At a barbecue restaurant in Lviv referred to as Meat and Justice, the place Ukrainian and Russian casualties are tallied every day on the entrance door, I bumped into an American named Andrew I’d met on-line. I had requested him to ship me messages as he made his manner from Arkansas to struggle within the international legion of Ukraine’s Territorial Protection pressure. Now right here, on this western Ukrainian metropolis, he was consuming ribs alone at a desk throughout the room—I acknowledged him from the selfies he’d despatched me en route. They have been normally accompanied by texts like: “I’m a free man. I’m type of a Viking. I can struggle for the place I would like. What’s extra righteous?”
It was the sixteenth day of Russia’s struggle in Ukraine, and Andrew was about to take an in a single day prepare to Kyiv to see how he may become involved within the preventing, although he had no tools and little preparation. He shook my hand and requested me to observe his Norse mythology–themed YouTube channel, the place he deliberate to livestream his time on the entrance. His presence in wartime Lviv was hardly incongruous—many others like him had crossed into Ukraine to take up arms, or at the very least to attempt. Whereas Ukrainian civilians discovered to make use of rifles in an previous film theatre, I watched foreigners present up in camo fatigues and snapback hats labeled “Hustler” to enlist within the newly fashioned worldwide legion.
As a nonprofit journalism group, we rely in your help to fund greater than 170 reporting tasks yearly on crucial international and native points. Donate any quantity right this moment to change into a Pulitzer Middle Champion and obtain unique advantages!
When President Zelensky introduced this concept, many discovered the invitation compelling. Fighters quickly began to reach in a gradual move throughout the Polish border, not simply from the US and the UK, however from India, Australia, Japan, Finland, Brazil, Canada, Israel, South Korea, and different international locations. Most have been funding their very own journey, usually in opposition to the orders of their governments.
By the point I met Andrew, I’d been speaking by telephone for hours a day to folks like the blokes within the camo outfits (most most well-liked I take advantage of solely first names for safety causes). I discovered them on TikTok, my telephone blaring movies of their pledges to struggle. They have been touring from American cities to enlist within the navy for a rustic lots of them had by no means actually considered. They’d met in on-line chat threads, the place they mentioned what it could be wish to struggle the Russians, swapped recommendations on find out how to get into Ukraine, what to pack for the struggle, and find out how to fireplace Stinger missiles. They deliberate to satisfy for beers in Warsaw and Krakow.
“I by no means understood how folks acquired so moved by the Spanish Civil Battle, however now I can intuit it,” one stated to me. To some, it was a second of solidarity that conjured the Lincoln Battalion and the worldwide brigades of that battle, its volunteers drawn in by a transparent ethical trigger. Hundreds noticed motion, notably within the protection of Madrid, although not all who got here have been well-equipped for the fact of struggle. (The younger Simone Weil left Spain after scalding her foot whereas cooking with olive oil.)
In contrast to the American ambulance driver within the Nineteen Thirties who wrote in his diary about becoming a member of the “‘here-to-be-revolted-by-the-horror-of-war, later-to-write-a-book’ custom,” the principal literary outlet now appeared to be Reddit. “At present in Germany awaiting transport to Ukraine,” one man posted, together with a photograph of himself in a cowboy hat and sun shades, smoking a cigarette. “After being evicted from my residence, I knew this was the best selection. I could not return however it’s what it’s.” (“Glad looking, I hope you change into a hero,” a commenter replied.) Individuals like Leon, a private coach from Surrey, England, who stated he “couldn’t discover Ukraine on a map,” corresponded in threads with topic traces like “Are any of you mad lads going to be on my airplane?” A nineteen-year-old Canadian comic and Black Lives Matter activist traveled to the border to enlist, tweeting “Battle sucks” immediately upon arrival.
Some amongst this constituency have been well-known to home extremist monitoring teams. One man I acquired involved with, Mike Dunn, a member of the American antigovernment militia group the Boogaloo Boys, had been livestreaming about his plans to journey to Ukraine below the net deal with “armed-and-unafraid.”
After a stint within the Marines, Dunn had labored as a jail guard earlier than changing into one of many frontmen of the Boogaloo Boys, showing at Second Modification rallies on the Virginia State Capitol in military fatigues and a Hawaiian shirt with an assault rifle strapped to his chest. “I carry a weapon day by day of my life,” he advised me. “I’m very educated with the AK platform. However fight shall be a primary for me. I’m hungry for some motion.” I met him outdoors the passport workplace in D.C., recognizing him a block away from the mirrored sun shades that he wore on high of his baseball cap in his broadcasts.
“I wish to kill Russians,” he advised me, including that he had fought the police in Newport News, Virginia over gun rights—now he was involved that the home terrorism investigation he’d confronted because of this may make it laborious to get a passport. He had collected donations to fund his journey below the account “freedombooms,” pushed up from his house in Raleigh, North Carolina, and already eaten a celebratory final meal at Texas Roadhouse.
On his vest was a patch that learn “I don’t consider in something.” He’d stated he would fortunately die within the streets of America preventing legislation enforcement, however now he was able to die in Ukraine. “I do know there’s most likely like an eighty p.c probability I received’t come again.”
In the meantime, Jake, a former infantryman from Indianapolis who’d carried out a tour in Afghanistan (“it sucked”), advised me that he’d determined to affix the international legion whereas on trip in Mexico, regardless that he had by no means considered Ukraine earlier than. “I’m a younger man going by way of a divorce, and I used to be, like, ‘Nicely, I’ve no sense of goal anymore.’ I had left the military, I’m shedding my household. So I noticed this struggle on TikTok.”
Jake chatted with a bunch of men on the net discussion board Discord who deliberate to satisfy on the airport in Poland, then discover their strategy to Ukraine collectively. After calling the consulate in Chicago, he despatched over his navy historical past and his identification to a Gmail handle that had been arrange by the worldwide legion (“kinda sketchy”). He didn’t inform his dad and mom, or his employer at a warehouse facility; when he did inform his soon-to-be-ex-wife, she yelled at him and referred to as him an fool. “They suppose it’s not my struggle, I assume.”
Jake discovered a sponsor on a Reddit thread who supplied to purchase him a airplane ticket. “Who is aware of if I’ll make all of it the best way there?” he stated. “However the concern is the uncertainty of after I come again. Who is aware of, perhaps I’ll like Ukraine? There’s a chunk of me that thinks I’ll keep there after. This can be a large world.”
Outdoors the Ukrainian embassy in Warsaw, its sidewalk piled with yellow and blue flags and bouquets of flowers, three males arrived to affix the worldwide legion. A Taiwanese volunteer and a French one left their navy packs close to the doorway and went for a espresso collectively. Neither spoke English, nor did they’ve one other language in widespread. Nonetheless, they determined to journey collectively, together with a person from Iran. Franck, who had been within the French military for eleven years, advised me, “I by no means actually gave it up. You might be all the time a soldier in your head. I’m not going to attend round for this to occur in France. I can’t sit this one out.
“Right here, there’s a true widespread sense of goal you possibly can really feel,” he added. “I would like this.”
Related scenes unfolded throughout town. On the Belarusian Basis of Warsaw, sufficient volunteers—lots of them expatriates who’d left the nation after the repressions that adopted the 2020 protests in opposition to President Lukashenko—have been exhibiting up every day that they now have their very own battalion preventing in Kyiv. I met Pavel, a combined martial arts fighter who was supervising tactical medical coaching and in 2016 had volunteered to struggle within the struggle within the Donbas. “Ukraine appears like a second homeland to me now,” he stated. “There are the Belarusian folks, after which there may be Lukashenko. They’re two various things. The Belarusian folks rise up for his or her brothers of Ukraine. I perceive the identical sense of what they really feel there proper now. We now have a vendetta. We wish revenge.”
Within the constructing’s foyer, which had been changed into a navy preparation space, Pavel outfitted the lads who got here to volunteer with physique armor. His finest pal had already misplaced his foot within the preventing, however was contemplating how he may get again to the entrance.
I’d stored in contact with Dunn as he took a three-leg, fifty-hour journey to Warsaw. He posted a photograph of his passport stamp to the track “Hold your rifle by your facet” from the soundtrack of a online game. I organized to satisfy him at a bar within the metropolis. Dunn arrived along with his pal Henry, additionally a Boogaloo Boy, and Mike, a former British serviceman whom they’d met on Discord and deliberate to journey to Ukraine with.
“We now have a particular alliance between America and England,” Mike stated. “We undoubtedly put 1776 behind us.”
“It’s not nationalism—it’s solidarity,” stated Henry.
“Nicely, I’m a little bit of a nationalist,” stated Dunn. “And the thrill of a two-way raid does get me off a bit of.”
Mike stated he knew a great variety of British ex-servicemen who have been war-hungry and noticed this as the proper probability to see motion, although he had issues about impostors. “There are such a lot of of these stolen valor guys on the market,” he stated. “I do wish to come house, although. Nevertheless it’s that feeling—I couldn’t get it out of my head. I dwell in a tiny little village. Pig wrestling. That’s it. I would like one final hurrah. I wish to struggle an actual enemy with actual coaching.”
I requested in the event that they’d ever felt this kind of borderless navy solidarity earlier than. When the Islamic State first hit northern Iraq, Henry stated he’d flirted with the concept of becoming a member of the Peshmerga, the Kurdish militia, however then his spouse acquired pregnant. They every stated they’d by no means struggle for their very own governments on international soil once more; they’d solely wish to function autonomous volunteers. Henry had labored as a contractor after discharging, defending oil tankers in Sri Lanka and Yemen. Dunn stated he deliberate to change into one, too, ideally for Blackwater, and Ukraine was a step towards that aim. “They’ll wish to see I’ve fight expertise,” he defined.
Again at their motel was a scene that felt like giddy preparation for summer season camp overseas. “Do you could have a blood patch?” Dunn requested the group as they assembled their gear. Henry confirmed us the scar from a gunshot wound to the again of his leg, from when he was carjacked leaving work at a manufacturing facility. Mike tried on Henry’s fuel masks. “In the event that they use fuel, I’m gone,” stated Dunn. “You Individuals have a lot gear,” stated Mike. “I simply flip up in a Land Rover and shoot folks.” Dunn packed his copy of The Anarchist Cookbook, which incorporates directions on find out how to make improvised explosive units.
“Dunn is usually a wild card,” Henry advised me later. “His coaching’s been one of the best on the earth, however he’s by no means been in a hearth struggle. Looks as if we’d have to carry him again a bit. He can’t do in Ukraine what he did in America.”
“We’ll take the join-the-resistance route if we have now to, be a part of one other militia, if the international legion factor doesn’t work out,” stated Mike. “We’ve been brainstorming what to do as soon as we get to the border. Perhaps hijack or hotwire a automotive? Even when we have now to undergo the woods, it’ll be enjoyable. They received’t flip us away.”
They discovered they may get an Uber trip to Ukraine. At 1 AM, their driver, a Georgian man in a Prius, pulled up on the motel and honked his horn. “Cease, within the Identify of Love” by the Supremes was enjoying within the empty foyer. The driving force advised me he’d served within the Georgian military; now he now not slept at evening as a result of he had so many foreigners providing him money for a trip to Ukraine. The lads had him attempt on the one Kevlar helmet they’d introduced with them—Mike’s memento from Afghanistan—and the Georgian posed for a photograph.
“Which of you’ll kill Putin?” he joked as they loaded their gear into the trunk. Henry and Dunn made remaining calls earlier than going off the grid. Mike insisted that I mustn’t take his photograph. “There’s lots of people who wish to eliminate me. And with good purpose. I did very unhealthy issues within the military.” The Prius took off for the border.
*****
On the border crossing at Medyka, in southeastern Poland, a trickle of individuals have been strolling into Ukraine as a miles-long line of refugees waited to get out. Below a tent on the Ukrainian facet was a “assist desk for international troopers,” the place males scanned QR codes with their telephones.
After reaching Lviv, I visited the Georgian legion’s new base in close by Dubliani to satisfy with Commander Mamuka Mamulashvili. His legion additionally accepted many different international fighters, amongst them a great variety of Individuals. I walked by way of a checkpoint of troopers strapped with AKs alongside a Georgian fighter. I requested him the way it felt to be going to the entrance on behalf of one other nation. “It’s like sacrificing your self for one thing, however splitting your coronary heart 50/50,” he advised me.
Mamulashvili’s Georgian legion first fashioned in 2014 to struggle in Donbas; not like the worldwide legion, it didn’t demand that volunteers hand over their passports. “I’m a foreigner myself on this nation,” Mamulashvili stated. He carried two telephones and a pistol, and wore a black jacket that learn “Courageous Dream, US Army,” a present from some American recruits. He had fought within the Abkhaz–Georgian battle, the primary Chechen struggle, and the Russo-Georgian Battle and had been held prisoner by Abkhaz forces for months. He confirmed me images of himself and his father after they have been free of captivity. “Georgians have a number of expertise going through Russian aggression,” he stated.
I requested what he considered the brand new worldwide legion. “It’s going to be very chaotic,” he stated. “Actually, I don’t understand how they’re going to do it. Usually, all of them come to me, and I maintain those with correct coaching. So long as they don’t have excessive views.
“The nonprofessionals go to the worldwide legion,” he went on. “Sadly, it’s very unorganized—they are going to simply obtain lots of of individuals and haven’t any plans.” He had not too long ago come from the entrance outdoors of Kyiv. “The Ukrainian navy will prepare them,” however, he stated, “they would be the crew of amateurs.”
“Is it what Ukraine wants?” I requested.
“Ukraine wants the sky to be closed,” Mamulashvili replied.
His legion has, for eight years, been doing a model of what the worldwide legion hopes to do now. Mamulashvili teams the principally skilled troopers who come to him into small squads and dispatches them to struggle on the entrance. The legion at present contains about half Georgian and half worldwide volunteers. Mamulashvili advised me that the American troopers typically mix in nicely along with his Georgians as a result of most of them have participated in missions in Afghanistan and Iraq. “So that they’re very equally skilled. They already know find out how to work collectively…. We get efficient navy items that do a great job on the entrance traces now. They’re ideologically the identical, they simply have completely different nationalities.”
Mamulashvili launched me to a couple of his new recruits. Dr. Dre performed within the background as I sat within the barracks with an English fighter named Chris Garrett, who goes by the nickname “Swampy.” He first fought in Ukraine from 2014 to 2017, serving on the entrance within the east. In civilian life, he’s a tree surgeon dwelling on the Isle of Man, with expertise clearing land mines in Southeast Asia when he volunteered for the Karen Nationwide Protection in Burma.
“When the struggle kicked off correctly with Russia this time, I had lots of people come contact me asking, ‘How do I get in?’” he stated. “They suppose they know what they’re moving into … [but] there are folks right here that simply see the struggle on TV and suppose, ‘Oh, that appears enjoyable. I get to go and blow a tank up.’
“I believe they’re going to study in a short time, they usually’re going to study the laborious manner that it’s not a recreation,” he went on. “Battle will not be nice. It’s a unclean, smelly, horrendous expertise. The chance of being killed on the entrance line could be very excessive, I believe.”
Garrett’s pal Emanual Bazanji, from Albania, confirmed me a video he’d taken of himself on the airport in Kyiv, simply after the struggle began, filming on his telephone as he was below aerial assault. “If I get a GoPro, I’m gonna movie some actually wild s—,” he stated. He’d grown up amid the battle within the former Yugoslavia, and joined the Georgian legion two years in the past. His complete household have been lifeless. “I’m alone on this life. It is just me on this world. So I got here right here to begin a brand new life.” He remembered as a baby when Georgian troops have been in Albania on peacekeeping missions:
“Civil struggle was in my nation. I simply have private examples from my life: folks got here collectively to guard the Balkans from the Russians and Serbians that have been committing struggle crimes and genocides. Individuals, Brits, Germans, French, everybody from everywhere in the world got here there to assist, like is going on right this moment. And we received that struggle solely due to it. Now it’s my time to do it.”
He supplied me a cookie. “So that is my house now. I’m going to be right here all the time. I additionally got here right here to dwell.”
Dunn, Henry, and Mike had ended up in the identical barracks, in a special constructing. “There are not any cliques,” a Canadian man in his mid-twenties, who had enlisted as a result of his ex-wife is Ukrainian, advised me. “There are the mental Individuals, after which there are the hillbilly Individuals. However this can be a band of brothers.”
After dinner at Meat and Justice, the place in Lviv the place I’d seen Andrew, I joined a humanitarian volunteer driving a household of refugees to the Polish border, the place we have been additionally going to select up a former Navy SEAL, David, who had arrived from Warsaw simply earlier than midnight. Throughout his US navy service, he had deployed within the Albania–Yugoslav battle and different excursions in what he known as the “‘struggle on terror’ wars.” Now he works in finance. He carried a military-style pack and coated his resist his eyes with a blue scarf.
“I’m not doing this for the glory or the ’gram—Instagram,” he stated. “I left a pleasant life in New York, White Plains. I’ve a canine and an Audi. However I’ve an ethical obligation to be right here.”
The humanitarian employee had branded his Volvo with a makeshift pink cross manufactured from masking tape and put a siren on high, in order that he may blow by way of checkpoints and bypass traces of visitors, his sound system blasting Kanye West’s new album and Eighties hits. David requested if we may cease so he may purchase a SIM card for his new burner telephone. As soon as we reached town middle, he thanked us and set off on his personal to affix the practically one thousand international fighters who have been coaching at a close-by navy base.
Early the following morning, air sirens sounded in Lviv as the bottom was hit by Russian missiles. The Ring cameras at my Ukrainian host’s picked them up on video, and he or she confirmed me in her app the place the nook of the sky flashed white for a second above her storage. David went house two days later.
On my manner again throughout the border, I met two German international fighters of their mid-fifties, who have been additionally touring again to Poland. They’d been on the Yavoriv base earlier the earlier morning, when it was bombed. “The worldwide legion is younger guys who’re hungry for an journey. They’re cannon fodder,” stated one. “They received’t come again from the entrance traces. They need to depart.” He described weapons trainings carried out with YouTube movies.
From the Yavoriv base, Franck, the French fighter, left me dozens of voice memos in the midst of the evening, describing his navy formation and why he knew he belonged in Ukraine. He was leaving for Kyiv the following morning. Dunn was requested to go away the Georgian legion; he hoped to change to one of many extremist militias. Mike advised me he was crossing into Romania, whereas Henry despatched me a message saying he was getting out. He then recorded and posted a video to Twitter that went viral, complaining about how the legion was a “lure” and he hadn’t been given sufficient ammunition; he hid behind an ambulance to get again into Poland.
I heard from Mamulashvili that he was sending his males to the entrance. “We’re simply troopers, and we’re preventing,” he advised me. I stayed in contact with most of the fighters I’d met, at the very least those who nonetheless felt like telling me their emotions over WhatsApp and Telegram. A number of days later, I woke as much as a string of texts from one of many Individuals I’d met outdoors the embassy in Warsaw. He wrote in bullet-pointed lists:
• Desertion of international legion could be very excessive. Many Ukrainian troopers, commanders incompetent.
• Russian infantry horrible. 12 Westerners can beat 40 Russians.
• Chechens torture POWs. No mercy to international legion. Don’t get captured alive by Chechens.
• A lot of miscommunication with Ukrainians and plenty of pleasant fireplace incidents.
• Generally your passports shall be confiscated.
• Ukrainians might rob you of your western gear and offer you a damaged rifle and ship you to the entrance.
The messages stored coming. Generally they contradicted what he’d stated earlier than; I had no manner of verifying his updates. “Ukrainians are utilizing outdated ways to struggle Russians,” he wrote. “Their casualty rely is way greater than reported. The international legion is being despatched on suicide missions like attacking 200 Russians with 14 males.”
I didn’t hear from him once more.
