A22 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.SUNDAY, MAY 29 , 2022
war in ukrainedispersed. Some went into trench
lines, other went into homes. One
abandoned residence still had a
Christmas tree set up, he recalled.
Some Russian troops fell back as
the fighting intensified, and they
left behind a wounded comrade
who wailed into the night, Dakota
said.
By the end of the second night,
eight of the 20 volunteers in Dako-
ta’s unit had abandoned their
posts, he said, including a fellow
Marine veteran who appeared to
break his machine gun with a rock
in the hope of passing it off as
battle damage. Another feigned
an injury, he said.
Dakota fought throughout the
Kyiv region and later was dis-
patched to the south to help train
others on using the Javelin. On
one mission, he said, he was un-
able get a lock on a Russian tank
with a cold thermal signature.
Then, four men climbed onto the
hull to sit and smoke. The sight
locked on their body heat. His
missile pulverized the vehicle, a
strike captured on video.
Russian a rtillery pounded theirHe put his first semester of
college on hold so he could fight
the Russians, saying a “righteous
indignation” compelled him to go
for it. He arrived in Ukraine with-
in days of the invasion. Com-
manders were eager, he said, to
tap his knowledge of U.S.
manufactured Javelin anti-armor
weapons, thousands of which
have been transferred to the
Ukrainian army.
Dakota’s cohort of foreign vol-
unteers was attached to a Ukraini-
an military unit and brought by
yellow school bus to Kyiv, from
which they were sent northwest
into an embattled town outside
the capital. It was early March.
They were issued antitank weap-
ons and Javelin missiles but no
batteries for the launch unit, he
said. Without a power source, the
equipment was inoperable.
Homes were on fire, Dakota
recalled. His unit gathered for a
patrol through the woods. A com-
mander motioned with his hand:
“Everything that way is Russian.”
Artillery blanketed the area. The
Ukrainians and their volunteerseran, went to Poland to take on a
quieter but significant role —
helping to r un logistics for refugee
aid centers and sending crucial
supplies over the border into
Ukraine. He has also assisted vol-
unteer networks in reviewing pro-
spective foreign fighters’ military
records, to assess whether they
“have the chops... to take on a
massive military,” he said. While
many do, a common theme is that
swagger sometimes stands in
place of relevant experience, he
noted. He h as advised some veter-
ans against going into Ukraine.
“There’s this idea of heroism
and it’s g lorified. I will look at y our
214 and tell you if you’re ready for
this,” he said, referring to the U.S.
military’s discharge paperwork,
DD Form 214, that lists the train-
ing and certifications completed
while in uniform.
In the Marines, Dakota spent
four years as an antitank missile
gunner, according to his service
record provided by the Marine
Corps. He never saw combat but
did spend time in Afghanistan as a
contractor, he said.view. “I was asking myself why I
survived and the others did not.”
A Ukrainian-born man who is a
naturalized U.S. citizen spoke
with The Post on the condition he
be identified only by his radio call
sign: Te xas. He r ecalled how, early
in the war, he saw images of his
hometown on fire and left to join
the fight two days later.
Te xas, who earlier this month
returned to his home in Houston,
never served in the military. He
works in an office. But he’s a q uick
study, he said, and soon was im-
parting lessons learned from his
American c olleagues to the Ukrai-
nians whom he fought alongside
— things like tactical theories for
conducting ambushes, and stay-
ing out of sight from Russia’s sur-
veillance drones and vehicle-
mounted optics.
Te xas patrolled in hunter-killer
teams in southern Ukraine, he
said, including one mission where
he spotted a T-72 tank dug into a
berm near Mykolaiv, its turret
barely visible from more than two
kilometers away. Te xas fired a
missile and it sliced through the
tank just next to the turret. A
success — but the rest of the team
let out a groan. They w anted to see
a column of fire propel the tank’s
turret high into the air.
“It didn’t explode the way we
wish it would,” said Te xas, whose
lessons were documented in an
April report by the Wall Street
Journal. “We were kind of
bummed about that.”
Life at home lacks the sense of
purpose and excitement, Te xas
said. He’s mired in divorce pro-
ceedings, initiated before he left
for Ukraine, and occasionally
hears from friends who update
him over text about their success-
ful tank harvests.
In quiet moments, he reflects
on what he has taken from the
experience, good and bad. He’s
more relaxed at work and doesn’t
stress about small inconveniences
the way he used to. But something
is missing, he said, and he is
tempted every day to get it back.
“Once you see that life-and-
death contrast, and you come
back t o a peaceful life and a peace-
ful job,” he said, “everything
seems to be less meaningful by
comparison.”position a half-hour later, and Da-
kota’s team withdrew under the
cover of night. About a week later
he felt nauseated and carsick. He
was diagnosed with a brain injury
linked to his proximity to the
shelling, he said, and left f or home
toward the end of April. He has
been in recovery ever since.
“It’s not over. It’s not done. It’s
not finished,” he said.
Other volunteers described dif-
ferent frustrations. Pascal, a vet-
eran of the German army, w as on a
team with Cancel, the American
killed in combat in late April.
Problems arose during their first
mission, he said.
The team suspected their two-
way radios were being monitored
by Russian forces, and they lacked
extra batteries, forcing them to
rely on unsecured cellphones and
WhatsApp to communicate. Soon
after they exchanged plans, their
position was attacked by Russian
artillery, h e said.
The volunteers felt underin-
formed during many of their mis-
sions, not knowing where they
were — and, vitally, where the
Russians were, Pascal said. The
day Cancel was killed, he said,
they took fire from a position they
believed to be Ukrainian but
didn’t have radio communication
to confirm. Two members of the
team ventured out to investigate.
Gunfire sounded, and they never
returned, he said.
The remaining team members
came under heavy fire, including
artillery rounds, from the same
direction, Pascal said. One team
member was killed in the shelling.
Pascal and another volunteer
turned their attention to Cancel,
who had be struck by shrapnel, he
said. They applied tourniquets in
a fruitless attempt to stop the
bleeding. Their bodies were left
behind as Pascal and another sur-
vivor withdrew.
That was Pascal’s last mission.
He later crossed into Poland. Mil-
ler, the American volunteer, met
him at a bar in Warsaw and noted
how shaken up he seemed. They
stepped outside and Miller con-
soled him, using Google Translate
to find the right words in German.
They hugged.
“From the beginning, we had
no chance,” Pascal said in an inter-to be like and what they experi-
enced. They recalled going into
battle underequipped and out-
gunned, the occasional thrill of
blowing up Russian vehicles, and
feeling torn over whether to go
back to Ukraine. Some intend to
do so. Others saw friends die and
decided enough is enough.
For several, an inflection point
came in late April when 22-year-
old Willy Joseph Cancel, another
Marine Corps veteran, was killed
in combat northwest of Mykolaiv,
a region that has seen ferocious
violence as Russian commanders
have sought to widen territorial
gains. The full circumstances sur-
rounding Cancel’s death remain a
mystery, and his body has not
been recovered. Attempts to
speak with Cancel’s family were
unsuccessful.
There are no known U.S. mili-
tary personnel i n Ukraine, and the
Biden administration has sought
to discourage American citizens
from independently joining the
fight, though it is not against the
law to do so. Officials have said
that the battlefield is complex and
dangerous, and that Americans
wishing to help the Ukrainian
cause should look to do so by other
means. And while the exact num-
ber of Americans volunteering is
unknown, an estimated 4,000 ex-
pressed interest after the invasion
in late February. M any entered the
fight after Ukrainian President
Volodymyr Zelensky personally
appealed to foreign volunteers to
journey there and fight.
Military veterans, in particular,
have been drawn to the war, em-
boldened by their combat train-
ing and an eagerness to apply
their skills in a conflict that, for
many, feels like a struggle of good
versus evil.
But the conflict also has drawn
Western military veterans who ei-
ther have never deployed into
combat previously or have experi-
enced only asymmetrical insur-
gencies — not this type of war,
with contested airspace, unre-
lenting rocket b ombardment, and
swarms of drones with sophisti-
cated thermal targeting technol-
ogy.
Dane Miller, a U.S. Army vet-
UKRAINE FROM A1
For foreign fighters, a wide gulf between expectations and experiences
MEGAN JELINGER FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
Dakota, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran who fought in Ukraine before suffering a head injury, is now back
home in Ohio. He said a “righteous indignation” compelled him to fight against the Russian invasion.A Russian military court ruled be-
hind closed doors last week that
115 national guard service mem-
bers were rightfully terminated
for refusing to participate in the
invasion. The decision can be ap-
pealed, according to Russian news
agency Interfax.
On Friday, a local Communist
Party lawmaker in the Far Eastern
port city of Vladivostok demanded
that the Kremlin cease fighting in
Ukraine and withdraw its forces,
the Associated Press reported.
“We understand that if our coun-
try doesn’t s top the m ilitary opera-
tion, we’ll have more orphans in
our country,” Leonid Vasyukevich
told a legislative meeting.
And Boris Bondarev, a Geneva-
based Russian diplomat, resigned
from his posting last week, sayingthat he is “so ashamed” of his
country.
At the same time, Russian na-
tionalists are pushing for greater
confrontation with Kyiv and the
West. Last week, a group of Rus-
sian veterans released a statement
laden with far-right sentiment, in
which they appealed to Putin and
his military leaders to dispatch
more troops t o Ukraine a nd c alled
for m ore a dvanced weaponry to be
used.
They a lso criticized the K remlin
for withdrawing troops from key
battlefields such as Kyiv and
Chernihiv in April. Moscow
sought to paint the pullback as a
good-faith gesture ahead of peace
talks with Ukraine, but the veter-
ans characterized it as humiliat-
ing.They were particularly embar-
rassed by the stunning defeat of
Russian troops near the Siversky
Donets River earlier this month.
As many as 485 Russian soldiers
died, and 80 armored vehicles
were lost when Ukrainian artillery
blasted a pontoon bridge, accord-
ing to Ukrainian reports quoted
by the Institute for the Study of
War and a forensic study by the
Atlantic Council.
“The special operation is over!”
the statement read, using Putin’s
preferred term for the war. “A full-
blooded war has begun!”
Alexey Muraviev, an expert on
the Russian military at Australia’s
Curtin University, said the veter-
ans’ statement carried the weight
of “battle-hardened specialists”
who are likely to be frustrated bythe narratives that portray the
Russian military as inept.
They are accusing the Kremlin
of showing a “complete lack of
professional competence,” Mura-
viev said.
Ta tiana Stanovaya, the Paris-
based head of the R. Politik politi-
cal consultancy, recently wrote on
her Telegram channel that Putin is
“stuck between two worlds” in
that he can neither crush Ukraine
nor retreat with his reputation
intact.
“Everyone has already forgot-
ten that Putin was once called a
president of half-measures,”
Stanovaya said. “Of course, every-
one is unhappy.”Peter Bejger and Liz Sly contributed to
this report.BY AMY CHENGRussian President Vladimir Pu-
tin has made it clear that he will
not t olerate criticism of h is a ssault
on Ukraine. Russians who de-
scribe his “special military opera-
tion” as an invasion may be im-
prisoned for up to 15 years, and
dissenters have been punished for
speaking out. But a s the war enters
its fourth month, disapproval is
increasingly bubbling to the sur-
face — from war hawks who argue
the Kremlin has been insufficient-
ly aggressive to officials who don’t
want to be part of the bloodshed.
Putin’s early attempt to blitz
Ukraine’s major cities failed, and
the war has morphed into a pro-
tracted conflict that may have
claimed the lives of as many Rus-
sian soldiers as the Soviet Union’s
nine-year war in Afghanistan,
Britain’s Defense Ministry said
this past week. Moscow has tried
to downplay these losses, but the
battlefield setbacks have raised
questions.
Signs of resistance are growing.In Russia, criticism of war
bubbles up from all sides
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