From the first days of the “special operation” launched by Vladimir Putin in Ukraine in February 2022, it was clear: she could not get out alone. That is why President Zelenskyy appealed to the good will of freedom fighters from all over the world to come and volunteer under the yellow and blue flag.
The message was heard. In support of the armies, in aid of the population, or more directly with arms in hand and in the face of the Russians, thousands of souls from all corners of the world have rushed to enlist alongside Ukraine. If many were disillusioned and now the number of 1,500 fighters is whispered, it was up to 20,000 who would find a way to Kiev.
Many of the true heroes joined the ranks of the official Foreign Legion raised by the Ukrainian army, or the ranks of one of the dozens of less formal structures that came to fight against Putin’s Russia. Many have paid for this commitment with their lives.
But in absolute urgency, as the saying goes, don’t look at a particular horse’s teeth. And as pointed out by a lengthy and genuinely confusing New York Times article, which focuses on the American case but other similar stories concern other nations, the lack of verification on the Ukrainian side – at most ten minutes per volunteer – has sanctified Margoulins, to slip into the influx of fighters.
“American Volunteers Who Lie, Waste, and Tear Each Other Up,” is the title of this survey, authored by Justin Scheck and Thomas Gibbons-Neff, which surveyed three dozen people. What we are discovering on this other side of the coin is frankly not glorious.
Bastards, to use the famous cinematic moniker, who have lied about their military past within the US Armed Forces but find themselves on the front lines, guns in one hand and raging on Twitter in the other. Others who collect insane sums but waste part of it on unnecessary expenses, inferior materials or vehicles that never reach their destination.
A half-crazy guy, John McIntyre, who was eventually kicked out of the Ukrainian Legion for bad behavior and defected to the enemy, now parading on Russian TV channels and claiming to have offered Moscow technological secrets with his crossing east.
Still others who quite obviously want to benefit personally and in a ringing and stumbling way from the outpouring of global generosity to Ukraine. And above all, a handful of utterly useless soldiers with no training or talent other than the slip that their country’s army would never have recruited.
The good, the bad, the bad
(but mostly the ugly)
The Times takes a special look at some of these odd characters. One of the best known is James Vasquez. The man was very present on Twitter and social networks until recently. Until the New York Daily begins investigating his past and activities when he passed out in nature.
In a lengthy fundraising video, Vasquez vowed he was a former US Army sergeant, a hardened veteran deployed to Iraq for Operation Desert Storm, and then a second time after 9/11. Having become a legend in his Connecticut town, he has done none of this, the Pentagon swears: he had barely been a reservist, and was one of the lowest in rank.
This did not prevent him from landing in Ukraine, guns in hand. American guns, of course. Brand new: “They’re barely out of the box and we’ve got a lot,” he told the Times. Where do you come from? He says he has no idea and doesn’t care.
As for his military exploits, narrated in highly regarded videos, they are practically nil, even negative. James Vasquez is therefore best known for posting the very precise location of his entire unit online during one of his filmed tirades. Which, the Russians at the Mariivka base ask, can lead to famous disasters.
There are also Malcolm Nance, a former US Army encryption specialist, a regular on the MSNBC channel, and one of the most visible supporters of Ukraine on American TVs. He went to Ukraine to inject some of his rigor into the Legion and try to give it some structure.
He came back. But not before finding himself heavily involved in power struggles, and not without accusing some of the individuals or financial support groups he encountered of outright fraud or even spying on behalf of Russia.
Some of these volunteers depend on donations for their own adventures or have started crowdfunding to help Ukrainian troops not surrender to the enemy. The sums collected are often quite crazy – and their use rather cryptic.
The New York Times was interviewing Grady Williams, a 65-year-old man who worked as a guide at the Reagan ranch in Santa Barbara, when he heard Zelensky’s call, which he couldn’t resist. A plane, a train, and some hitchhiking later, he found himself at the front, arms in hand. For about ten days: The Ukrainian army then found that Williams hadn’t even gone through their filter before he began fighting.
Withdrawn from the fighting, he began raising funds for the Georgian Legion volunteers. 16,000 dollars (around 15,000 euros) to provide them with motorcycles. About half of that was spent on his own needs, and he was eventually kicked out by said Georgians after he had a serious argument with another volunteer.
In this jumble of groups, sub-groups, legions, frontline volunteers, social media fundraisers, the NYT reports several instances of clumsy use of the often large sums spilled by generous donors.
In the field of night vision devices, this means that Chinese devices are much less effective than originally promised, or vice versa advanced things, the transfer of which to Ukraine raises serious questions about export restrictions of American technology.
In the latter case it is Lt. Col. Hunter Ripley Rawlings IV, who is on the maneuver – thanks in large part to the important publicity James Vasquez gives him before he disappears from radar screens caught in the act. Colonel Rawlings says he has raised more than a million dollars to equip Ukrainian soldiers sent to the front lines.
In addition to these problematic night vision devices, he mainly spent $25,000 on remote control vehicles, which never arrived at their destination. It has drawn the ire of some donors who wonder where those fortunes are really going.
Perhaps in the bank accounts of Iron Forge, the company that Colonel Rawlings set up in parallel with these donations of materials to the Ukrainian front. This is to receive funds intended for the transport of expensive tricks and devices that are sent to Kiev and Donbass. But it’s not an NGO: Iron Forge was founded for their benefit, that is, Rawlings’s.