DRUZHKIVKA, Ukraine — Four months after Russia invaded Ukraine, foreign war veterans who heeded the Ukrainian president’s call to fight are grappling with the grueling reality of a war like they’ve never seen before.
Many are American and British veterans of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, where they could count on air strikes for protection and other critical support. In Ukraine, military efforts are essentially bare, leaving Ukrainian armed forces — and their foreign-fighter allies — to face a larger and better-armed Russian invasion force without basic amenities, such as set meals, and even some modern warfare tools that would help. they level the field.
“This is much more intense than what I saw in Afghanistan,” said Brian, a former US military paratrooper who, for security reasons, did not want his last name used. “This is fighting, fighting.”
That reality, volunteer fighters say, has displaced some of the hundreds of men who first arrived in Ukraine to help fight what many believed to be a just and deeply skewed war. Of those that remain, some now work directly for the Ukrainian military, which has quietly and effectively used them to fill gaps in frontline capabilities, including filling a desperate need for medics.
Some would-be fighters still roam the country — their goals vary and include building an online following, a first taste of battle or, in some cases, finding others who hold far-right beliefs, according to fellow fighters. But the most professional foreign soldiers have gained increasing respect from their Ukrainian comrades, as well as from the country’s leaders.
Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, especially praised those who recently fought in one of the most grueling battles of the war, in Sievierodonetsk, saying that their “motivation, professionalism, their readiness for urban warfare” played an important role in keeping the Russian troops away for so long.
They are “just what we needed,” he said.
Still, even with the help of volunteers, Ukrainian officials eventually decided they had no choice but to withdraw from that city, which set the stage for the fighting that unfolded on Thursday when Russian forces attacked neighboring Donetsk, the last remaining province. , attacked. in eastern Ukraine not under Moscow’s control.
At least seven civilians have been killed there in the past 24 hours, including a 17-year-old girl found under the rubble, local authorities said as they warned of an impending Russian offensive.
In the city of Kramatorsk, a rocket that Ukrainian officials say was fired by Russian troops killed a man sitting on a bench in the yard of an apartment complex and injured six others, officials and witnesses said. Residents had been cooking and eating in the yard since the war started, said a former resident, Anastasia, 25, who was visiting when the rocket hit.
“He was here, outside,” she said. “He didn’t have a chance.”
The number of foreign deaths pales in comparison to the losses suffered by the Ukrainians, but the risks facing the fighters from abroad have intensified in recent weeks. On June 9, Russia sentenced three captive foreigners to death, and reports surfaced of at least four American deaths on the battlefield. In the most recent case, the State Department confirmed on June 22 that Stephen Zabielski, 52, an army veteran, was killed in May after stepping on a land mine.
The professionalism described by Mr. Arestovych arose from the initial chaos of a flood of volunteers. Some were seasoned combat veterans; others were aspiring fighters who arrived with bulging backpacks filled with military gear, but no front-line experience. They came to answer what was essentially an SOS call from Mr. Zelensky in the early days of the war, when many world leaders and analysts assumed that the Russians would soon defeat the over-manned Ukrainians.
Understanding the war between Russia and Ukraine better
Within days, volunteers started flying to Poland and going to the border with Ukraine. Within weeks, the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, 90 minutes from the border, was packed with Americans and other foreigners arriving by train and bus, trying to find their way to the front.
With almost no structure to find out who was qualified to fight or to help the newcomers find positions, a few volunteers roamed around Lviv until they found someone who could direct them to a recruitment agency. Others returned home frustrated.
“It was an attempt to gain support for a cause that didn’t look very promising at the end of February,” Kacper Rekawek, a fellow at the Center for Research on Extremism at the University of Oslo, said of Mr. Zelensky. “It came from the presidential circle and I don’t think all elements of the bureaucracy — military, civilian, what have you — got the memo right away.”
Four months after the war, much about the foreign armed forces remains obscure. Mr. Arestovych estimates that 1,000 took part in battles. But without a central clearing house for volunteers, nobody knows for sure. Hundreds or thousands of others have come to assist with non-combat duties.
President Biden has discouraged Americans from going to Ukraine, a point he recently reiterated when two American veterans went missing and were reportedly in Russian custody.
The best known of the foreign fighting groups is the International Legion for the Defense of Ukraine, established by the Ukrainian government in accordance with the appeal of Mr. Zelensky.
The Legion does not give numbers of its members, but its spokesman, Damien Magrou, said of the countries represented in its ranks, the United States and Great Britain were at the top. All those accepted by the Legion sign contracts with the Ukrainian military, serve in units where foreign NCOs answer to Ukrainian officers and receive the same salary as the Ukrainian armed forces, he said.
A video recently posted on social media showed Legion fighters in intense urban battles. The video, edited and reportedly shot in Sievierodonetsk, shows a group of soldiers, clearly well-trained and well-equipped, moving through bombed-out buildings and firing at Russian troops. The Hollywood-style imagery was a clear indication of some of the capabilities of the Legion and of those who man its units: skilled, professional fighters now directly involved in some of the most vicious battles of the war.
Much of the International Legion’s carefully managed media efforts have focused on increasing foreign public support for Ukraine’s war effort and arguing that Ukraine needs more advanced weapons.
Mr Magrou said that after initially increasing acceptance, the Legion now accepts only those who have combat experience, who have passed background and psychological checks and who do not express extremist views.
But some of those rejected by the Legion, he said, were accepted by other units of foreigners or made their way to the front lines and formed their own battle groups.
“Volunteer groups can be anything from 15 guys with three guns” to the largest and most organized groups, said Mr Magrou, a Franco-Norwegian corporate lawyer who lived and worked in Ukraine when Russia invaded in February.
It has proved difficult to keep extremists out of the many fighters who want to help Ukraine. Two frontline recruits, who declined to give their names for security reasons, described meeting American and Scandinavian members of the white supremacist Aryan Brotherhood, some with prison tattoos, in hiding addresses, who were trying to escape on their own. the fight.
Even the Legion may have had problems. A photo on his Facebook page of deceased members showed a French victim, Wilfried Blériot, wearing a patch of the “Misanthropic Division” — a far-right group with white supremacist views. In another photo posted to Telegram by the Misanthropic Division, he is wearing one of their T-shirts.
Mr Magrou said that he had spoken to Mr Blériot’s mother and other recruits who said that Mr Blériot had made friends with a member of the Misanthropic Division but that Mr Blériot was not aware of the racist identity of the group.
The reasons why fighters choose to risk their lives for a country that does not belong to them vary widely.
Brian, the US veteran who fought in Afghanistan, said he came because he trained Ukrainians years ago to fend off Russian-backed separatist forces, and many of the Ukrainian friends he made died in those battles. Brian, the son of a Marine, said he stayed – even though his wife learned she’s pregnant – because he realized he wasn’t quite done with the military and because he believes he’s making a difference in an unequal battle .
Rather than the active combat envisioned by many potential recruits, Brian’s unit – led by a Danish platoon commander and in conjunction with Ukrainian special operations forces – has focused on mundane but vital tasks. Those include helping Ukrainian troops shake some of the Soviet-like doctrines that prevent them from sharing information between units and empower lower leaders.
For some other Americans and Brits who have carried the baggage of unpopular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and even some who haven’t fought, the call to arms for what they see as an obvious cause has proved irresistible.
Matthew Robinson, a Briton who is a former US military contractor in Iraq, said he saw his service in Ukraine as a form of “redemption” for taking advantage of a war he now considers unjust.
Robinson eventually trained Ukrainian armed forces across the country, including close to the front lines in the east, the site of some of the war’s most intense battles. There, Ukrainian troops face near-constant artillery attacks.
“Unless you fought in World War II, when did you experience this?” he asked.
Thomas Gibbons-Neff reported from Druzhkivka, Valerie Hopkins from Kiev and Jane Arraf from Baghdad. Reporting contributed by: Megan Special from Lviv; Kamila Hrabchuk from Kramatorsk; and Michael Levenson and Michael Schwirtz From New York.
