Journalistic embeds with the Ukrainian military are almost nonexistent—but, in October, Luke Mogelson was granted permission to accompany a team of foreign fighters on a mission in the Donetsk region of Ukraine. Read his harrowing report.
One Sunday in early October, I had lunch at an outdoor restaurant on Andriyivsky Descent, in downtown Kyiv, with a thirty-seven-year-old American who went by the code name Doc. I’d rented an apartment on the same cobblestone street back in March, while the Ukrainian military was repulsing a Russian assault on the city. At the time, the neighborhood had been deserted, and a portentous quiet was broken only by sporadic explosions and whining air-raid sirens.
Two weeks later, Doc landed in Warsaw with a duffle bag containing medical supplies and body armor. He texted the number and was directed to a motel near the Ukrainian border. Several groups of men, “obviously military guys,” loitered in the parking lot. A few had unrolled sleeping bags in the lobby. Nobody would talk to Doc. Paranoia about spies and infiltrators was acute.
Many foreigners, no matter how seasoned or élite, were unprepared for the reality of combat in Ukraine: the front line, which extends for roughly seven hundred miles, features relentless, industrial-scale violence of a type unknown in Europe since the Second World War. The ordeal of weathering modern artillery for extended durations is distinct from anything that Western soldiers faced in Iraq or Afghanistan .
Doc went into the basement, which was teeming with ammunition boxes, anti-tank weapons, and rocket launchers, and unfolded a mat on the concrete floor. Tai, a former member of the New Zealand Defense Force, and T.Q., a German who had served in the French Foreign Legion, also slept down there. Another Kiwi, called Turtle, and a U.S. Army veteran whose code name was Herring occupied the first floor. Several Ukrainians lived upstairs, and a motley entourage of dogs and cats roamed the property.
As Turtle described in granular detail various ridges, valleys, rivers, and roads, I was struck by how thoroughly he’d internalized the local geography. His family had been troubled, he said, when he’d begun referring to the town where we were as “home.” In New Zealand, he’d been “planning out the rest of my life with a girl.” Before coming to Ukraine, he’d ended the relationship, quit his job, and sold his house and car. “In hindsight, it was very selfish,” he acknowledged.
Rambo and his men had moved in with Turtle’s team in August, after their own house, next door, was bombed. As we headed to the front in two dilapidated vehicles, we passed one building after another that had also been destroyed. Incinerated cars sat on the roadside. Missiles and rockets had lodged in the fields, their protruding metal tubes resembling strange bionic crops. We parked in the dystopian ruins of a coal mine whose silos, conveyors, and concrete warehouses had been severely shelled.
We soon stopped advancing through the trees. While Rambo kneeled amid the deadwood, pulling security, Herring stepped out from under the canopy, draping a poncho over his head to hide the glow of his controller’s monitor. The drone’s four miniature rotors whirred into action, lifting it into the sky. Artillery whistled back and forth, over the field. After a while, I heard Herring curse.The Russians and the Ukrainians employ two main countermeasures against each other’s drones.
Another persistent obstacle was the fact that both Ukraine and the Legion were constantly losing and replacing men. The 72nd Mechanized Brigade had assumed control of the area in August. Before that, the foreigners had worked with another brigade, the 53rd, which had fully integrated them into its operations and had furnished them with coveted Javelins. On near-daily missions, the team had pushed forward Ukrainian positions, ambushed enemy tanks, and planted mines behind Russian lines.
Herring, braving incoming Russian artillery and tank fire, flies a reconnaissance drone while other members of his unit patrol the front line on foot. “There’s always gonna be some soreness there,” Turtle said. While other Legion members were less restrained about their frustration, Turtle hewed to a philosophical detachment that I came to appreciate as central to his efficacy as a soldier. “Until then, we’d been lucky,” he told me. “And our luck ran out that night.” He was most concerned about the fallouthis team. After Jones and Abelen were killed, fear and trepidation had crept in, eroding the unit’s esprit de corps.
We switched to a four-wheel-drive truck at the mine, and Turtle and I rode in the bed as it followed muddy tracks past the air shaft with the command center. When the truck could go no farther, we walked. Rain made the ground a slippery morass. After a while, we reached a Ukrainian encampment with a few soldiers, hand-dug foxholes, and a fire pit under camouflage netting. Grek was talking to an infantryman with gray stubble and glasses when a shell crashed in the fields.
At the same time, the team had learned from the Ukrainians, especially when it came to the historical anachronism of trench warfare. Once, while the foreigners were visiting a trench that came under heavy bombardment, they had scrambled into a foxhole that was eight feet deep, in an L shape, with stairs and a roof of felled timber.
I expressed my condolences, and Vitaliy replied, “Yes, but this is war.” He planned to return to the front as soon as possible. “I’m concerned about my mate,” Tai said. He meant Dominic Abelen, whose body remained in Russian custody. Tai had known Abelen since 2017, when they served together in Iraq. After Tai and Turtle joined the International Legion, in August, Abelen requested that the G.U.R. assign them to Donetsk.
To a civilian, this may sound appealing. But any service member knows that such an arrangement not only contradicts the basic premise on which functioning militaries are built; it also imposes an oppressive burden on individual soldiers. On our way to Donetsk, Doc had explained to me, “In the Marines, it didn’t matter what shit you threw at us,” because disobeying orders was never an option.
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