KYIV, Ukraine — Before he decided to buy a one-way plane ticket to Ukraine, Adam worked two jobs, as a security guard and as a cashier at a 99 Cents store. The only fighting he had ever done was in mixed martial arts classes.
That didn’t stop the tall, lanky 24-year-old from Thousand Oaks, a Los Angeles suburb, from flying to this war-torn capital earlier this month. He joined a new international legion set up to fight Russian forces about 15 miles outside the city.
Adam, sporting camouflage pants, is unfazed by his inexperience in combat. He will rely, he said, on sheer determination — to "save Ukraine and protect American values".
“Democracy and freedom are very important to the whole world,” said Adam, seated in the lobby of a Kyiv hotel, along with other foreigners dressed in their new military camouflage who have joined his unit. “What Putin is doing is simply wrong. And Ukraine is the underdog, so they need help.”
In Ukraine’s brutal modern war, though, the romance of adventure and political convictions can quickly vanish as volunteers get pounded by airstrikes, Grad rockets and artillery shells, or engage in urban warfare on the streets of cities.
Many of these would-be fighters, such as Adam, are novices at best.
They say they do share a sense of righteous conviction. They believe they are "on the right side of history".
“I am willing to go and fight and die with this guy,” said Brian, a business analyst, referring to Adam. “Never killed a man in my life but ... I am going to enjoy it.”
All the foreign volunteers interviewed for this article did not want their last names to be used. Some were concerned about their security, while others wanted to protect their relatives or had not yet told their families they were in Ukraine to fight the Russians.
It remains unclear what added utility the arriving foreign recruits can bring on the battlefield.
And the government’s volunteer program, at times, appears to be disorganized, according to interviews with five volunteers and an ethnic Georgian commander who has enlisted Americans and other foreigners into his own paramilitary force in Ukraine. Some would-be fighters are processed in their home nations. Others are landing in the capital without contacts or speaking the language, hoping that someone will get them trained and shipped to the front.
If nothing else, the foreigners may be useful for public relations purposes, demonstrating the global support for Ukraine.
“This is a way of tying in populations from other countries to the Ukrainian war and the outcome of the war,” said Ilmari Kaihko, an associate professor of war studies at the Swedish Defense University who has researched Ukraine’s conflict.
But there is concern that some of these American volunteers could become liabilities. If Americans get captured by Russian forces, they could become fodder for the Kremlin’s propaganda machine, held up as evidence that Ukraine’s resistance is really an American and Western plot. If they get killed, it could bring more pressure on the United States to retaliate.
Adam just wants to get on the battlefield as soon as possible. His first choice, he said, is to be a medic because he took a first aid class in the United States, he said. His second choice? “A sniper,” he said.
He has no experience at either job.
In the days after the Feb. 24 invasion, Adam said, he couldn’t stop watching the news. He said he saw similarities between the Russian assault on Ukraine and Israel’s conflict with terrorists. He believed that both Ukraine and Israel were “being attacked unprovoked” and that both nations needed help to fight their enemies.
He was working odd jobs and getting a degree in automotive technology at a local community college in the San Fernando Valley. “Not much going on at home,” said Adam.
He said he liked “cars, building stuff, basketball, sports and MMA,” referring to mixed martial arts. For months, he was planning to move to Israel and join the Israel Defense Forces, he said. But he decided to make a stop in Ukraine first.
Adam didn’t know much about the county. He didn’t tell his parents, his three sisters and brother that he was going to fight the Russians, he said. He told them instead that he was going to help Ukrainian refugees entering Poland.
He didn’t reach out to the Ukrainian Embassy or consulate. Nor did he log into its recruitment website, fightforUA.org, where foreign volunteers are supposed to register and learn about the process of joining Ukraine’s armed forces, Adam said.
“I only found out about fightforUA.org when I was already here,” he said.
He flew to Istanbul and then to Warsaw. He hitched a ride to the border and crossed into Ukraine, passing through the western city of Lviv and finally reaching Kyiv.
As many as 20,000 foreigners have expressed interest in joining the International Legion of Territorial Defense of Ukraine, as it is officially called, according to the Ukrainian government. That includes Americans, an official with the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington told
The Washington Post.
They had to sign contracts saying they will fight until the end of the war. Other volunteers said they were told the contracts meant Geneva Convention rules would apply if they get captured or killed, though experts say it’s unclear if they would be treated with full prisoner of war status.
Each volunteer would receive a salary of roughly $3,000 a month, the same as a soldier, said Yaroslav, a Ukrainian military officer and head organizer of the International Legion in western Ukraine, who declined to give his last name.
There are already concerns about the international legion. Volunteers complain of delays in contracts, extensive paperwork, not getting weapons, and days of waiting before getting assigned.
“There is a big bureaucracy, even now when there is war, and those guys have to experience that bureaucracy,” said Mamuka Mamulashvili, commander of the Georgian National Legion, a nationalist paramilitary force that has been fighting Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine for eight years. “For me, it seems very amateur.”
He said “there is a very big flow” of inexperienced Americans and foreigners wanting to fight in Ukraine. “We cannot just take some guy from Brooklyn who wants to fight on the front line,” he said.
All could face risks on the battlefield, and not just from bullets and bombs: A spokesman for Russia’s Defense Ministry, Igor Konashenkov, recently described the foreign volunteers as “mercenaries” who, if caught, could be “prosecuted as criminals.”
Kelso, another volunteer, didn’t listen. He left his job after seeing reports of “innocent civilians being directly targeted and attacked,” said the Montana-born construction worker who was also in Adam’s group.
He said he had never seen combat. “This is my first war,” said Kelso.
He registered on the Ukrainian government’s recruitment website and filled out the forms. But he didn’t hear back for days. “I am not going to wait for an email response while there are people dying,” he said.
So, with some money saved, he paid $700 for a one-way flight to Poland. He carried warm clothes, a sleeping bag, medical supplies, family photos and a bulletproof vest a friend had donated.
“I do believe that God is on our side here,” said Kelso. “We are on the side of good. What the Russians brought is pure evil.”
Zelenskyy “said we would be welcome here and we would be armed and ready to go,” said Rob, 61, a grandfather. “We should be at the front lines. There are young Ukrainians who are at this moment dying. And we are here.”
“I came here to fight for Ukraine,” Rob said.
Adam has not told his mother, despite her concerns about his well-being expressed in messages on WhatsApp.
“I don’t really need her to ruin my mental aspect right now,” said Adam. “I am here on a mission.”
Minutes later came the sound of an air raid siren, from an app on Adam’s phone, and a message came up in Ukrainian. “I can’t read it,” said Adam. “But I know there is a missile somewhere.”
Adam was angry and emotional. Despite the legion’s assurances of proper vetting, he was now in the northern section of the capital with a territorial defense unit mostly composed of Ukrainian nationalist militiamen.
Adam still hadn’t received a bulletproof vest, a helmet — or a weapon. And he could hear the sounds of shelling, he said.
“I have been here 15 days now and still nothing is happening,” he said in a phone interview. “I am not putting up with that.”
“They expect me to guard the base with no guns, no armor, no vest, no helmet and no knowledge of the Ukrainian language,” he continued. “It makes absolutely no sense. I am not going to stand around and get hit with a missile with no guns or nothing.”
https://www.stripes.com/theaters/europe/2022-03-20/the-frustrations-of-some-novice-americans-who-signed-up-to-fight-in-ukraine-5413238.html
Maybe that is why Putin wants them dead--so they don't spread Covid. It is certainly more justified than killing innocent civilians because some of them are Nazis. Maybe Putin will attack the U. S. next to get rid of American Nazis. 
