In early June, two American veterans from Alabama, Alex Drueke and Andy Huynh, were captured and reportedly held by Russia-backed separatists in a skirmish outside Kharkiv. The news of an official foreign unit was met with excitement by members of the Georgia National Legion, an English-speaking force of volunteers with Western military experience who train Ukrainian troops and sometimes deploy to the front line with the country's marines. They linked up with an aid organization called Road to Relief, and obtained a donated Polish ambulance, a beat-up van, and a small SUV. Ad Choices. Read about our approach to external linking. Hed heard rumors that many of the people whod sought refuge in the bomb shelters eventually grew impatient and came out, and that most of the ones who came out got killed. Not since that conflict has a war in Europe elicited such a groundswell of support from foreign recruits. No matter ones military background, each foreign applicant must complete three months of basic military training before deploying to the war zone. When reached by GQ, a State Department spokesperson was unable to comment on the particulars of this rumored ambush, noting that our ability to verify reports of deaths of U.S. citizens in Ukraine is limited., Next on their agenda was to construct a field hospital based out of Dnipro, a vital transit point for troops and military supplies bound for the eastern front; Russian missiles had destroyed the airport there in April. But after I sent Robinson a lengthy email to be forwarded to Mamulashvili, the units founder, and pledged to reveal no details about the centers whereabouts, he agreed to take me there and introduce me to his squad. From my third-floor hotel room, I heard two explosions. Mr Mamulashvili does not draw a line between the Russian state and Russian civilians, blaming them equally for the current crisis. Ukraine is . This conflict should not be disregarded as irrelevant, because Europe should be defended in Ukraine, because the world must show that Russias expansion ambitions are not welcome in todays society, said Vjekoslav, a 39-year-old Croatian serving in Ukraines 1st Separate Marine Battalion, which is currently deployed close to the city of Mariupol in the eastern war zone. The governments of several countries, including some vulnerable former Soviet republics such as Latvia and Lithuania, gave volunteers their blessing. The Georgian National Legion says it is funded by the Ukrainian government. In an interview with the leader of the Georgian Legion, Mamuka Mamulashvili, I asked whether his men were simply mercenaries, fighting the enemy for a monthly handout. But this is not the only unit composed of foreigners fighting in Ukraine. And everybody should understand that its a real war, and its the real face of Russia that we see today in Ukraine.. The shopkeeper noticed the Croatians accent and asked where he was from. "When one group tries to impose their will on another group, there are those of us that have the skills to help," he says. ILDU Blue and Yellow patch.jpg 3,024 4,032; 2.47 MB. The units utility to Ukraines war effort has made it a target for Russia. Four volunteers, maybe fiveit was all sketchyhad apparently been caught in an ambush and killed, somewhere in the east, out in the shifting turmoil of the chaos zone. The most prominent, the Azov Battalion, originated as a paramilitary unit during the war in Donbas in 2014 and became incorporated into the Ukrainian military, despite its associations with neo-Nazi ideology. I want them to be free, to be happy. Certain volunteers I spoke with had heard that the supposed casualties were Americans; others asserted that the group was composed of fighters from various countries and that Cancel had been among them. This is the beginning of a war against Europe, Zelensky had said, against democracy and peaceful coexistence. He announced the creation of the International Legion to train and dispatch the volunteers. It is a training exercise, for now. On battlefields throughout history, the combat engineer has proven time and again to be a decisive factor in victory and defeat. A thin man with stringy blond hair and a blond beard sat disconsolately in a corner booth, with several empty beer bottles in front of him; Young identified him as the commander of the group that was apparently ambushed on the eastern front. A California Marine remains in the brig, accused of threatening to chop up his wife with a machete. Browse 28,475 georgia national legion stock photos and images available, or start a new search to explore more stock photos and images. For his part, Vjekoslav said that hes also experienced a notable amount of gratitude from Ukrainian civilians for his military service. At the border checkpoint, Polish immigration officials boarded and processed passports, and then the bus advanced to the Ukrainian side. "But they enjoy the achievement of doing it, and the camaraderie is something that is undeniable.". Im just worried, he confessed, that wherever I go, its going to be Get out of here, we dont like you, we dont want you.. The director told them that if they did not get her out now, she wouldnt live through the night. Mamulashvili went on to fight Russian forces again during Russias 2008 invasion of Georgia, as well as in Ukraines Donbas region. While the motivations of foreign fighters are often questioned, John said going to Ukraine was not the result of a desire to kill. After several days, Hoeft left the Georgia Legion and made a video that was posted to the internet and went viral in which he claimed that foreigners were being sent to Kyiv with no fucking weapons, no kit, no fucking plates, and when they refused to go, commanders threatened to shoot us in the back.. Theyre asking us to do a lot of extractions of wounded soldiers now, Casey told me, when I met the three men in Kyiv. If you dont hear from me, dont panic.. The day after Young told me all this, advancing Russian troops blasted apart the Severodonetsk bridge that he had traveled across on his evacuation missions. Mamuka Mamulashvili is the leader of the Georgian National Legion, a volunteer unit formed by mostly Georgian soldiers that has attracted foreign fighters to Ukraine, including from many Western . Some foreigners arrived in Ukraine expecting to be immediately dispatched to fight Russian tanksonly to face what they saw as a shortage of munitions and a seemingly interminable wait to get to the front. Meet Yuliia Levchenko, the high jumper with a travel bug who loves beach snaps. Especially considering the fact that these soldiers were all volunteers training to defend a country that isnt their own. Then he stuck the phone in his pocket. The diversity of fighting forces underscored the spectrum of motivations and personalities convergingthe makeshift armies were variously composed of danger junkies and sinister right-wing nationalists, shameless opportunists and good people seeking a good war. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Thursday said that 16,000 foreigners have volunteered to fight for Ukraine against the Russian invasion. Volunteers traded info about salaries: One American seemed pleasantly surprised when he learned that his pay with an international outfit would be 3,500 a month. To revisit this article, select My Account, thenView saved stories. Often after dodging rockets and evading Russian troops, the men confronted people designated by aid groups or concerned relatives for evacuation who cursed and told them to get lost. On the chat, volunteers from the U.S., the U.K., Australia, and Sweden swapped information on border crossings and other logistics. They advanced purposefully, covering each other's movements. Hudson Institute. The encrypted messaging apps Signal, Telegram, and WhatsApp have allowed volunteers to reach out directly to intermediaries in Ukraine and in neighboring Poland, where recruiters set up shop and began processing incoming fighters. He had found reserves of strength. Theres a few lessons you learn along the way., Mamulashvili, the Georgia Legion founder, told me that his organization imposed a three-week waiting time on fresh volunteers to allow commanders to assess their battle readiness. Whether that was an improvement was difficult to determine. Moscow denies this, but admits that Russian "volunteers" are fighting for the rebels. It was no surprise, he says, when earlier this year he was again pulled aside for questioning at Heathrow before boarding the flight to Ukraine. Since then, armed rebels have seized large areas in what is known as the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine. What's the least amount of exercise we can get away with? As to my reasons for fighting [in Ukraine], for me its a continuation of the war in Chechnya, Osmayev told Coffee or Die. If a major Russian invasion kicks off there will definitely be an influx of foreigners, and I think it will be important for the Ukrainian government to utilize the potential of ex-military who wish to serve and protect Ukraine, said Aiden Aslin, a 27-year-old British citizen who enlisted in the Ukrainian Marines in 2018 and recently renewed his service contract. Young had come to Ukraine a few weeks earlier, arriving from Portland, Oregon, to join thousands of eager volunteers flooding into the war zone, anxious for the chance to help fend off Vladimir Putins troops. Foreigners who enlist with Ukraines regular armed forces receive temporary residency for the duration of their service contract, which typically lasts three years. 04 March 2022. "Because Russia hasn't been punished for the war in 2008, it is now escalating against Ukraine," Mr. Mamulashvili said in an interview at the Georgian Legion's base in a sports facility on the. In 2012, while the pro-Russian Viktor Yanukovych was president, Ukrainian security agents arrested Osmayev for his role in an alleged plot to assassinate Russian President Vladimir Putin a charge that Osmayev denies. They had been drilling without weapons and taking cover in a basement when the sirens went off. Some foreigners saw the war in Ukraine as a last stand against Russian aggression pushing deeper into Europe. Foreigners who join volunteer organizations to contribute to the war effort must obtain temporary residency by other means. They want weapons in two days and to go to the front lines, even those without experience, he said. We passed sandbagged checkpoints marked by tattered Ukrainian flags, roadside crates of Molotov cocktails, and banners declaring Russian warship, go fuck yourself. Soon the bus was crawling through traffic in central Lviv, and Young began trading WhatsApp messages with his handler at the Georgia Legion. Osmayev later assumed command ofthe battalionafter the units founding commander, Isa Munaev, was killed in action during the February 2015 battle for Debaltseve in eastern Ukraine. The true answer to this question was perhaps a hard thing to articulate. Young could feel the vibrations of artillery landing a few hundred meters away. Its Yes, we want to fight, and theyre moving people with no experience quickly into battle., Yet other volunteers offered a gripe of an opposite nature. They are saying, We came here to fight, not to sit on a base. I say, Its war, people are dying there. The base had become a training center for new legionnaires, and as many as 1,000 were there at the time of the strike. Northern Irelands secretary of state, Brandon Lewis, said he had sympathy for the captured Britons but added that they had been fighting in Ukraine illegally.. Thousands volunteer to join Ukraine's International Legion Army after appeal from Zelensky including 'several' American veterans - as locals are offered $3,300-a-month to fight "There is no difference between so-called civilians and the government, they are the same occupiers, and they act the same when they are tourists in (my) country. All the details necessary to join a war half-a-world away were suddenly right at a prospective fighters fingertipsas were the grim reminders of the conflicts brutality, in the form of photos and footage. At conservative gathering, Trump is still the favourite. As he spoke, Young hungrily forked at a rib-eye steak. Foreign fighters gather in Ukraine to support Volodymyr Zelenskyy's international legion against Russia Posted Tue 8 Mar 2022 at 7:54am Tuesday 8 Mar 2022 at 7:54am Tue 8 Mar 2022 at 7:54am Since the war began, nearly 4,000 foreign fighters have joined Ukraines military ranks both as volunteers for irregular militias and in the regular armed forces according to a June 2019 study by The Soufan Center, an American defense research firm. The Georgian National Legion proudly displays pictures of its newest recruits on Facebook. In particular, Ukrainian defense officials reject applicants who have associated with any far-right extremist groups or have ties to the Russian government. Robinson, who had worked during the Iraq War as a contractor for Kellogg, Brown & Root, came out of early retirement in Spain to join the fight in early March. Youd better be prepared., Robinson wasnt the only foreign volunteer who shared his disillusionment with the caliber of the international force. Personnel from 60 countries have signed up. There are also the extreme-right factions. In late April, Robinson and some of his men took over an abandoned office building in the capital and turned it into a Georgia Legion barracks and an urban training ground for Ukrainian reservists in the Territorial Defense Force. The Ukrainian army had 196,000 active members, a sizable force but a far cry from Russias 900,000-strong active personnel, and Zelensky seemed to think that to have any chance of staving off their adversaries, he would need more troops on the ground. Young fetched a stretcher from the ambulance and helped maneuver the woman carefully up the staircase and into the street. I hope its going to end here. When this started my heart sank. But they still felt sidelined, unable to see a path to the fighting for themselves. Today, however, there is a legal pathway for foreigners to join Ukraines regular armed forces. Nearly eight years later, the war is ongoing along a static, entrenched front line. Later on in civilian life he worked as an engineer. He began an itinerant life, driving a tour bus in Boston, toiling in wineries in Oregon and New Zealand, and working as a utility arborist in Oregon and eastern Washingtonshinnying up towering Douglas firs and Ponderosa pines and trimming branches away from power lines with a chainsaw. He struggled to put himself through college but finally graduated from Washington State University with a degree in psychology. ILDU-Logo.jpg 646 546; 399 KB. The application is done in Kyiv, Ukraines capital city, and requires medical and psychological evaluations, as well as a criminal background check. Giorgi Kurashvili, 37, a Georgian actor who left Tbilisi for London in 2010, had taken a break from voice-overs and commercials to join the fight. Negotiation is pointless, he says, with a nation that does not listen. The two had arrived in Ukraine at a difficult moment, he told them. Then there were those like Michael Young, moved by a tangle of motives that he had struggled to understand: moral outrage, a thirst for adventure, a yearning for redemption. When Volodymyr Zelensky raised the call, a makeshift army of foreign volunteers came flooding into Ukraine: They were fishermen and accountants, schoolteachers and security guards, mercenaries and humanitarians. Members of the Georgia National Legion at their base in Kyiv. Ukraine accuses Russia of arming the separatists in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions and also sending its troops to the region. Giorgi Lomsadze May 9, 2022 Members of the Georgian National Legion fighting in Ukraine (Facebook) While many Georgians feel a personal connection to the war in Ukraine, a number are putting their lives on the line for it, traveling to Ukraine to fight in its defense against the Russian invasion. Bill. Ukraine's embattled president has issued a call to foreign nationals who are "friends of peace and democracy" to travel to the country to fight . With him that March day was Mark Watson; theyd struck up an online friendship through the international volunteers Signal group and had arranged to link up to travel to war together. He had served as a medic in the U.S. Army and then worked in Israel for Triple Canopy, the security group, guarding government officials. The alarms went off, we were getting ready to leave, and mortars started coming down, he said. Oleg, 13, holds a training weapon at a military training course with the Georgian National Legion in Kyiv on Tuesday, Feb. 8, 2022. A month later he discovered that the sum was paid in Ukrainian hryvniaabout $118. John's more conventional military experience began when he was aged 16, when he joined the Army after leaving school, serving for nine years. Ive got the embassy in Poland breathing down my back, trying to get me to leave, he said. They had harbored a faint notion of somehow opening their own hospital unit, but jettisoned that idea, Casey says, after the main hospital in the area told them, frankly, that this sort of help wasnt needed. Kelleys and Robinsons no-nonsense manner initially struck me as overdramatic: two would-be soldiers playing war games far from the front lines. She then gave him the chessboard for free. At the beginning of 2022, he caught COVID, quit the arborist job, and spent the early months of the year doing the same work in the Idaho Panhandle, sawing branches through the cold, dark winter. I gave them a lot of little caveats, he told me. As the citizen of a country that has suffered its own war in recent times, Vjekoslav said he found common cause with Ukraines fight to shake off decades of Russian overlordship. They were operating in what was a wild, desperate no mans land, largely depopulated, scarred by artillery strikes, peppered with pro-Ukrainian civilians too infirm to leave on their own and pro-Russian separatists who regarded the foreign do-gooders with hostility. Other deterrents have popped up to thwart would-be volunteers. Youngs lifelong restlessness and search for fulfillment had taken him, step by step, to the edge of a catastrophic conflict in a land far from home, and would, over the next weeks, draw him in even deeper. The sounds of coughing and wheezing, especially among the children, filled the space. "Certainly not as big as they should be in my opinion, so us being here will make people more aware of what's going on.". Zelensky's call echoes that of the Spanish Second Republic, which, when the right wing Spanish military tried to launch a coup d'etat in 1936, relied on tens of thousands of foreign volunteers in the International Brigades to fight against General Francisco Franco's professional soldiers. This makes it all real, he told me. Although badly wounded by torture, his father was elated to learn that his disappeared son was still alive, My presence breathed life into him, Mamulashvili later said. According to information provided to Newsweek by the Foreign Office, Ukraine has confirmed that both individuals are members of the Ukrainian armed forces and their families have indicated. By the summer, Young was contemplating staying for the long haul and had already reached out to commanders about making a three-year commitment to serve in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. It. In other cases, foreigners fought in Ukraine to avenge historical grudges against Russia. Known by the nom de guerre, Johnny, Aslin maintains a popular Instagram account in which he posts updates about his wartime service in the Donbas as well as advice for other foreigners interested in joining Ukraines military. This view was reiterated by a powerful-looking Georgian called Misha, who heads one of the legion's artillery units. Anyone who wants to join the defense, Zelensky said, can come and fight side by side with the Ukrainians against the Russian war criminals. The call to arms echoed the invitation made at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, when Republican forces fought off a coup attempt led by General Francisco Franco by enlisting the help of some 35,000 volunteers from 65 countriesincluding around 2,800 Americans who rushed to Spain to fight alongside Republican soldiers. He gave his life for a nation he had never been to before., In the weeks that followed, he grew only more resolutemore committed to the people of Ukraine. They were living in a shared hotel room in Kramatorsk, just southwest of the wars front lines. It wasnt direct combat; if anything, these forays to the fringes of battle were something like chores. But in 2015, seeing the rise of the so-called Islamic State (IS), he decided to make something of a return to his military roots and signed up to fight as a volunteer with the Kurds in Syria. And there is a part of me that wants redemption for how my military career ended. He was working through the meaning of his desire to volunteer and he feared being ridiculed by other veterans as one of those wannabe warriors who were going there to get experience they feel they missed in the U.S. military. Youngs biggest concern was being told by his commanding officers that he wasnt qualified to fight. Step 1. Combatants from Syria and Afghanistan have been drawn into the war, alongside former servicemen and inmates from Russian prisons. But that post, too, he said, was apparently compromised by recruits who had inadvertently revealed their location on TikTok and other social media platforms. Mamulashvili was only 14 in 1993 when he snuck out to the front lines in Abkhazia, a Russian-backed breakaway territory from Georgia, and joined a combat unit commanded by his father, Zurab Mamulashvili, a highly regarded Georgian military officer. The Home Office will not comment specifically on fighting in Ukraine, but says it advises against fighting any group abroad. Their attitude was like, Are you going to kill yourself? Well, I dont want to. Well, then, youre not depressed. It was like Catch 22.. The messages that followed revealed his growing frustration. I promised myself that if such a thing were to happen in Eastern Europe and I were in a position to help, I would do so., After Putins attack, Young made plans to enlist in the International Legion, but he changed course once he began to read about the group on Signal. Though Adam has spent just two days in Ukraine, the civilians' commitment to military training makes a powerful impression on the American veteran. Follow. Four air raids in one day, Young texted to his friends and family at one point. He moved down the steps and into a dark tunnel, where he pushed through a metal bomb-shelter door, and recoiled from the stench of sweat and decay. The units symbol is the head of a wolf an allusion to ancient Persians description of Georgia as a land of wolves.. Mark Watson, a former U.S. Marine turned software developer from Pomona, California, was a slight, taciturn man of 27 with sleepy eyes and a shock of brown hair. That same week that their capture was announced, the U.S. State Department reported that a third American volunteer, Grady Kurpasi, may have been missing since April. I made a will before I came, Young said. Young and I met in the lobby of his hotel, in the center of Krakw, hours before he climbed aboard the bus bound for Ukraine. I found myself out of a job, I felt useless, he said. Taiwan released their soldier's name, but Japan did not. Fighting in the Donbas began a month after Russia annexed Ukraine's Crimean peninsula. Extensive second-degree burns, shrapnel, their contact wrote. I decided to put this skill set to use in Ukraine. He joined up with the International Legion, which directed him to the Yavoriv base. Instead, they decided that they would devote themselves to evacuating sick and wounded civilians from dangerous areas at the edge of Russian-controlled territory. While the Russian Defense Ministry would claim the attack killed up to 180 foreign mercenaries, Ukrainian officials asserted that 35 people were killed, none of whom were foreigners. Now employed by an I.T. The U.S. State Department warned American citizens not to travel to Ukraine, citing the extreme danger, though the government has made no firm statement on the legality of volunteering. I know Im not doing superhero things, but what Im trying to do, I want to change a little piece of someones life here. Mamulashvili founded the Georgia National Legion to support Ukraines armed forces, which were depleted by years of post-Soviet corruption and could only muster a few thousand combat-ready soldiers when the war began in 2014. The idea of creating the legion was to gather people of different nationalities to serve together to stand against Russian aggression, and we did it, Mamulashvili said. The Navy Cross the branchs second-highest award for valor in combat isnt handed out to just anybody. As the Polish hinterland flickered by, most of the 20 or so passengers dozed off, but Young and Watson made easy conversation and resolved to hang together when they reached Ukraine. The injuriesof an ironically non-combative natureclearly werent the sort theyd expected they might suffer at war. Sitting with Young in the booth were the two Americans with whom hed quit the Georgia National Legion; the men had become inseparable during the past month and were staying together in a hotel nearby. One volunteer, a man named Scotty, who asked me not to share his last name, told me he thought that the volunteers own online activity had compromised security at Yavoriv and one other base. They were leaving soon for Kyiv, one step closer to the action. Im an ideological risk for Russia, because guys like me are uniting the people. He flew to Poland and signed up with the International Legion at a recruitment booth at Krakw Airport. "Some people are politically motivated, some people have the desire to fight a war, there are people that have been ex-military and never been deployed, they feel like they've got something to prove. But when air travel collapsed during the pandemic, the firm laid him off. In April, two American volunteers, Paul K. Gray of Texas and Manus McCaffery of Ohio, were injured when an artillery shell hit their fighting position as they waited to ambush a Russian tank. In the wake of Ukraines 2014 pro-democratic revolution, Russian military forces launched an unconventional military offensive in the eastern Donbas region. Ukrainian men between the ages of 18 and 60 are being conscripted.

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