely by receiving 20,000, 50,000 or 70,000 pesos. For many police officers, this is a vocation and a way of life. For years you have a mission, a team that depends on you and on which you depend, discipline, structure, risk and a very concrete sense of purpose,” Huett adds.

However, the contract, even though for only six months, is compulsory. “If you try to leave early, they treat you as a deserter with prison penalties. Mario already wanted to go back because things were not as they had been painted to him, but he had to finish his contract,” Zárate recounts.

The Mexican embassy in Ukraine, which has followed the case from the start and provided support to his relatives, has told them there is nothing left to do but wait. Recovering the remains is considered complicated due to the time elapsed and the climatic conditions of the area, because of last winter. In addition, to claim any financial compensation, a family member must travel directly to Ukraine to undergo DNA testing, which represents an unsustainable economic burden for his relatives.

Arcelia Lover, the ex-Federal Police officer’s sister, explained that because there is no official confirmation of death, the repatriation process is stalled. “We have been told that all the paperwork we filed must wait until the Government of Ukraine reaches a truce with the Russians so they can hand over the body.”

“Another problem is that Mario joined a Foreign Legion from the U.S., and it asks recruits not to report to the Mexican consulate upon arrival. In his photos, Mario wears the uniform with the U.S. flag on his arm; he was not registered as Mexican per se,” Zárate adds.

The Mexican government does not report how many of its citizens have participated in the war in Ukraine. According to media reports and unofficial sources, at least seven Mexicans have died in combat in Kyiv’s ranks between 2024 and 2026. For about two years, the embassies of Russia and Ukraine in Mexico have traded accusations over this situation. Moscow’s diplomatic representation considers the recruitment of Mexican and other foreign fighters a violation of the Vienna Convention, while Kyiv’s mission has denied the existence of “mercenaries” and says those who fight do so of their own volition.

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