Consider This from NPR - The Foreign Fighters Who've Gone To Ukraine

Episode Date: June 22, 2022

Two American citizens who'd traveled to Ukraine to join the fight against Russia have reportedly been captured by pro-Russian forces. The State Department says it's "closely monitoring" the situation and has urged Americans not to travel to the country, noting the risk and danger. But still, thousands of foreign fighters have journeyed there.NPR's Ryan Lucas met some of them — a group of Americans and Brits who have formed a unit that is fighting in the east. In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Four months ago this week, Russia invaded Ukraine. It was February 24th, to be exact. For Hanna Hopko, it feels like a lifetime ago. You know, the life is now, after February 24th, changed a lot. It seems like the previous life doesn't exist anymore. Hopko is a former member of Ukraine's parliament. She and her daughter fled after Russia invaded. This month, she was in Washington, D.C., meeting with State Department officials. My colleague Mary Louise

Kelly caught up with her. I like for all my nation, for millions of Ukrainians. Every day we are receiving not just one, not just three, not just five. Tragic news that we are losing our friends. Five a day of people you know. Yes, and it's really very sad. I cannot understand why the West is so reluctant to help us to win faster. Last week, the U.S. announced another billion-dollar package of weapons, ammunition, and artillery for Ukraine. Russia is advancing in some parts of the country, thanks in part to sheer numbers.

Ukrainian officials say they need more heavy weapons to keep up. I do grant you that the Russians do have the numbers, and they continue to have the outnumber Ukrainian systems, gun for gun. General Mark Milley is the president's top military advisor, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And he told NPR economic sanctions against Russia need more time to take full effect. And Russia is enduring heavy losses on the battlefield. So the question really for the Russian leadership is the cost benefit risk calculation. Is the cost that's being imposed on Russia, is it worth whatever benefit they think they're getting? And I would argue that the cost is extraordinarily high.

But I think it's a bit early. We're only 110 days into this thing. Consider this. Only 110 days. A statement that implies as the fighting in Ukraine enters a fifth month, it could go on much longer. And it's a fight that thousands of foreigners have traveled a long way to join. My hands were shaking when I made the decision, but I couldn't sit back drinking margaritas on the beach when I knew that I could have some sort of effect. From NPR, I'm Ari Shapiro. It's Wednesday, June 22nd. mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the WISE app today or visit WISE.com.

T's and C's apply. It's Consider This from NPR. This week, Russian officials claimed to be holding two American citizens who'd been missing since earlier this month after a battle north of Kharkiv. The Kremlin called them soldiers of fortune, in essence claiming the men did not represent any country and therefore would not be protected by the Geneva Conventions. The U.S. State Department responded with a statement urging Russia to, quote, live up to their international obligations in their treatment of any individual, including those captured fighting in Ukraine. As of Wednesday afternoon, we don't know much more about the status of those

two men. Also in recent months, the State Department has confirmed the deaths of two other American citizens killed fighting in Ukraine. All this underscores the risk and danger of traveling to fight in a faraway country. But thousands have done it anyway. Among them, a group of Americans and Brits who have formed their own fighting unit in eastern Ukraine. NPR's Ryan Lucas set out to learn what brought them there. Go, go, go, go, go. In a video taken late last month in eastern Ukraine, a group of soldiers creeps through the woods and comes to the edge of a clearing. A Russian armored vehicle is rumbling about 100 yards away. One of the soldiers kneels.

He puts an anti-tank weapon to his shoulder and fires. The Russian vehicle explodes. The men in the video are a small group of Americans and Brits who came to Ukraine to fight the Russian invasion. During a recent break in Kyiv for some rest, four men from that team agreed to talk to me the Russian invasion. During a recent break in Kiev for some rest, four men from that team agreed to talk to me about their experience. Some of them are comfortable using their first names. Others spoke on the condition that NPR doesn't disclose their identities. We meet on a sunny afternoon in a hip outdoor cafe in central Kiev.

Where would you like to start? That's the group's commander. Like most men on their team, he's a military veteran. In his case, a 30-year-old former captain in the British Army. He's got a shock of short blonde hair, and his call sign, he says half-joking, is Princess. He says he was relaxing on a beach in the Middle East when the war started. And like many people, he didn't think it would last long.

But after Ukraine held on for a few days, he decided to come help. My hands were shaking when I made the decision. And that was on day two or three, day three of the war, but I couldn't sit back drinking margaritas on the beach when I knew that I could have some sort of effect there, even if it had just been the humanitarian aid or just training the locals. I didn't expect to be doing what I am doing now. The other Brit at the table, a former Royal Marine commando, followed a similar path. After the war started, he quit his job as a security contractor in Iraq and flew back to England. He packed a bag, caught a flight to Poland and then crossed the border into Ukraine on foot. In the early days, he says, were chaotic and included a run-in with Ukraine's intelligence service, the SBU. We had a few problems. The SBU kicked that all down a couple of times. I think we were spies, you know, put weapons to our heads and very quickly realized we were their friends.

And they were sweet after that. The Brits at the table are chatty. The Americans, less so. One of them is a former Navy SEAL who listens closely but doesn't say much. The other is a 22-year-old from Tampa, Florida. His name is Ed. Former Airborne Ranger, 375. I got out in October, you know, went to college, got a job, got my dream car. Which is? Dodge Challenger. Anyways, yeah, I had a really good life, you know, GI Bill, paying for my school, had an awesome girlfriend I was with for like four years, you know. But after the war started,

he dropped it all. He sold his car, bought a plane ticket, two in fact, he says, because his family cancelled the first one along with his credit cards and flew to Ukraine. And all of them are happy to be here. They feel a sense of purpose. But the decision to come to Ukraine hasn't sat well with their families back home. Here's Princess. So initially, when I said I was coming over here, my mum was like holding onto my arm, screaming, crying, you can't go, you can't go. I had to persuade her that I was doing a humanitarian aid job because that's what I was coming to do. But once he took up arms, he says he had to cut contact with her. He's in a group chat with other family members who keep her informed,

but he says he can't deal directly with her constant worrying. It's a similar situation for Ed. Yeah, really, it's the same. They're completely against it, but, I mean, I don't really care for their opinions. Like, there's a million people out here getting killed and stuff. I think that's more important. And then for them to be against me leaving, I think that's selfish. But, yeah, I haven't spoken to my family since I left,

and I really don't care. I think what I'm doing here is more important. Their motivations to come to Ukraine vary. They mentioned being outraged by the brutality of Russian forces but this is also an opportunity to use the skills they learned in the military. And under the surface, perhaps there's also an attraction to the violence of war. These men are among the thousands of foreigners who flock to the country to fight but unlike Ukrainian soldiers, the foreigners still have a lot of freedom to pick whom they team up with and where

they fight. And that's important, these men say, because most of the foreigners who came here had no military background, no experience, and no idea what they were getting into. Here's that again. So I joined the Foreign Legion. I was there for about a week, realized it was a joke. A bunch of Call of Duty players there, you know. Yeah, I didn't want to work with them. They're a liability. They're going to get me killed. Like the others, Ed says he spent weeks wandering the country trying to find a group of guys he felt comfortable working with. Eventually I found them, and yeah, it's the best thing that's happened.

This group coalesced in Kiev, where one of them had established a good relationship with a Ukrainian commander. Now this team has a core group of around 10 guys, although that number varies as some people return home and new people join them. The Ukrainian military provides their weapons and ammunition, and they each get a monthly salary. The last one came to around $1,400. We pretty much get weapons and ammo and everything else we do by ourselves. We're accommodating ourselves, we're paying for our own food, we're buying our own vehicles. That's Princess again. I managed to raise some money from some friends that's paid for a vehicle, it's paid for GPSs, sat phone, radios. It's all a work in progress. He says they're spending much of their time in Kyiv now trying to raise money and wrangle

donations to help pay for new equipment and supplies. While these men have military backgrounds and training, not all of them had seen combat before, including Princess. It was a shock to the system. I came out here having done my whole life being in a military pad brat army family, then joining the army. That was all I ever wanted to do. And then when I went on my first mission, I went from being a talkative, confident person to really being really quiet. And everyone was like like are you okay i was like oh yeah the combat they've seen they say has been intense and they've taken casualties come on come on

come on come on during a firefight in the, an explosion tore through the left leg of one former British soldier on the team. The others had to lug him miles through the woods under fire to get him to a fallback point in medical help. He survived, even managed to keep the leg, and the team recently visited him at a military hospital in Kiev. They got him out of the woods with the help of Ukrainian soldiers. And the Ukrainians, these men say, are brave, fearless even. But the relationship between the Ukrainians and foreign fighters has at times been strained. For one, the Ukrainians didn't trust the foreigners at first. And many foreigners have been limited to demanding observation posts or holding cleared villages, not actually fighting. And Princess says that wariness on the part of the Ukrainians was not without reason.

When the Legion was created, it got a very bad reputation because all of a sudden you had thousands of morons, yeah, Walter Mitty's inexperienced airsofters who thought they knew it all coming in and trying to tell everyone that they're amazing. And the Ukrainians saw straight through it. Ukrainian military, though, has issues of its own, these men say. The Ukrainians don't really do a lot of planning in their process. They're sort of like, oh, here's a thing, go and do that, which generally doesn't work very well. The Ukrainians' command and control, they say, is spotty at best,

and they're beset with basic battlefield communication problems, as in there's often no way for Ukrainian units to talk to each other or coordinate with artillery. In one recent operation, in the middle of a firefight, a Ukrainian wanted them to rush forward with him to retrieve his men somewhere in the woods. He wanted their help because he had no way to communicate with his own men other than talking to them in person. There's so many different units within there, we didn't have any comms with any other unit,

and we had the drama of on the way out being fired at by another Ukrainian unit because, you know, the blue and blues that way out being fired at by another ukrainian unit because you know the blue and blues that happen out here all the time basically blue on blue is military lingo for friendly fire despite the many challenges the working relationship seems to be improving at least for this team which is good they say because this war is unlike anything these men even those with combat experience have ever seen for one they've always been on the side with superior force, the bigger guns, the better technology, air power. We're on the flip side now.

We're the ones facing the attack helicopters, the jets, the tanks, without that support ourselves. And we've had all of them chasing us after a contact. That's the former Royal Marine jumping in. Having jets fly over, firing missiles into the woods, or attack helicopters out and tanks, it's like, OK, fine, as well as drones tracking where you're trying to exfil through, you know, and it's that's that's the crazy bit, because with all that stuff, you're completely powerless.

And that points to perhaps the biggest difference between this war and previous ones, the outsized use of drones by both sides. This type of warfare has not been seen before. The drone game, I know the drones are used a lot by ISIS in the Middle East, but here it's completely changed the game of warfare. From the outside, he says, this looks like a conventional war because of all the artillery and tanks. But he says you can't combat those in conventional ways anymore because now drones are always on the lookout in the skies above, ready to direct fire. A group of tanks will have a small drone. One will go up, will try and find you.

And when that drone comes back down, the second tank will send their drone up. So there's constant surveillance overhead with drones. All of this has made one thing clear. Working in small groups that are highly mobile is the best and safest way to fight, at least for now. Like, we've been here for three months now. We need to adapt to how this war is going. And even how the war is going now, three months in, compared to how it was going two months ago,

is also a very different thing. So we're prepared to carry on being flexible because we know it will change again, won't it? Every mission we learn something incredibly new. One reason the war keeps changing is the influx of new weapons, heavier ones, provided to Ukraine by the US and other Western allies. Just in the past few weeks, for example, American howitzers, M-777s, have popped up on the front lines.

And that has shaken up how the two sides are fighting. Before, when we'd go out, the Russians had their drones up and their artillery was pretty free to strike us as and when they wanted. Now there's the counter batteries that are out here, the M-777s are out here. The Ukrainian artillery have got a much better fight in them now. Now, he says, the Ukrainian and Russian artillery are in a cat and mouse game chasing each other, which has opened things up a bit for the foot soldiers like them. That, at least, is the state of the war now,

as the team prepares to head back to the battlefields out east. A couple of the guys are rotating out for a longer break or to return home to move stuff into storage. New guys are joining the team to take their place, to play their small part in a war in constant flux.