Disclaimer: The language of this article may seem offensive to some, but we’ve included it because it’s an integral component of the testimony of a young American veteran fighting with the Ukrainian armed forces opposed to the Russian ones, as Newsweek said in an exclusive interview. . in Lvov.
Lviv, Ukraine, is full of American fighters. They are not in uniform and, in fact, they are not active-duty U. S. military personnel. But anyone walking through the cute little cafes on the sidewalks of the city’s old town will miss the sound of American English spoken by teams of physically compatible young people.
Some of those Americans are among the thousands of foreigners who have signed contracts with the officer infantrymen of the Ukrainian Foreign Legion, which was created in the days following Russia’s large-scale invasion of Russia. February 24. Others are with anonymous equipment that helps exercise Ukrainian troops, either at the front or in camps in the rear.
These Americans are rightly suspicious of potential Russian agents, but they do not hesitate to tell trusted interlocutors exactly what brought them here: the opportunity to help democratic Ukraine in its combat David opposite Goliath opposed to a Russian invader decided us to annihilate him on the map. Those who opened up said they had discovered a cause worth fighting for and, if necessary, dying.
In front of a flat white café at a table on a paved pedestrian street near Market Square, one of those American volunteers told Newsweek about his experience. “Elvis,” as the nom de guerre scribbled on his green baseball cap used to say, is a small, nervous guy in his twenties, with squinted eyes who continually scan his stage for possible threats. He joined foreign forces fighting the Russians on April 16.
He spoke to Newsweek with one condition.
“You promise me that it will not be distorted for political purposes,” he said. “It’s for my guys who didn’t come back. For my friends who died in this city. People want to know the raw truth. “
“This city” is Severodonetsk, a market town in eastern Ukraine that in June became the scene of a week-long artillery battle. Ukrainian forces withdrew on 25 June. Since then, Russia has struggled to take near Lysychansk, and is already actively bombing Sloviansk while continuing the Donbass War of Attrition described by Elvis.
“This war is Iraq, it’s Afghanistan, it’s Siria. Es a meat grinder,” he said. It’s of the Western Front type, 1916. Es a round-trip artillery. “
Elvis said the United States has not fought a war like this in more than half a century.
And he said that neither the United States nor NATO are willing to do that about fighting.
“Even if NATO were to get involved, unless they do a strategic air crusade and bomb absolutely the entire Russian line. . . The army of the EE. UU. no is in a position for that. He is not in a position for this kind of war. “
He added that Ukrainian forces on the ground, and foreign volunteers who joined them, are also ready for the fatal Russian artillery bombardment, which, according to General Russell Honoré, is the world’s largest and maximum hard artillery force.
“There is no education for that. I’ve noticed guys who were Tier I, guys from SF, GSG 9, guys from SAS, but this artillery will just consume you and spit on you,” Elvis said. you don’t give a damn about education. If you are in the position at the time this circular arrives, you have about three, 4 seconds to make an impact. You’re done.
“If you hear the whistle and it gets louder and louder, everything will start shaking like a damn freight train,” he said. “The longer the whistle, the closer it will be to you. If it’s a short whistle, you have no problem. But if you feel like it’s hitting you right in the face, you’re in the death zone. It doesn’t make sense in racing.
“But the smart thing is, you died before you knew it,” Elvis said. of a guy splashed against the wall. It’s horrible, but it’s the reality. We were handed over to the point that none of us were dressed in helmets, because if something like that hits the construction you’re in, just wait for it to. it kills you quickly.
“They got to the point that if I didn’t listen to the artillery I didn’t feel safe. That’s weird. I felt safer when they hit because at least I knew what they were doing,” he said. “When the Russians weren’t firing artillery, they were making plans, and you don’t know what. It’s more stressful than taking artillery, because you know they’re going to eventually form a swarm. “
Elvis described the tactics used by Russian forces to transparent Severodonetsk after the bombing.
“When the Russians push hard, they’re like fucking cockroaches,” he said. it can kill many of them, especially if they pass through the street, however, smarter, they began to walk along the buildings, cleaning themselves before continuing.
“In the first wave, there were recruits from the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, like guys from Russia,” Elvis said. “They used them a little bit as surprise troops. They knew they were going to be killed.
“Then they would push the National Guard, then they would have Chechens, and then they would have GRU spetsnaz [special forces] escorted through a BMP-3 or a T-90 [Russian tanks], and they would walk with artillery and rockets in front. of that,” he said.
“The T-90s, when they were rolling, if they caught a Ukrainian unit, they were the main weapon,” Elvis said. They are not looking so much to move strategically, but simply looking to kill. “
He described a general for human life through Russian forces.
“Severo’s armor [Severodonetsk] was more on the periphery, but you had T-90s rolling, and they essentially put other people in a close diversity with the weapon, which is a war crime,” Elvis said. “They dropped phosphorus bombs on they threw cluster munitions. Basically, they threw anything at us and screwed up the Geneva Conventions; they were just looking to kill you. “
But he added that the atrocities were limited to the Russian side.
“If I give him the honesty of God’s truth, on the Ukrainian side, we also start doing everything,” Elvis said. “We were employing anti-aircraft weapons on human targets, but we had a limited number of weapons and that’s what we had to use: a 14. 5cm AA anti-aircraft gun. and we would annihilate them. I mean fifteen, twenty guys at a time [snap your fingers] – disappear. “
He recounted the atrocities against the civilian population in the war zone.
“What other people want to realize and emphasize is that they are now smart to cover up their war crimes,” Elvis said. “They don’t make mass graves anymore, they burn cadáveres. de age and they’re still in spaces where the Russians push, they’re going to execute them. If they are women, it doesn’t matter if they are nine years old: they will rape them, then kill them, or rape them and continue to use them and continue to use them until they themselves commit suicide.
“They take corpses and love to desecrate them,” he said. The most productive way to say it would be in a purely diabolical biblical sense, such as impaling, mutilating bodies, leaving them exposed for mental effects. I guess to have a mental effect, or maybe they’re just absolutely screwed. “
During reconnaissance missions, Elvis said he had witnessed atrocities but could not prevent them.
“There were many times I watched them f*** ed s ** t and just looked to drop them all,” he said. “But you can’t react, because he would have betrayed us, and that means death. So, unfortunately, you have to make a lot of tough decisions like that. Many other people think that fighting is just about firing and dodging artillery, but no, it’s also about sitting and hunting in a lot of things that, in a society in general, no one would see, and nothing can be done to prevent it. “
Elvis said that even in the spaces from which Russian forces have withdrawn, the possibility of more death and destruction persists.
“When the Russians retreat, they literally throw mines, indiscriminately,” he said. “They don’t care if it’s a village, if it’s a school. A child can walk on it. They don’t care. “
Proximity mines, you can’t even walk near them,” Elvis said. “They’re going to shoot in the air and listen like a ‘zzzzzz,’ and then ‘Boom!meters You’re right, you’re done.
“In the south, in Zaporizhia, the struggle is not urban,” he said. “These are hedges and open fields, so you have to move from one hedge to another, and if the Russians were in this hedge, when they left, they left trap cables and landmines. Sometimes it’s just F-1 grenades. Sometimes they are AT [anti-tank mines opposite trees. Sometimes it’s just a flare. Other times, it may be one of the local mines.
Elvis said the lack of humanity of Russian forces is limited to Ukrainian infantrymen and civilians, extending even to their own infantrymen.
“The Russians never bury their dead. They don’t get them back,” he said. “You’ll see corpses that have been on the streets for days, weeks, decomposing. The Ukrainians did more for the dead Russian infantrymen than Russia. They will send groups to collect the Russian bodies in the camps. They throw them into a mass grave, yes, but at least they bury them. The Russians don’t care.
However, even in a clash in which the contrast between the strategies of the two opposing forces is striking, Western fighters like Elvis have expressed their considerations about how Ukraine continues its defensive efforts. Devices such as quadcopters for military use, the fact that the Ukrainian army has not used some of the donated Western apparatus has been a source of frustration.
“Yes, the West is sending aircraft, and yes, I’ve noticed three seven [M777 howitzers] there,” Elvis said. and push, there is nothing you can do.
“My biggest complaint is that they [the Ukrainian army command] don’t give us access to some of the mandatory equipment we know they have. There are NVGs [night vision goggles] in Kyiv, donated through Western countries, which are in warehouses. “He said. They give them to their elite outfits that don’t have the proper training, and then when they don’t know how to use them, they say, ‘Oh, well, that’s a piece of. It’s like, ‘No, you just don’t know how the team works. ‘All Westerners have backgrounds. We all know how to drive with NVG, we know how to work with NVG, we know how to shoot with them. Ukrainians are not as good as they could be.
“When you have most other people coming from the United States, from Britain, whose countries have fought an insurgency over the last 20 years using this equipment, we know how to use it well, to our advantage,” Elvis says. But they don’t need to hear that. They are very proud. There’s nothing wrong with being proud. It’s your country that you protect, but if you can’t protect your country, you won’t have a country. The Ukrainian mentality is: “Die for your country, honor the heroes. “I respect this and everything, but you have to live so that your country also has a country. You can’t wipe out an entire generation.
This preference for fighting for Ukraine’s right to have that long term is the main explanation for why so many other people like Elvis are again important in the country, despite the apparent difficulties.
“I will only communicate about him once, I promise, but we are here because many of us feel that the way the current commander-in-chief withdrew from Afghanistan was dishonorable,” he said. “Basically, the way he retired means that all the guys who were injured, killed, in the last 20 years, had no bad intentions. It was a great ‘f**k you’ for everyone. Our country turned its back on us, and then when we saw Zelensky say that he needed other people to fight, that we can a Ukrainian citizen, well, fight, that’s why we are good.
This is not about hearts and minds; it’s combat. We can really do what we’re smart at and help a country,” Elvis said. “It’s a cause I can defend. There is no hidden agenda. Ukrainians are free and fighting for their survival. They are not fighting to enrich the pharmaceutical or oil corporations. It’s so they still have a country. That’s why so many of us are here. “
But all the Western volunteers who have arrived in Ukraine since February 24 have done so for equally idealistic reasons, and this has genuine consequences for the other volunteers.
“When the Legion started, there was a large influx of foreigners, and you had bad apples in each and every group. You had a lot of other people who came here with drug behavior and this and that,” Elvis said. Previously, you can get things like morphine, where you had it in your IFAK [individual first aid kit], so if you fall, you can stay attached. Not so much as to survive, but to make it less difficult to get out. But because there were guys who were going to abuse it, now you can’t even perceive that anymore.
There have also been disorders with unqualified volunteers getting ahead of themselves and passive to their units.
“We have a lot of guys coming here, mainly American, American and British citizens, they’re in their 50s and 60s and they say, ‘Oh, this is my chance to have something,'” Elvis said. “It’s like, ‘No, man, that’s not that. You’re going to have someone killed. ‘We all have between the middle and end of our twenties. above, you are nothing more than a walking corpse.
“Also, it’s going to sound very cliché, but I don’t accept as truth anyone on the front who is rarely very afraid,” Elvis said. “Because if you’re afraid, you’re afraid, you’re afraid. ” If you don’t feel anything, if you don’t care about your own life, then you are a risk. You are endangering everyone around you. You’re going to do stupid things, and you’re going to have other people killed.
However, even in well-trained and highly disciplined units, Russian artillery warfare had a devastating effect.
“I’ve observed several other people who are there for a second, and I don’t even know how to describe that,” he said. “But when someone gets shot and dies, it takes a few minutes, you can communicate with them. When the artillery catches them, they’re only there for a second, and then [snap your fingers], you know.
“And it hits me differently now. I’m starting to go down,” Elvis said. “So, I’m sorry if I look a little nervous. Wow, he was someone’s son, his father, his brother. They were alive for several years, and then, in part, for a moment – [snap your fingers]. “
“I started to normalize myself by seeing other people being fucked up through artillery, which is not normal,” he said. have problems. This is one of the reasons why I am afraid to return to the United States.
“Because I probably couldn’t tell anyone about it,” Elvis said. “Regardless, the VA [U. S. Department of Veterans Affairs] is going to do so. I’m passing to stay in Europe. What am I going to go back to?Homeless?Six dollars a gallon? I don’t feel like it.
Newsweek contacted Russia’s Defense Ministry and Ukraine’s Defense Ministry to comment on allegations related to their forces that are included in this story.
The day after our conversation, Elvis sent a message to Newsweek saying he was returning to the front.