Rob, a member of the Mozart group, conducts military training for Ukrainian soldiers in rural Donbass, Ukraine. Photo: Laura Boushnak/The New York Times
Andrew Milburn, a former US Navy colonel and leader of the Mozart group, was in a cold second-floor briefing room in a Kiev apartment building to break bad news. Across from him sat half a dozen men who had traveled alone to Ukraine to work with him.
“Guys, I’m devastated,” he said. “The Mozart group is dead.”
The men looked at him with expressionless faces.
One asked as he walked to the door, “What do I do with my helmet?”
The Mozart Group, one of the most prominent private US military organizations in Ukraine, has collapsed under a cloud of allegations ranging from financial improprieties to alcoholic miscalculations. Their struggles offer an eye-opening window into the world of groups of foreign volunteers who have poured into Ukraine *(sic) with noble intentions only to meet the strains of running a complicated enterprise in a war zone.
“I’ve seen it many times,” he said. one of Mozart’s experienced coaches who, like many others, only spoke anonymously for fear the Russians might target him. “You have to run these groups like a business. We do not have that.”
Ukrainian volunteer soldiers listen to instructions during a Mozart Group military training session near Kiev. Photo: Laura Boushnak/The New York Times
Hundreds, if not thousands, of foreign veterans and volunteers have toured Ukraine. Many of them, like Milburn and his crew, are stubborn men who have spent their adult lives in violence, loners trying to work together in a very dangerous environment without much structure or rules.
The Mozart group thrived early on, training Ukrainian troops, rescuing civilians from the front lines, and raising over a million dollars in donations to fund it all. But then money started to run out.
After months of struggling to stay together, the Mozart group was plagued by defectors, power struggles, a robbery at their headquarters office and a lawsuit filed by the company’s chief financial officer, Andrew Bain, demanding Milburn’s removal.
The lawsuit, filed in Wyoming, where Mozart is registered as a limited liability company, is a litany of petty and serious allegations that Milburn is accused of, among other things, making disparaging remarks about Ukraine’s direction while in “considerable drunkenness.” urinating in a borrowed apartment and from “diversion of company funds” and other financial crimes.
“I’ll be the first to admit I have flaws,” said Milburn, who admitted in an interview that he was drinking while making the Ukraine comments. “We all have them.” However, he dismissed the more serious allegations of financial misconduct, calling them “completely ridiculous”.
When Milburn surfaced in Ukraine in early March last year, the capital Kyiv seemed to be on the brink. Russian troops fought their way out of the suburbs, and Ukraine sent thousands of inexperienced soldiers to the front.
It was then that Milburn, 59, met Bain, 58, through a mutual friend. Bain, also a former Marine Colonel, has worked in media and marketing in Ukraine for more than 30 years. “The two Andys,” as Mozart’s associates would call them, shared a vision of doing whatever it took to help Ukraine win the war.
Milburn, whose career has spanned the US wars of the past three decades from Somalia to Iraq, had both the combat experience and the connections. He counts naval heavyweights like writer Bing West and former Secretary of Defense James Mattis among his friends.
Andrew Milburn, founder of the Mozart Group, during a meeting at the organization’s office in Kiev, Ukraine. Photo: Brendan Hoffman/The New York Times
Bain had the organization. For eight years, since Russia invaded eastern Ukraine in 2014, he ran the Ukrainian Freedom Fund, a charity he founded that turned donations into much-needed equipment for Ukraine’s military.
The two went on to found Mozart, a name that’s a cheeky response to the Russian mercenary troupe that used the name of another famous composer, the Wagner group. They also ran a short podcast called Two Marines in Kyiv.
But they had very different styles. Milburn is gregarious, loves to be in the limelight – he wrote a scathing memoir – and says he has a short temper. Bain, who studied classical music at Yale, is more reserved and cerebral.
Both say there was tension from the start. “For 30 minutes he’s the most charming man in the world,” Bain says of Milburn. “But in the 31st minute you’re like, ‘Wait, something’s wrong.'”
Milburn said that while he did not mean to offend Bain, “the facts speak for themselves and I cannot give more information about his character than what he has already done”.
With the Ukrainian army desperate for Western support, Mozart quickly grew from a handful of combat veterans to more than 50 employees from a dozen countries. The group’s two specialties were last-minute extractions of civilians trapped at the front lines, extremely hazardous work, and condensed military training.
As spring turned to summer, more Ukrainian military units requested Mozart’s training. But the Ukrainians couldn’t afford it, so Mozart relied on a small group of regular donors, including a group of East Coast financiers with Jewish-Ukrainian roots and a Texas tycoon.
Ukrainian soldiers during a military training session of the Mozart group in rural Donbass, Ukraine. (Laura Boushnak/The New York Times)
Everyone involved says that just paying the paycheck has become stressful. And several employees said the way money flowed into the organization Bain oversaw was opaque.
“I can’t tell you how many people would come up to me at a party and say, ‘Marty, I love what you do. I want to give you $10,000,” said Martin Wetterauer, one of Milburn’s old Navy friends and Mozart’s operations manager. “But we never knew if the money was really coming.”
Bain said he did absolutely nothing wrong and provided financial information whenever asked, which was rare.
Next to, the people employed by Mozart were not easy to deal with. Many of them were combat veterans who admitted to suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and excessive drinking. When not working, they frequented Kiev’s strip clubs, bars and internet dating.
“There was a lot of swearing, a lot of women, a lot of things you don’t want to bring to Mass,” says Rob, another trainer.
In September, they lost a key source of funding when a charity called Allied Extract decided to use less expensive Ukrainian equipment to rescue civilians. By November, Mozart was so short of cash that Milburn, Bain, and Wetterauer gave up their hundreds of dollars a day in salary.
Bain, who owned 51% of the company, then approached Milburn, who owned the other 49%, to try to separate, the two said in interviews. Bain asked Milburn to pay him $5 million to buy out his stake, but Milburn refused, saying there was no way he could raise that sum. The two soon stopped talking.
As soon as Bain filed the lawsuit on Jan. 10, an internal battle erupted on social media. Bain posted the allegations on Mozart’s Facebook page, which he controls, and Milburn responded with scathing comments about Bain from Mozart’s LinkedIn page, which he controls.
“It was like a domestic argument,” Rob said.
Milburn has rented a new office in Kiev and says he is determined to revitalize operations.
“I dream of returning to the Donbass,” he says. “When you’re there and scared, everything else is in the shadows. You don’t think about money. You don’t think about your reputation.”
But he won’t be returning to the front any time soon. This week he spent hours in front of his computer. Are you looking for new business areas, e.g. B. Hostile Environment Training. Write emails to donors.
And talk to their lawyers.
(Appeared in the New York Times)