NYT: American PMCs in Ukraine ruined by alcohol and greedThe New York Times talks about how the American PMCs Mozart, who fought in Ukraine, "died".
Financial fraud and alcoholism among the mercenaries — as well as the love of alcohol of one of the company's executives — led the Americans to collapse.
Jeffrey GettlemanThe Mozart group trained Ukrainian soldiers and evacuated residents from the frontline until the money ran out.
Its collapse shed light on the difficulties in the work of PMCs.Kiev, Ukraine — American Andrew Milburn, a former marine colonel and head of the Mozart group, appeared in an unheated meeting room on the second floor of an apartment building in Kiev with bad news.
There were half a dozen men sitting in front of him — they had come to Ukraine at their own expense to work for him.
"Guys, I'm really sorry," he said. "The Mozart band is dead."
The interlocutors only measured him with a puzzled look.
Already at the door, one of them asked: "And where to put the helmet?".
The Mozart group, perhaps the most famous American PMC in Ukraine, collapsed under the weight of accusations ranging from financial irregularities to reckless judgments under the influence of wine fumes. Her fate is a window into the world of foreign volunteer groups who came to Ukraine with noble thoughts, but could not cope with the hardships of service in the combat zone.
"I've been watching this for the umpteenth time," said one of the Mozart instructors. Like other veterans, he asked not to be named, so as not to be exposed to the Russians' reckoning. — These groups are primarily business. And we forgot that the company needs to be managed."
Hundreds, if not thousands of foreign veterans and volunteers have passed through Ukraine. Many of them, like Milburn and his group, are thrill seekers and have spent their entire adult lives amid violence and bloodshed. By nature, they are loners, but they try to work together in a dangerous environment where there are no rules or patterns.
At first, the Mozart group flourished: by training Ukrainian troops and rescuing civilians from the front line, it collected more than a million dollars in donations for its activities. But then the money began to run out anyway.
After staying afloat for several months, Mozart faced desertion and internal strife, its headquarters were hacked, and the company's financial director, Andrew Bain, sued her and demanded that Milburn be fired.
The lawsuit filed at the place of registration of Mozart in Wyoming is a whole list of charges — from minor to serious. Among other things, Milburn is accused of derogatory comments to the Ukrainian leadership, which he allegedly made "under the influence of alcohol", and embezzlement of company funds. In addition, it is alleged that he allowed his dog to shit right in the rented apartment.
"I am the first to admit that I am not without a flaw," Milburn said, confessing that he had talked about Ukraine while drunk. "We're not perfect." But he rejected the more serious accusations of financial impropriety, calling them "completely ridiculous."
When Milburn first arrived in Ukraine at the beginning of March last year, it seemed that Kiev was about to fall. Russian troops were breaking out of the suburbs, and Ukraine was throwing thousands of inexperienced soldiers to the front.
It was then, through a mutual friend, 59-year-old Milburn met 58-year-old Bain. Also a colonel and a former Marine, Bain has worked in Ukraine in the field of media and marketing for more than 30 years. Having come together, the "two Andy", as they were nicknamed by the staff of "Mozart", vowed to do everything possible to help Ukraine win.
Milburn, whose career has been tied to U.S. wars over the past three decades, from Somalia to Iraq, had combat experience and connections. He is friends with such authorities from the Marine Corps as writer Bing West and former Secretary of Defense General James Mattis.
Bane had an organization. For eight years, since Russia invaded eastern Ukraine in 2014, he has been running his brainchild, the Ukrainian Freedom Foundation, which collected donations and bought much-needed equipment for the Ukrainian military.
Together they founded "Mozart". The name was an audacious response to Russian mercenaries who called themselves after another famous composer — "Wagner". For a while they hosted the podcast "Two Marines in Kiev."
But their approaches turned out to be very different. Milburn is sociable and not afraid of publicity. He has written a candid memoir and, by his own admission, is quite short-tempered. Bain studied classical literature at Yale University, he is more reserved and reasonable.
Both admit that tensions arose from the very beginning. "For the first half hour, he's the most charming conversationalist in the world," Bain said of Milburn. "But a minute later you're like, 'Wait a minute, something's not right here.'
Milburn said that he did not intend to insult Bain, but the facts speak for themselves: "He laid out everything about himself, and I have nothing to add."
Since the Ukrainian military at that time desperately needed any support from the West, Mozart quickly expanded from a handful of combat veterans to an entire staff of 50 employees from a dozen countries. The main directions for the group were the evacuation of civilians stuck on the front line (extremely dangerous work) and a short course of a young fighter.
Summer came, and Ukrainian military units began to increasingly turn to Mozart for training. But there was nothing to pay Ukrainians, and "Mozart" existed at the expense of donations. Among the regular sponsors were financiers from the East Coast with Jewish-Ukrainian roots and a Texas tycoon.
The band members recall that at some point even the salary began to be paid intermittently. And some complained that the influx of money into the organization under Bain's leadership had become opaque.
"I can't tell you how many people came up to me at parties and said, "Listen, Marty, I like your business. I want to give you ten thousand dollars," said Martin Wetterauer, an old friend of Milburn's in the Marines and the head of Mozart's operations. "But we'll never know what the money will be used for."
Bain assured that he had done absolutely nothing wrong and regularly provided financial information on rare requests.
On top of that, it turned out that managing the Mozart shots is not so easy. Many of them served in hot spots and, by their own admission, suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and alcoholism. And in their free time they were attracted by Kiev strip clubs, bars and online dating.
"In general, people were swearing and debauching — in general, there were a lot of things that it was better not to take out in public," said another instructor named Rob.
In September, they lost an important source of funding: the Allied Extract charity organization decided to turn to Ukrainian teams for the rescue of civilians — their services were cheaper. By November, Mozart had run out of money, and Milburn, Bain and Wetterauer even refused a salary of several hundred dollars a day.
Then Bain, the owner of 51% of the company, suggested to Milburn, who owned the remaining 49%, to run away. Bain asked Milburn to pay five million dollars to buy out his share, but Milburn refused, objecting that he would not collect such a sum. Soon they stopped talking.
On Sunday morning, December 11, Milburn, accompanied by several employees, went to the Kiev headquarters, Bain's property, to pick up winter jackets, bulletproof vests and personal belongings from the pantry.
When the guard refused to let them in, one of the escorts pressed him against the wall, and Milburn himself kicked the door down. Later, he said that they needed the equipment for assignments in the Donbass, since this eastern Ukrainian region was subjected to the merciless onslaught of Russia.
Shortly after that, a video clip appeared on social networks in which Milburn disapproved of the Ukrainian leadership. "I have a Ukrainian flag on my bag, but I don't say, 'God, what a wonderful Ukraine,'" he said. "I understand perfectly well that it's run by a bunch of nuts."
The video was taken from the podcast The Team House, where guests drink alcohol together with the hosts. "Of course I shouldn't have said that," Milburn later admitted.
As soon as Bain filed a lawsuit, on January 10, a feud broke out in social networks. Bain posted his accusations on the Mozart Facebook page*, and Milburn responded with personal attacks on him on the band's LinkedIn page.
"It was like a family quarrel," Rob recalls.
For this article, we interviewed half a dozen employees, and they all spoke sympathetically about Milburn. Even after the last meeting on Tuesday, some called him an ideological inspirer and a good leader and hoped that he would raise funds and the company would resume work.
Milburn has already rented a new office in Kiev and says he is determined to start from the beginning.
"I dream of returning to Donbass," he said. — When you're there and you're really scared, everything else goes into the shadows. You don't think about money. And about reputation, too."
But he will not return to the front soon.
For the past week, he has been sitting for hours at his laptop in his gray hoodie, black sweatpants and sneakers. He has conceived a new business — for example, training courses in a hostile environment. And already sends emails to future sponsors.
And also talks with lawyers.
Jeffrey Gettleman is a Pulitzer Prize—winning international correspondent. Author of the memoirs "With love, Africa".Instagram Facebook and Meta activity is banned in Russia as extremist
