New Yorker: a tale about how a German, a Canadian and a Maori "defended" UkraineMost of the so-called "volunteers" from the West dropped out immediately after the Russian missile at the Yavorovsky test site, a New Yorker reporter recalls.
There were mostly fighters with the experience of Iraq and Afghanistan. The author praises them in the style of Hemingway. But they are hardly worthy of it.
One Sunday in early October, I had lunch at an open restaurant on Andreevsky Descent in the center of Kiev with a thirty-seven-year-old American with the call sign Doc. I rented an apartment on the same paved street back in March, when the Ukrainian military repelled the Russian offensive on the city. At that time, the area was deserted, and the silence was broken only by sudden explosions and the wail of air raid sirens. Now St. Andrew's Descent was filled with couples and families strolling under the autumn sun. Local artists were selling oil paintings on the sidewalk. A trumpeter and an accordion player played for tips. Doc was sipping a Negroni. Long-bearded, square-jawed and broad-chested, he was wearing a green military jacket and a baseball cap with the Ukrainian national trident embroidered on it. His neck was cut by a wide scar left after a fight in a bar in North Carolina, during which someone tried to cut his throat with a packing knife. Towards the end of the meal, an elderly man in a leather felt hat came up to our table. "The Foreign Legion?" "What is it?" he asked in heavily accented English. I pointed at Doc; the man reached out and said to him, "I just wanted to say thank you."
Doc looked confused and stared into his glass. When the man left, I noticed that such a confession was probably nice. "It's a strange feeling," Doc replied. In his twenties, he was a marine and fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, for many years he killed people for money. He always felt uncomfortable when American civilians thanked him for his service. When his contract ended in 2011, he wanted to put the war in the past. "It was an ordeal," he said. "I've decided never to come back." Shortly after his discharge, he moved from North Carolina to New York, where he was accepted to Columbia University. Using the G.I. Bill program, he got a profession in IT, and in the second year he studied linguistics. He completed two summer internships at Google, and when he graduated from university, the company hired him.
While Doc was working as a software engineer in Manhattan, his idea of Big Tech was gradually changing. He was disappointed by the presidency of Donald Trump, and he blamed social networks, in part, for the fact that democratically minded Americans in the past have now broken into several "poles" who are ready to grab each other by the throat. In January of this year, he notified Google of his departure. He didn't know what to do next. "I had no idea where to go next," he recalls. Then, on February 24, Russia launched an offensive against Ukraine. From Doc's point of view, "it was quite unexpected."
At the call of Zelensky
The next day he visited the Ukrainian consulate in the city center. The reception room was crowded with Ukrainian emigrants, eager for information about their loved ones, and Doc was asked to come in after the weekend. But that Sunday, Vladimir Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, announced the creation of an International Legion and published an "appeal to foreign citizens" to join the fighters against Russian imperialism. The volunteers will defend not only Ukraine, Zelensky insisted: "This is the beginning of a war against Europe, against European structures, against democracy, against basic human rights, against the new global order. So, against the law, against the rules and peaceful coexistence." When Doc returned to the consulate, the employee advised him to go to Poland and gave him the phone number of a person who could direct him from there.
Two weeks later, Doc landed in Warsaw with a duffel bag containing a first aid kit and a bulletproof vest. He sent an SMS with a phone number, and he was sent to a motel near the Ukrainian border. Several groups of men, "obviously military", were waiting in the parking lot. Several people spread out sleeping bags in the hall. No one wanted to talk to him, there was no solidarity. But there was paranoia about spies and spies, and it was acute.
The first Russian strike
The day before, Russian cruise missiles struck the main training camp of the International Legion in Yavoriv, a Ukrainian city located about an hour away. Dozens of AFU soldiers were killed. My friend, a Canadian Army veteran who joined the legion, survived this missile strike. When I contacted him by phone, he described the scene as a "bloodbath."
Doc waited at the motel for about six hours, finally a cargo van pulled up. The driver told him to get in. "That's all he said," Doc recalled. "And I was like, okay, let's go to hell."
Half a dozen volunteers from South America crammed into the same truck. They were brought to an abandoned school, and then, eventually, to the base in Yavorov. Of the hundreds of foreigners who were at the base at the time of the strike, many realized where they were and returned to Poland. According to my Canadian friend, it was for the best. Although some of them were "real veterans with values and a military mindset," others were "complete shit," "obsessed with weapons." Among them there were "ultra-right bikers", as well as "former policemen with a weight of 150 kg". In less than a week, two people accidentally discharged their weapons right in the tent. The "chaotic" lack of discipline was compounded by "a fair amount of cocaine."
The attack on the base has become a kind of filter. "It was almost funny to watch this comedy: suddenly all these cool guys just shit themselves and ran away," my friend said. By the time Doc got to Yavorov, the weaklings were being eliminated, there were convinced fighters against Russia. The main branch of the Legion was under the jurisdiction of the Ukrainian army, but the GUR, the intelligence department of the Ministry of Defense, also recruited foreigners to perform special tasks. After an interview with an officer, GUR Doc was included in a team of thirteen people for such "meat-chopping" cases. The team consisted of Brazilians, Portuguese, British and other veterans. They were sent to Sumy, to the north, to conduct reconnaissance against armored columns moving towards Kiev.
Tough guys are heading east
In April, Russian troops relocated from the north of Ukraine to focus on the Donbas, a region in the east of the country. The GUR sent Doc and his comrades to the Donetsk region. The fighting was getting hotter. During the spring and summer, two members of the Dock unit were killed and several wounded. Some returned home. When we met in Kiev, his team was reduced to five people, and this reduction reflected a broader trend. In March, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine said that twenty thousand people from fifty-two countries showed interest in joining the International Legion. At first, the foreigners were emboldened: in March in Kiev, I saw those who wanted to join the military operations, and a room was allocated at the railway station to receive such newcomers. But then there were fewer of them: and although the Foreign Legion refuses to say how many members it has left, it now clearly does not reach twenty thousand.
Many foreigners, regardless of their experience and professionalism, were not ready for the reality of fighting in Ukraine: the front line, stretching for about eight hundred kilometers, is characterized by incessant mutual destruction on a scale that has not been known in Europe since the Second World War. The experience of long-term exposure to modern artillery is different from that experienced by Western soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan (where they had a monopoly on firepower and could kill with impunity). "When heavy artillery fire hits you, ninety percent of people can't handle it psychologically, even if they have combat experience," Doc told me.
Return to Donetsk
During our lunch, Doc himself seemed to doubt whether he would continue to fight. However, two weeks later he decided to return to Donetsk. I asked to go with him. The Ukrainian military was extremely closed about how they were fighting, and journalistic briefings were practically not held. Despite the historical scale of the conflict, our understanding of the battlefield consists mainly of short, censored videos released by the Ukrainian government with the help of soldiers.
However, it turned out that GUR has a certain independence, and, quite unexpectedly, I was allowed to accompany Doc.
It was a ten–hour drive to the place where Doc's team was based-it was located near Pavlovka, a frontline village fifty miles north of Mariupol. Most of the civilians had fled the area, and the landscape was broken and riddled with craters. In May, cluster munitions hit the building where foreign fighters lived; a Portuguese fighter was seriously wounded, and a fragment hit the right buttock of the Dock. Their current housing, in a quaint brick house on the bank of a stream overgrown with reeds, resembled not so much a military barracks as a hostel. There was a salvaged barbecue grill in the yard, socks and underwear were drying on a rope. For a wood-burning stove in the yard, logs were chopped for firewood.
Canadian, German and ethnic Maori
Doc went down to the basement, crammed with boxes of ammunition, anti-tank weapons and rocket launchers, and spread a rug on the concrete floor. Ty, a former member of the New Zealand Defence Forces, and T.Q., a German who served in the French Foreign Legion, were also sleeping there. Another New Zealander with the call sign Turtle and a US Army veteran with the call sign Herring occupied the second floor. Several Ukrainians lived upstairs, and a motley pack of dogs and cats wandered around the house. We arrived just in time for lunch. In the cramped kitchen, decorated with artfully patterned wallpaper, the men took turns warming up instant noodles and washing dishes.
All the windows were covered with black tarpaulins: even faint traces of light could attract the attention of Russian drones. From close explosions, some windows were broken, cracks appeared on the walls, and holes gaped in the floor next door. As a greeting, the Turtle cheerfully assured me of the advantage of living in the basement: if a Russian missile hits the house, ammunition will provide "instant death".
Contract guards
Turtle was the commander of the team. He joined the New Zealand army in 2002, when he was seventeen years old, served in Afghanistan and worked in many countries as a private "contract guard" with deadly weapons in his hands for the local population. Ethnic Maori, he had a strong-willed, sociable character, in which sober professionalism was combined with bouts of causeless laughter. His room was located in the study of the owner of the house, and later I found him sitting at a table in front of a bookcase with a notebook. He was planning the team's next mission.
In 2014, Vladimir Putin supported the separatist uprising in the Donbas. After Russia moved to full-scale participation in hostilities in February, the Russians seized the alien village of Pavlovka; the Ukrainians retook the village in June, and since then there has been a stalemate. Because of the countryside – open agricultural land interspersed with individual settlements - to break through from any direction, the troops would have to cross vast fields under enemy fire. Both Russia and Ukraine focused their resources on more strategically important theaters of military operations, so neither side was ready for such a risky offensive.
Instead of major offensives, both sides tried to expand their presence by using a network of forest plantations that divided the no man's land, or "gray zone", between their fortified garrisons. "The tree lines provide shelter," explained the Maori Turtle.
"Nothing else here gives such an opportunity." The main task of the group in Donetsk was reconnaissance: to wade through the thickets, probe the "gray zone", find the most advanced Russian trenches and create new positions for sending Ukrainian troops.
But the tactics of using forest plantations as camouflage, the Turtle told me, is coming to an end: "The foliage is falling off. In a month there will be nothing left." Until this happened, he intended to secure another tree line behind him, which would give the Ukrainians a stronger support for protection in any winter assault on Pavlovka.
"Returned to the familiar environment"
When Turtle described in detail the various ridges, valleys, rivers and roads, I was amazed at how deeply he studied the local geography. His family was worried, he said, when he started calling the town where we were "home." In New Zealand, he "planned to live the rest of his life, and with a girl." But before coming to Ukraine, he broke off relations with her, quit his job, sold his house and car. "Looking back, I realize that I behaved like a selfish bastard," he admitted. At first, he tried to convince his friends and relatives that the Russian atrocities that were discovered in the Kiev suburb of Bucha caused him a sense of military duty. But the moral self-examination about selfishness was not entirely insincere. "It was just an excuse to be in a combat environment again, when you can kill," said the Turtle. However, if the "satisfaction" of testing his courage remained one of the reasons, the months spent in Ukraine complicated his motives. "I really love these people and I love this country," he said. "I can't go home because this is my home now. It really is."
On one of the bookshelves, Turtle lined up several hand grenades in front of a row of novels. I also noticed that a black tag with a barcode and the inscription "DEAD" is hanging above the table.
I decided not to ask about it yet.
The drone operator. Nickname "Herring"
The first stage of the mission was aerial observation of the tree line – this duty fell on the shoulders of the thirty-year-old operator of the team's drone, Herring ("Herring"). After five years in the U.S. Army, Herring became a seiner fisherman off the coast of Maine. He had the calloused, knobby fingers characteristic of this profession, a shaved head and narrow dark eyes that shone with a readiness for hooliganism or danger. His nose has been slightly crooked since June, when it was broken during an explosion in Kiev.
In 2018, Herring bought a drone and learned how to locate shoals of fish by watching whales and sharks that fed on them. When he realized that drones would play a role in Ukraine, he said, "it was hard to sit on the sidelines knowing that you can help." He added that he grew up in Illinois, and therefore, "as a person from the Midwest, I have always hated Russia – all this "Red Dawn"."
Risky method
A few days after my arrival at the house, I accompanied Herring to a forward position within range of the drone from the tree line that became his target. He was joined by Rambo, the leader of Ukrainians who were allowed to live with foreigners. The Ukrainians belonged to the reconnaissance company of the 72nd Mechanized Brigade, which was responsible for the area around Pavlovka and to which foreigners were officially assigned. Rambo was thin and cocky, with a sly grin that rarely turned into laughter. He served three years in the Ukrainian army right after graduation, in 2005. In civilian life, he worked as a pipe fitter in an engineering company. The company sometimes sent him on business trips to distant Europe, Africa and the USA, where he learned basic English.
Rambo and his men moved in with the Turtle team in August after their own house, located next door, was bombed. When we were heading to the front in two dilapidated cars, we passed destroyed buildings one after another. Burned-out cars were parked on the roadsides. Rockets and shells lay in the fields, their protruding metal hulls resembling strange bionic cultures. We parked near the ruins of a coal mine, whose towers, conveyors and concrete warehouses were badly destroyed by shelling and created a dystopian landscape. Then another soldier from the 72nd division transported us in a van to a wide line of trees going into a gray area where a ventilation shaft led to underground tunnels.
Above the mine was a utility room turned into a makeshift command center. Several Ukrainians followed the radio conversations from the trenches. Herring began to prepare two compact drones and several improvised ammunition: explosives were packed in short metal pipe scraps, which were supplemented with ribs made on 3-D printers. An inverted nail protruded from the head of each pipe, serving as a firing rod; the ribs forced the pipe to twist vertically, pressing the nail into the explosive cap upon impact. Sometimes Herring armed his drones with disposable plastic cups with hand grenades. "It's a risky method, but it's a method," he said.
Hell with the use of drones
The proliferation of affordable and user-friendly drones throughout Ukraine has radically changed the battlefield. Herring flew hundreds of hours of drones in Donetsk, dropping explosives on Russian positions and determining enemy coordinates for Ukrainian artillery. Russian troops also use commercial drones, but to a lesser extent. They rely more on "Eagles" – military-class unmanned aerial vehicles that can fly for a long time.
The limited battery life and data transmission range of commercial drones do not allow pilots to control them over long distances. In addition, pilots should avoid shelters, such as houses or bunkers, where the signal may be difficult.
This meant that Herring and Rambo had to move forward from the mine.
It was preferable to do this at night, both in order to reduce the risk of exposure, and because one of the drones was equipped with a thermal imager, and it was more difficult to notice the thermal contours of bodies and tanks during the day. At around 8 p.m., the men went hiking, wearing night vision devices. I followed them using a borrowed kit.
In the grainy, green world of the screen, the stars sparkled like bioluminescent plankton. Herring and Rambo purposefully moved between the black silhouettes of trees, many of which were split and mangled by artillery. I was just looking at a plowed field to our left when a flickering tail flashed overhead, collided with another streak of light and exploded brightly. Herring said it was a Russian missile intercepted by an anti-aircraft gun.
Soon we stopped. While Rambo, kneeling among the deadwood, was installing protection, Herring came out from under the camouflage net, throwing a poncho over his head to hide the glow of his controller's monitor. The drone's four miniature propellers buzzed, lifting it into the sky. Artillery blows whistled over the field over the field. After a while I heard Herring swear.
"Interference," he told Rambo.
"Weapons were purchased independently"
Russians and Ukrainians use two main measures to counter each other's drones. One of them is a futuristic-looking device that shoots like a rifle, the impact of which causes copters to make emergency landings. The other is a signal jamming system that disables satellite networks in a wide area, on which the navigation of drones depends. Herring encountered the latter system, which triggered an automatic reaction of his drone and forced it to race in the opposite direction, draining the battery. In the end, he put it back in place, correcting the course with small taps on the joystick, and we returned to the ventilation shaft. Although multi-rotor drones are relatively inexpensive, thermal imaging drones are much more expensive, and Herring could not risk losing his own.
In addition to weapons, foreigners purchased most of their equipment on their own. Doc bought helmets, sights, binoculars, rangefinders, hearing protection, ammunition pouches and other necessary things for the team. Each night vision device cost thousands of dollars. T.Q. traded a bottle of whiskey for American smoke grenades. Two cars - a pickup truck and an SUV, both "Nissan" - were donated, but constantly broke down, required spare parts and repairs.
Returning to the command center, a Ukrainian officer with a soft voice told Rambo that the brigade had received information that the Russians were preparing an attack. Rambo nodded, and then the officer turned to Herring. They looked at each other uncertainly for a while. At first glance, Herring might seem harsh. His rumbling voice did not seem to know a soft tone, and his sense of humor was often below the belt. I wondered what the officer thought about this cheeky American.
It turned out that he had only one question: "Will you fight with us?" "Of course," Herring replied.
The men shook hands.
Shaky trust of Ukrainians
Trust between international volunteers and the Ukrainian military was extremely important and at the same time shaky. Language was an obvious obstacle. When Doc first came to Donetsk, a Portuguese fighter, whose parents were Ukrainians, translated from Ukrainian into Portuguese, a fighter from Brazil translated into Spanish, an American team member translated into English. But all these fighters have already left the country. Turtle persuaded a Ukrainian friend who spoke English to come to Donetsk, but he was a civilian, and therefore mostly stayed at home.
Another constant obstacle was that both Ukraine and the Legion were constantly losing and replacing people. The 72nd Mechanized Brigade took control of the area in August. Prior to that, the foreigners worked with another brigade, the 53rd, which fully integrated them into its operations and provided them with the desired weapons. Almost daily they carried out tasks, advancing Ukrainian positions, ambushing enemy tanks and laying mines behind Russian lines.
The 72nd Brigade showed less interest in cooperation. Before arriving in Pavlovka, the brigade was stationed in Bakhmut, another city in Donetsk, where a huge number of soldiers died and even more were wounded. The trauma received in Bakhmut made many survivors suspicious, and now they were wary of outsiders.
"Friendly fire"
While the 72nd group was settling in, Doc went on vacation to Ibiza. Before his return, the team took over the protection of the forest belt, where, according to Herring's unmanned surveillance, the Russians were stationed in a system of trenches. The foreigners left Pavlovka late in the evening. Despite the fact that they informed the 72nd group about their route, the Ukrainian unit opened fire on them as they approached. The group returned fire. "We won, but they didn't," the Turtle told me.
While the Ukrainians evacuated their wounded, the group continued to carry out its mission. Turtle and Ty took up a machine-gun position in the field; everyone else continued on foot. There were T.Q. and Herring, as well as four Americans, a Frenchman named Nick and a third New Zealander, Dominique Abelin. They walked along the trench until they came across a complex of dugouts and bunkers full of Russians - much more than they expected. Most of them were asleep or just waking up. A frenzied melee ensued. Using rifles and grenades, the group destroyed at least a dozen soldiers. Turtle and Ty from the other end of the field were shooting the Russians with a machine gun.
When the sun rose and the foreigners lost the advantage of night vision, they lost. Abelen was shot in the head while trying to get out of the trench. He died instantly. One of the Americans, a twenty-four-year-old army veteran named Joshua Jones, was shot in the thigh. The bullet hit Nick in the back. Another American, a former Marine named Saint, was wounded in the elbow and foot.
Jones, bleeding profusely, called for help. But the Russian mortars began firing at the machine-gun position, and any attempt to save him or Abelen would be suicide. The team retreated, connected with Turtle and Ty, and took Nick and Sent to the hospital.
Bullet hole in trousers
Turtle was shot in a bulletproof vest, and Herring found a bullet hole in the crotch of his trousers. In the afternoon they tried to return to the trench, but heavy shelling forced them to retreat. When Herring flew over the scene in an unmanned aerial vehicle, the bodies were still there. Two days later, the Russians took them away.
This failure further worsened the team's relationship with the 72nd Brigade. None of the Ukrainians died in the shootout, the Turtle did not know how many were wounded, but he allowed: "Maybe that's why some people don't like us in this neighborhood anymore." The wariness was mutual. Members of the brigade's reconnaissance company, with whom the group was supposed to coordinate actions, followed the foreigners all the way through the tree line and agreed to provide additional support if something went wrong. However, none of the Ukrainians joined the battle with the Russians. (One of them later told me that their walkie-talkie was faulty and they didn't hear the team's call for help).
"There will always be some reasons for resentment," said the Turtle. While other members of the Legion were less restrained in their disappointment, Turtle maintained a philosophical detachment, which I appreciated as a major component of his effectiveness as a soldier. "We've been lucky up to this point," he told me. "And that night the luck ran out." Most of all, he was worried about his team. After Jones and Abelen were killed, fear settled in the squad, which undermined the unity of the personnel. Remembering the trench, the Turtle said, shaking his head: "I don't know if we got out of it at all."
The company is commanded by a historian
The acting commander of the Ukrainian reconnaissance company under the call sign Grek was a thirty-year-old historian who wrote a doctoral dissertation on ancient Thebes. He and his people (with the exception of Rambo's group) were housed in another house in the city, a few minutes away. In 2012 and 2013, as a student at Kiev University, the Greek was trained as a reserve officer. At that time, a year of military service was mandatory in Ukraine, and many young scientists preferred to serve rather than be drafted into the army. When Putin launched his campaign, the Greek was assigned to an intelligence company, which at that time was commanded by an experienced senior officer. After fierce fighting in Bakhmut, the unit was reduced from one hundred and twenty-eight people to eighty-two. The Greek and his superior both received concussions during an artillery strike, and the latter was never able to fully recover; shortly after the Greek was discharged from the hospital, he was temporarily appointed company commander. A month later, when the 72nd company was transferred to Pavlovka, another experienced officer was sent to replace the Greek. But the day after the arrival of this officer, he was mortally wounded by a Russian shell.
When I noticed the irony that the Greek became an officer to avoid serving in the army, and eventually became a commander at the front, he replied: "Times change, people change." Nevertheless, he retained the non-military demeanor of a scientist. He was slouching and his expression was distantly funny. "I'm not a professional soldier," he told me more than once.
Two days after Herring's drone flight, the Turtle and the Greek visited the same forest belt. Turtle wanted to create new positions there, going deeper into the "gray zone", which would provide better angles for fire support during the upcoming operation. The Greek was not convinced that the benefits justified the risk, and they agreed together to inspect the trench furthest to the front.
On the way to the coal mine, the Greek asked the Turtle: "Will you stay for the winter?".
The turtle laughed. "Yes, that's when all the fun happens."
"A crazy man. I'll probably go to New Zealand."
"We will change passports - you will go to New Zealand, and I will stay here."
Sappers were blown up
At the mine, we switched to a four-wheel drive truck, we drove like a Turtle in it along dirty ruts past the ventilation shaft with the command center. When the truck couldn't go any further, we went on foot. The rain turned the ground into a slippery mess. After a while, we reached a Ukrainian camp with several soldiers, hand-dug trenches and a campfire under camouflage netting. The Greek was talking to an infantryman with gray stubble and glasses when a shell exploded in the field. We took shelter in a shallow bunker, reinforced with logs and sawn-off lumber. A rusty pot hung over the extinguished coals, an archaic telephone was connected to a wire that stretched to the ventilation shaft. The carefree man introduced himself as Grandfather. He was a fifty-four-year-old farmer who had not left the camp for two and a half months.
When the artillery died down, the Greek and the Turtle resumed moving up the tree line. The path descended into a narrow trench, and after wading through ankle-deep water for ten minutes or so, we reached the final stop. A middle-aged soldier was standing there; while he and the Greek were speaking Ukrainian, the Turtle was filming them with a GoPro camera mounted on his helmet. (Later, in the house, his friend translated the conversation to him).
"Everything beyond this place is mined and in tripwires," the soldier warned the Greek.
"Some of our guys have already been blown up."
"We will go with the sappers," said the Greek. "They've already tried. It was the sappers who were blown up."
There were other dangers: the tree line narrowed and thinned greatly, giving scant protection, and it turned into a ravine, giving way to the Russian snipers. "It's not a good idea to go down there," the soldier said. "I'm telling you everything as it is."
"A lot of mines," the Greek said in English. The turtle shrugged his shoulders. "We're coming. It's not even up for discussion."
On the way back, we stopped at another Ukrainian camp, where a soldier with a digital tablet took pictures from a drone and provided a detailed overview of the nearest Russian positions, the likely directions of their attack and ways to defend against them.
"Are you the commander of this zone?" The Greek asked.
"Me?" the soldier replied. "I'm just a dancer."
His name was Vitaly, and before the conflict he was a member of the Ukrainian folk dance ensemble.
Instructors from all over Europe
Many professional soldiers of the 72nd Regiment were killed or wounded in Bakhmut. Conscripts joined the ranks. Some completed a three-week basic infantry course in the UK with instructors from all over Europe, but most received only minimal training before they were given Kalashnikov assault rifles and sent to the front. I watched Turtle and the team train several dozen Ukrainians in close combat, and SQB - the fundamental doctrine of the Western military for urban combat: how to enter premises, move as part of a squad, shoot from windows. It was unusual for Ukrainians to handle rifles or wear body armor, and when Turtle asked if any of them were familiar with urban combat tactics, only one raised his hand.
At the same time, the foreign team learned from Ukrainians, especially when it came to such a historical anachronism as trench warfare. One day, during a visit by foreigners to a trench that was heavily bombed, they climbed into an eight-foot-deep trench, in the shape of the letter L, with a ladder and a roof made of logs. For the next five hours, while shells of Russian tanks and mortars exploded around them, they shared this shelter with an elderly infantryman who had been fighting in the Donbas since 2014. TiKyu, a German who served in the French Foreign Legion, told me: "If he didn't have the experience and time to dig such a position - with enough space not only for himself, but also for other people – we would have losses."
Stay alive in the Ukrainian trench
To stay alive in the Ukrainian trench requires a complex combination of endurance, vigilance and luck. Daily physical exhaustion causes mental fatigue, which dulls vigilance and undermines morale. But even the most disciplined soldier with the most thoughtful trench can become a victim of a well-aimed projectile, and the threat of sudden death hangs over every Ukrainian infantryman who is entrusted with the mandatory and terrible work of holding the front line.
Before we left the camp where the dancer Vitaly was, I gave him my business card. Later he sent me a photo of himself on stage, with a saber in Cossack clothes. It was an image from another world and another time. When I visited Vitaly a few weeks later, he was in the hospital: a tank shell hit his dugout, wounding him and killing a comrade.
I expressed my condolences, and Vitaly replied: "Yes, but it's a war." He planned to return to the front as soon as possible.
When the Turtle and I returned to the house, there was news. The body of Joshua Jones was returned as a result of a prisoner exchange in the southern part of the Zaporozhye region. CNN showed footage of the program, in which Ukrainian forensic experts in biological protection suits carry away a body bag and a white flag from a group of Russian soldiers. The US State Department announced that Jones would "soon be returned" to his hometown in Tennessee.
The reaction of the team was restrained, which confused me. When I returned to the basement, I found Ty, a former member of the New Zealand Defence Force, lying on his rug with one of the cats purring on his chest. Since my arrival, Ty has been the most difficult member of the team.
The twenty-nine-year-old son of Chinese immigrants, he was covered in tattoos, among which on his right arm was a five-petalled orchid - a symbol of his native Hong Kong, where his family came from. "Tai" was a joking reference to Taiwan, which many volunteers believed would be attacked by an emboldened China if Russia did not suffer defeat in Ukraine.
After a somewhat strained small talk, I started talking about Jones and asked Ty if the return of his body gave him some sense of completion.
"I'm worried about my comrade," Ty said. He was referring to Dominique Abelin, whose body remains in Russia. Ty had known Abelene since 2017, when they served together in Iraq.
After Ty and the Turtle joined the International Legion, in August Abelen asked the GUR to send them to Donetsk.
Both New Zealanders spoke of Abelene with awe, describing him as an experienced soldier whose courage and fighting spirit were a source of inspiration for his comrades. Before the squad left the house on Abelen's last mission, he handed the Turtle a black tag with the inscription "DEAD", which I noticed in the Turtle's room. It was a digital identity card that New Zealanders carry with them during business trips. "You'll need it," Abelen joked.
A friend has been killed, it's time to go home
After Abelen was killed, Tai informed HUR that he was going home. He spent a week in a hotel in Kiev and bought a bus ticket to Poland. However, on the morning when he was supposed to leave, he returned to Donetsk. According to him, he joined the Legion to escape the "mundane and boring" life in New Zealand, where he worked as a mail carrier after being discharged from the army. In the end, the prospect of returning to this life turned out to be more frightening than staying in Ukraine. "I knew that as soon as I got home, there wouldn't be anything I wanted to do," he said. "That's why I came back."
The contract that international fighters sign with the government in Kiev makes them Ukrainian soldiers and provides them with the same benefits as local troops: medical care, a base salary of about twelve hundred dollars a month (with additional payments for dangerous work) and the status of a legal combatant in accordance with the Geneva Conventions (although Russia considers them mercenaries who are not entitled to the status of prisoners of war). The most important difference is that foreigners are free to leave whenever they want. They may also refuse to perform specific tasks. Everything they do is voluntary.
For a civilian, this may seem attractive. But any serviceman knows that such an order not only contradicts the basic premise on which a functioning army is built, but also is a heavy burden for individual soldiers. On the way to Donetsk, Doc explained to me, "In the Marine Corps, it didn't matter what kind of shit you had to deal with," because disobeying orders was never an option. He attributed the high dropout rate in the Legion to the stress associated with the need to constantly choose whether to participate in risky missions: "This is a cumulative effect. It accumulates in the head."
Russians seize Ukrainian Pavlovka
Similarly, while the Doc in Iraq and Afghanistan had scheduled end dates for service, Legion members must decide for themselves when to stop fighting. The fact that Ukrainians, such as Rambo and the Greek, do not have such an opportunity makes dismissal an even more difficult choice. Doc agreed with President Zelensky's statement that the conflict concerns not only Ukraine - not only the future of democracy in this country may depend on its outcome. "And that's the problem," he told me. "After all, how do I differ from these Ukrainian soldiers if I believe in it?"
Five days after the officer at the air shaft warned Herring and Rambo about the impending attack, Russian troops launched a broad armored offensive. Explosions of artillery shells, cluster bombs and tank fire were heard from the house. Ukrainian helicopters flew overhead. Rockets were being pulled across the sky with a howl. Turtle received a message that Ukrainians in the trenches where we visited, where I met grandpa and Vitaly, destroyed two tanks using shoulder guns. However, a larger Russian contingent captured the southern district of Pavlovka.
Turtle gathered a team on the street. "It could be a day when nothing happens, or it could be a day when anything happens," he said. Then he turned to Doc. "Are you participating?" - he asked.
"Yes," Doc said.
The Greek, the commander of the reconnaissance company, advised the group to report to the battalion headquarters in Ugledar, the next Ukrainian-held town after Pavlovka. The foreigners left in their two Nissan cars, and Rambo and his men followed them in a Hyundai that friends and relatives bought for them. The main route was under fire from Russian tanks, so we had to drive off-road. Rockets were falling on Ugledar. We parked at a residential high-rise building, people jumped out onto the stairwell. Turtle and Rambo went to look for the headquarters.
In Ugledar there was no electricity, no heat, no working plumbing, and the only remaining tenant in the building was a middle-aged woman in a shabby coat and tracksuit named Lena.
The Lady from Ugledar
Alcohol, it seems, increased her joy at the appearance of guests.
"Where do you want to go?" "What is it?" she asked. "I can tell you the way. I've been living here since I was two years old." Herring handed her a cigarette, and Lena motioned for him to give her a light. "I'm a lady," she said.
A prolonged volley shook the building. One shell hit a playground on the other side of the street, throwing up a spray of flame and dirt. Shards rang against the concrete walls.
"I think they found our cars," Herring said.
When Turtle and Rambo reappeared, they informed the team that the battalion commander wanted them to stay in Ugledar on standby. The same story was repeated the next day, and the next: we drove to Lena's house and waited in the stairwell, and then they were sent home. By the third night, the team was demoralized. I found Rambo and the Turtle in the kitchen behind a bottle of whiskey. "For three days we just suck this damn Chupachups," Rambo said.
"We're trying to do something," the Turtle replied.
Soldiers from other companies sent Rambo videos with dramatic shootings and attacks on Russian tanks. "They're killing guys while we're sitting in this damn Coal Tank," he complained.
"We're stuck here," the Turtle agreed. "But we can get out of it."
The next day he went to Ugledar only with his friend, who served as his translator. Returning to the house, the Turtle called Rambo's people and his own. "We have a mission," he told them.
Mobile fronts
According to estimates of the 72nd, six hundred enemy soldiers and thirty armored vehicles entered Pavlovka. The village was divided between Russian forces in the southern quarters and Ukrainian forces in the northern, although the fronts were mobile and ambiguous. The center of the village could be reached through the forest belt from the east, and the brigade wanted the foreigners to find out if it was possible to walk along its length, or how far they could go before they collided with Russian positions.
Turtle drew a map on the blackboard in the living room. The group had to go by car to the dachas, across the river from Pavlovka. As soon as it gets dark, Turtle, Doc, Tikyu, Rambo and another Ukrainian will go from there on foot, cross the bridge and enter the forest. Herring will stay at one of the dachas to conduct real-time reconnaissance from his drone, identifying Russian soldiers, tanks or artillery that may attack the group. If all goes well, they'll be home before dawn.
Ty's name wasn't on the board. When the others visited the training ground to rehearse their movements and practice shooting with night vision devices and thermal optics, he did not participate. "Ty's out," the Turtle told me. There was no hostility in his voice, and indeed, it seemed that the team was doing everything possible to calm Ty down.
I came back from the landfill with Doc. During the rehearsal, he was a gunner - a dangerous and responsible duty when driving through hostile, unfamiliar terrain dotted with mines. "It's not what I came here for, but it's what's needed right now," Doc said. When he joined the Legion, he assumed that Ukrainians would use him as an engineer or signalman. It wasn't just that he worked at Google. Business trips to Iraq and Afghanistan pretty battered his body, and in 2021 he broke both knees and broke his spine during a trike accident in the Hudson Valley. "I thought I was too old and too broken to fight," he said. However, he didn't protest when GUR signed him up for the intelligence team. Knowing little about intelligence methods, he searched the Internet for manuals and studied them on his phone. However, he was not a born specialist-not like Dominique Abelin, who was in charge of every task until he was killed. "He was so careful," Doc said. "You need a person who is obsessed with security down to the smallest detail." The fighting is fast and frantic, the reconnaissance is painstaking and slow. You take a few steps, then stop and listen. I had to diligently suppress a powerful instinct, enhanced by adrenaline and nerves, in order to accelerate. "It's not my thing at all," Doc said.
When we met in Kiev, he was working to switch from front-line operations to safer projects, such as fundraising. "But, in the end, I'm still a soldier," he said. In any war, abstract or ideological reasons that encourage a person to take up arms often dissolve into a purely personal crucible of combat, which generates its own logic. The desire for revenge, or the need for redemption, or the dependence on risk. Doc seemed to be struggling with guilt. "The shittiest feeling I've ever had in this war," he told me when Abelene and Jones were killed. "When two of your guys died and you're sitting on the beach in Ibiza..." He broke off, and his face contorted with pain.
Duck for survival
The team left the house the next day. Together with the photographer, Herring and a Ukrainian soldier with the call sign Pan, we were driving in a Hyundai. On the way, Herring reached into his pocket and pulled out a yellow rubber duck. In March, he said, he distributed clothes to refugees arriving at the train station in Kiev. He gave a jacket to one boy, who in return gave him a duck. The boy explained that she helped him survive during the siege of Mariupol. "He said it would help me survive," Herring said, and his joking facade disappeared.
We joined the rest of the group in an abandoned cottage, riddled with holes. Other soldiers of the 72nd Regiment were also there, preparing to enter Pavlovka with a dozen anti-tank guns. The artillery was located close; we could hear the roar of small arms very close. In the wrecked living room, Doc tried to defuse the situation by talking about the caliber of shells outside.
T.Q. leaned back on the couch with a gloomy look. At twenty-five, he was the youngest member of the team, the only one who did not drink or smoke, and in general the most serious, with stereotypical German restraint. After two semesters of college chemistry, he asked himself: "Do I want to spend four years of my life for a piece of paper confirming a salary increase?". He enlisted in the French Foreign Legion and went to Iraq. In Ukraine, TiKyu was the commander of the group before the Turtle. Although TiKyu. he was widely admired for his scrupulous pragmatism, and after the death of Abelene and Jones, everyone agreed to change. Since then, according to the Turtle, TiKyu was sometimes annoyed by the loss of control. The day before, he had asked sharp questions about the plan that the Turtle had sketched on the blackboard. First of all, he was concerned that the team did not have clear lines of communication with the Ukrainian forces in Pavlovsk. "Are you okay, man?" Doc asked him at the dacha.
TiKyu shrugged his shoulders.
"They'll never know"
The night before, Doc told me, "If we do our job right, they'll never know we were there." Then he clarified that not everything is so easy. The trees were almost bare, the roads were strewn with leaves. Orlan, a Russian fixed-wing drone, would have "perfect surveillance." In the end, Doc said, it's "a game of chance."
More and more members of the 72nd Brigade were accumulating at the dacha, and Herring and Pan, a Ukrainian soldier, decided to settle in another place. When the photographer and I followed them along a dirt path dotted with small houses, each of which was at least partially destroyed, something whistled loudly and quickly in our direction. We dove into the mud, then got up and ran. Arriving at a large closed house, we went inside, and as soon as Herring closed the door behind us, another shell fell to the ground, scattering shrapnel on the walls.
There was a lot of glass and debris in the foyer. Floral drapes hung over the broken window. The door leading to the next room was barricaded with debris from the other side. I was relieved to see a hole in the floor with a wooden ladder going down to the main cellar. When the photographer and I went down, we found that the shelter was too shallow to stand in it.
The rest of the team, who were still at the former dacha, were waiting for nightfall. Then the Turtle radioed that they were on their way. He replaced Doc as a liaison and instructed one of the members of the 72nd squad to lead them around the Ukrainian mines.
Herring went out into the courtyard of the closed area, threw a blanket over his head and launched the drone. Soon, the neighborhood rumbled again. The photographer and I hid in the cellar. After one of the blows, I heard Peng in the foyer shouting, "Is Herring okay?". It seemed crazy to me that Herring was still outside. Only after a giant explosion brought down pieces of the ceiling in the foyer, he and Pan joined us under the floor.
"This is the closest approach to me," Herring marveled. He managed to land the drone in the yard, but he managed to run inside before he could pick it up. He also lost his walkie-talkie. Taking the radio from Pan, Herring said, "Turtle, this is Herring."
There was a long pause. Then: "This is Doc. Keep in mind, we are being shelled." As soon as the group crossed the bridge, the Ukrainian military in a dugout on the Pavlovsk side of the river warned them that they had been spotted by "Orlan".
The group decided to continue the operation, but quickly found themselves pinned to the shore.
"Roger that, Doc," Herring said. "We are getting almost almost direct hits on this house. I can see you guys well. I just landed."
"I understand you. It looks like tank fire is being fired at us. Reception."
"I understand you. It's about the same story here. I scanned the tree line well. I saw zero, I repeat zero, objects along it."
Doc asked Herring to locate the Russian tank. "It's going about ten degrees to the left," he said.
"I have to wait until everything calms down to get out and pick up the drone," Herring told him.
Another thump next to the house made Doc's reply inaudible.
"I have to get this drone," Herring said. If he could pinpoint the location of the tank, Rambo could transmit its coordinates to the 72nd Brigade, which could neutralize it with artillery.
On the command "Get down!"
It was pitch dark in the basement. Even when three of us were sitting with our knees pulled up, the fourth person could only fit standing next to the stairs. In this claustrophobic space, I could feel Herring wondering what to do. He was lighting a cigarette when a loud whistling sound, like a cascade of water, reached us. "Get down! Herring barked, even though there was nowhere to go to bed. I bowed my head and rested my palms on the earthen floor, which shook when three consecutive blows rang in my ears. "Damn freaks!" Herring said.
It was unclear if we were a deliberate target. I recently interviewed an American who taught Ukrainians in the south of the country to identify Russian drone pilots by the signal of their dispatchers. But Herring said that this method only works on the Chinese brand of drones that the Russians prefer; his drone was made by another company and was not amenable to such tracking.
"I think they are just striking all over the territory," he suggested.
The next explosion was the strongest. Above us, wood and plaster broke and fell; windows burst in houses.
"We're going to be fine, guys," Herring said. He struck a lighter and held the flame to his face to show us that he was smiling. At first I was annoyed by what seemed to be youthful bravado. Then I realized that Herring was trying to calm the photographer and me down. "I feel safe!" he said as half a dozen more shells exploded outside.
Doc radioed it. The Russian tank was aimed at them. He said of the shells: "They are coming along the tree line. The next shell will most likely be on us. So please try to find him."
"We've been pretty roughed up here right now," Herring told him. When Doc didn't answer, Herring repeated: "I have to get this drone." Another munition shook the house. A machine gun started firing somewhere. I urged Herring not to go outside.
"Yes, but they need me," he said. "For example, if I don't do it..." He picked up the walkie-talkie. "Doc, this is Herring."
There is no answer. A few seconds later, thirteen rockets, some of which fell almost simultaneously, destroyed most of the house.
"Damn!" said Herring.
Finally, the Turtle spoke on the radio. "What did you find out from the drone?" - he asked. "Have you found where the problem is?"
"Every time I try to climb out of this basement, we get arrivals almost directly over this house," Herring told him.
The turtle didn't seem to hear. "We are under quite heavy shelling," he said. "Try to find out where it comes from. I know it's a difficult task, but if you can, it will be useful for our counter-battery."
"Copy that, Turtle. I'm trying."
"Do your best, buddy."
During a brief lull in the high-frequency whistling and thunderous peals of tank shells, rockets and artillery, Herring muttered, both to himself and to others: "Okay. I think I'll get as close to the ground as possible, crawl through the house and make a mad dash for the drone." As he climbed the stairs, he added: "If something happens, don't go outside. I'll find my way inside."
The drone was lying where he had left it, and, apparently, was intact. Herring lifted it into the air, but before he could detect the Russian tank, the camera disconnected, making it inoperable. Guided only by the digital map on the controller and the sound of the rotors, he returned the drone to the yard. When he returned to the house, he found that the drone's camera mount had been damaged by one of the explosions.
"She's screwed," he said.
If everyone is alive, everything is fine
I went back to the living room of the house. There was a fresh layer of debris on the floor, and when I looked up, I saw that all the slats on the ceiling were bare. On the controller, Herring showed me a thermal shot of the team: each person is a small black speck against a long gray line of trees. They still had a long way to go, and now we had nothing to do but wait.
Forty-five minutes later, Doc informed Herring that they were returning to the cottage. It was too early to complete the task, and Herring was afraid that someone might run into a mine. But that wasn't the point: the shelling convinced them that the Russians were watching them, and the Turtle decided to abort the mission.
When we ran back to the Hyundai, we found that the rear window had been knocked out. Rambo arrived at the same time as us. It was 10:30 p.m. The headlights would have been like beacons for the Russians, so Herring covered the dashboard with a tarp, and Rambo drove in the dark using his night vision device. The others followed him in a pickup truck.
When Rambo turned into a rutted black field, Herring asked if everything was all right.
"Everyone is alive," Rambo replied.
Doc looked like a completely different person in the house. His eyes were bright and intense, his face smeared with sweat and dirt. Even his speech was unnaturally animated. There was some kind of physical energy emanating from him, which in another context might have suggested mania or drugs. "It's endorphins," Doc said.
Motivation check
Turtle told me that he was "one hundred percent" sure that they would die. The next day I talked to him about it in more detail. During the two weeks I spent with the team, I was struck by what seemed to be a fatalistic anticipation of my own death. The "DEAD" label given to him by Dominique Abelin was just one example. Turtle regularly made such remarks as "When your time comes, your time will come", "I wake up every morning ready to see a big guy in the sky" and "I had a good life, I can die happy". When I asked him to tell me about his mood, he said: "There was not a single thought of regret. I said: "It was a great trip. No tears. It was just acceptance. Like, "Wow, here I am."
He once told me that many volunteers who leave the Legion do so because they were not honest with themselves about the reasons why they came to Ukraine. "Because when you come here, your motives will be put to the test," said the Turtle. "And if it's something weak, something fake, you'll know it." He was dubious about foreigners who claimed they wanted to help Ukraine. Cherepanov, of course, also wanted to help, but this impulse was not enough; he could bring to the front, but not keep there.
I asked what was keeping him there.
"I think I just love this shit," he said. "And maybe I can't avoid it-maybe it will always be like this."
The photographer and I left for Kiev the next morning. Ty came with us. Doc, too, was flying to New York for a Veterans Day gala where he hoped to collect donations. Herring came with us, too. He had a girlfriend in Butch, whom he met on a dating site, and he had to visit her. Tikyu stayed, but not for long. In his logical manner, he came to the conclusion that he could be more useful to the team if he spoke Ukrainian, and given his linguistic abilities - he was fluent in German, English and French - he decided to take lessons in Kiev.
We were loading things when Rambo got a call from a Greek. A Russian armored unit was pressing into another forest belt near a coal mine, and the infantry stationed there needed reinforcements. When we left the house, Rambo, Pan and Turtle put on their gear. That evening, when I was in Kiev, the Turtle sent me a GoPro video: the three of them are rushing across a cratered field, emptying shops, bullets are rushing past them, a shell is raising dirt. When I called him, he said that they were forced to retreat from the forest belt, but no one was injured.
I asked if they would be coming back.
"I sure as hell hope so, buddy," the Turtle said.
Three days later, members of the Russian brigade leading the attack on Pavlovka published a letter claiming that many of them had been killed, wounded or captured. Despite the noise about the losses, Russia continued the offensive, and the 72nd Brigade eventually left the village. This defeat was the largest loss of territory for Ukraine since the summer. Subsequently, Russian shelling of Ugledar intensified, which also put it at risk. Now that there are no leaves on the trees in Donetsk, it is unlikely that Ukrainians will be able to re-occupy any of their given trenches until spring. Although Ukrainian troops have recently liberated Kherson, a major port city on the Black Sea, the trench and artillery slaughter taking place in the Donbas shows no signs of abating. The terrifying stalemate in Bakhmut continues to inflict terrible damage on both sides, while practically nothing has been lost or won.
Some official information:
November 10 General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff:...The International Legion refuses to say how many foreigners were killed or injured.
After the prisoner exchange in Zaporozhye, the Ukrainian government announced that it was holding the remains of Joshua Jones as part of a war crimes investigation. Jones' father, Jeff, a U.S. Army veteran, Gulf War veteran and retired police officer, told me that he had identified his son from a photograph and that the corpse was "charred." He is awaiting the results of an autopsy that will show whether Jones was alive when his body was burned. Jeff said that he had spoken to Joshua on the phone a few weeks before his death, and that "he looked pleased, as if he had finally found his place in the world."A friend's body
A few days after my conversation with the Turtle, Rambo sent me a video of himself with a bandage on his face and his right arm bandaged with a splint. Hyundai came under fire near a coal mine, as a result of which it slid into a ditch. A couple of weeks later, Herring was driving in a truck through the dachas when a shell fell on the road. When he came to, the truck was lying on its side, smashed against a tree. Herring climbed out through the broken window, but he didn't have the strength to get to his feet. The next time he woke up, the Ukrainian was hitting him in the face, and he heard muffled explosions. He was evacuated to a hospital in Dnipro, where he was told that he had four broken ribs and a punctured lung. His face and torso were covered with lacerations. When he called me from his room, which he shared with several wounded Ukrainians, he said that his life was saved by a rubber duck. "It's either the duck or my helmet," Herring said.
Ty, a New Zealander who left the Legion, did not change his mind this time. The only thing he regrets, he told me, is that he left Ukraine without Dominique Abelin's body, which he hoped to deliver to New Zealand. That's why he stayed here for so long. But, according to him, "I realized that if I stayed, I would most likely die waiting for him, too."
When New Zealand soldiers die abroad, their units greet their coffins with a haka, a ceremonial Maori dance. Turtle and Ty plan to seek the same honor for Abelen. If they succeed, the coffin will be delivered to the parade ground of his former unit in Christchurch through a wooden gate decorated with traditional carvings, which are called waharoa. Abelene's comrades will stamp their feet, beat their chests and stick out their tongues. Each battalion of the New Zealand Army has its own haka, with its own words, which the soldiers growl and shout. The name of the hack, which will be performed by the Abelene unit, translates as "We are ready."
After participating in a solemn event on the occasion of Veterans Day in New York, Doc returned to Kiev, where he plans to buy an apartment. Currently, he is raising funds for the production and distribution of an innovative protection system for Ukrainian troops stationed in frontline trenches.
The soldier thought about it
More than any other foreign volunteer I met, Doc seemed genuinely motivated by the belief that the conflict was "a clear example of a battle of good and evil." Sometimes I wondered to what extent his desire to participate in such an unambiguously just war was connected with his previous military career. The cause for which he is fighting in Ukraine is righteous, because it lies in the fact that one country resists another. But the opponents of the Dock in Iraq and Afghanistan viewed their goals in a similar way – and in Afghanistan, perhaps it was precisely because of these sentiments that the Afghans won, driving out the Americans. This is a hot topic for veterans, and Doc did not want to recognize the moral equivalence between American and Russian actions. However, the experience of defending the country from an enemy superior in numbers and firepower made him re-evaluate his previous experience. "I used to think: "What kind of weaklings are fighting with mines?" - he said. "And here I am, laying mines, just like my recent enemies."
I also suspected that there was another draft for members of the International Legion in Ukraine. During lunch with Doc on Andreevsky Descent in October, I was unexpectedly touched when an old man in a felt hat thanked him for his service. I shared Doc's discomfort about such gestures in the States, but something was different here. Although the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan were transformative for those who fought in them, they did not have a real impact on most Americans and Europeans. In Ukraine, on the contrary, many people thank foreigners: here many have experienced suffering. For some foreign veterans, this country, so thoroughly changed and destroyed, may turn out to be less alien than their native one.
Luc Mogelson
