US volunteers have been seen in video footage of the front lines in Ukraine, suggesting the international legion, fighting alongside the Ukrainian army, is playing an increasingly active role.
Two video clips of US fighters appeared on Twitter on Thursday: one shows an American in riot gear posing in front of the burned remains of what is believed to be a Russian tank. A Ukrainian shouts “Welcome to America!” from the off and the American repeats the sentence.
The other, narrated by another soldier with an American accent, shows a detachment of soldiers taking cover against a wall along a road in a village they recaptured from the Russians, the narrator claims.
The first video was posted by James Vasquez, a US Army veteran and Connecticut contractor who, according to his Twitter feed, arrived in Poland on March 15 and crossed through Ukraine the next day, bringing with him several surveillance drones. He was sent to the front from Lviv on March 18.
“I kind of feel like I’m on a great, very dangerous vacation,” he said. And in another tweet: “When I need to gear up for battle, all I think about is the hardest hitting face on the planet…Tucker Carlson.”
He reports how he patrolled in Ukraine, passed numerous checkpoints and showed his passport.
“They are … shocked to see an American passport when I reach checkpoints,” he said. “They let me through straight away because they think it’s great that an American soldier is here to fight alongside them.”
In his account of Thursday’s battle for a village he doesn’t name, Vasquez said he was tasked with “finding a pack of Russians who were spotted by civilians trying to hide,” and he used a drone, to try to discover them.
A few hours later, he tweeted: “I’ve just been through six straight hours of fighting. I have a crazy video that I will post later. 2 men were shot but will be fine. A death.”
Initial reports of the international legion suggested that the foreign volunteers were a mixed bag, many with no experience. Military news website Task&Purpose reported there was “a bevy of fantasists for every candidate with combat experience.”
“The selection obviously follows no discernible process other than separating those who have no military experience from those who do. The former go through a four-week training course – the latter are given a weapon and sent to the front in ad hoc units with a Ukrainian officer,” the report from Ukraine reads.