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The Team House
Iraq, Afghanistan, ISIS, & Ukraine: One Fighter’s Journey Through Modern War | Ryan O'Leary | Ep. 409
03:24:56
Combat veteran Ryan O'Leary joins us to discuss his journey from the Army National Guard to fighting alongside Kurdish forces against ISIS in Iraq, working with Iranian Kurdish insurgent groups, and later experiencing the war in Ukraine firsthand....
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Hey, folks, welcome to episode 409 of the Team House. I'm Jack Murphy, here with today's guest, Ryan o'. Leary. Ryan is a American military veteran, served in the National Guard, deploying to Afghanistan and Iraq, and then has lived the life of. Maybe we can call you a professional adventurer. Ryan, serving with the Peshmerga, the Pak, some of the Kurdish groups over in northern Iraq or Kurdistan, and then spent another curious journey took him to Ukraine, where he's been ever since. So Ryan has lived the life. I think it's pretty incredible and we really appreciate you joining us and hearing about these varied experiences that you've had.
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B
Yeah. Hey, I'm glad to be here, honestly. I don't think like the war in Ukraine, because it's on like its fourth year, it doesn't always get like the notice it should. And I don't think people really understand, like, the new drone warfare that's going on here. Yep. I think some, some countries like Israel are experiencing it now with Hezbollah and then, you know, you're seeing it pop up in Africa and also popped up in Syria. So I think there's a lot of misunderstandings with what drone warfare entails. Yeah, I know.
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C
I'm looking forward to getting into that with you a bit. But I want to start off sort of at the beginning. If you tell us a little bit about yourself, about where you came from and why you joined the military.
- [02:27]
B
Yeah, so I'm originally from Iowa, like small town in Iowa. Joined the Iowa army national guard at 17, went to basic training, AIT all that good stuff for infantry. The reason I joined Is I had like, my grandfathers were in the military. I had some uncles in the military. And like, it's not really that way anymore, but like, growing up when I. I'm 39 years old. So like, growing up, we still have this like, you know, somewhat of a patriotic duty. A lot of my classmates from high school joined. I don't think you see that much anymore, sadly. But I joined because, like, you know, like, you should, you should defend your country if you're going to vote and if you're gonna, you know, participate, you know, you should participate with what's going on around you, whether it's politically or, you know, defending the nation. So I think everyone should do it, to be honest.
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C
And so you went into the Army National Guard?
- [03:26]
B
Yep. So originally I was gonna go to college, and then I didn't really go to college. I, I did like two years of college. I never really, you know, finished a bachelor's or anything, but like the Guard at the time was like, hey, you know, we didn't have a sign on bonus, but they had the GI Bill. And like back then college was expensive, but it wasn't as expensive now. So I was like, oh, I'll go, you know, do the one weekend a month and then when I graduate high school, I'll go to college. I graduated high school, didn't go to college, but.
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C
And what year was that that you signed up initially?
- [04:01]
B
So I signed up. So I completed basic training in AIT, November of 2004. Wow. Okay.
- [04:09]
C
And where was the first place that they deployed you? With the National Guard.
- [04:15]
B
So the first place for the National Guard. So actually when we were basic training, there was some other guys from Iowa. They got pulled directly after AIT and deployed to Iraq. It was the 133rd. I did not go with the first group. I deployed in 2007. We were based out of Camp Victory Slayer area. Didn't do anything, anything like, remotely, you know, exciting. It was mainly FOB security, you know, and like making sure the Iraqi army and police don't shoot at each other type deal, you know, you're typical to point for most people. Yeah, it was boring. It was like, I don't know, like, I think it was disheartening for me, honestly. So, like, it wasn't what.
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C
It wasn't what, you know, looking for.
- [05:03]
B
Yeah, yeah, basically.
- [05:07]
C
And you did a couple more pumps with the National Guard though, right?
- [05:11]
B
Yeah. So 2010-11, we deployed to Afghanistan. We were in Rces Pactia, which there it was more of your infantry style fighting you know, your foot patrols, presence patrols. We did some good operations and, like, it was just more. More of like your action oriented. It was less. Like there was still, like, the hearts and mind that you had, but because the Taliban were more willing to, like, tow up against you, there was still quite a bit of fighting, at least at that time frame, like 2009, 10 and 11. You know, there was still some pretty good fighting going on. So we actually got to do like, an infantry job versus, like, you know, state, like, basically police, you know, just say you're there type deal.
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C
So now you're kind of experiencing what you had hoped for, I. I take it.
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B
Yeah, yeah. Like, I mean, because, like, you know, again, we have like, actual direct firefights. Actually, our first day in country, we got in firefight. So we landed at FOB Gardez and we did the right seat. Left seat with the unit. I think it was a unit out of the. I think we replaced a guard unit out of New York, I believe, actually. But literally, we went from Gardez up to another, like, to a cop called Don Patton. And in the middle of that, there's. Was it AI Kell something? Kell, Second Village. And, like, we just got lit the up. It was. It was a good first experience for people, put it that way. We had one vehicle get hit with RPGs. We had one guy injure his hand. Luckily, nobody was killed or sued, like, severely injured. But, like, from that point on, it was like, you know, this is real. Let's go.
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C
So, so were you guys doing raids or were you kind of, like, going out there, like, kind of movement to contact, like, let's find the enemy and mix it up.
- [07:07]
B
So. So actually I was assigned to a PSD group that was supposed to be bringing our brigade commander around. But on that, like, he was with us on that first, you know, main operation. So after that, like, he used, you know, the air to move around more than he did on the ground. We still did some other operations with him to bring him to some, like, more closer areas to FOB Guard as. But it was pretty much like, hey, we don't need PSD anymore. What do you guys want to do? And so we ended up just doing, like, EODs core presence patrol. Like, we would drive down routes and be like, routes clear. And like, we just basically were like the. The. Hey, we need somebody to go clear out before engineers go down it type deal. And, like, you know, just like, go out and go out and see what happens type deal. It was like, I enjoyed it. I think some of our guys enjoyed it less than me because, like, if we. We got put at some highrisk situations, we drove down a black route a few times that some of the guys weren't very kosher with. One of them I planned, but like, that was just young, dumb me. But like, it was just more infantry oriented. So, like, it was just, you know, we had decent morale the whole time. We, our unit itself didn't take casualties. Some of our sister companies did. We had one guy get shot in the nuts. Otherwise, a majority of. We were able to like, escape unharmed for most of our, you know, contacts there.
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C
Any operations from that time frame that kind of stand out in your mind?
- [08:39]
B
I mean, not, not like if you would have asked me that before my adventures after Afghanistan probably. But like, honestly, like, looking back, like, the only thing that really stands out is we went up to. So Alpha Company was in Don Baton, which was in the northeast, near the Afghan packed border. Like, they were sandwiched right on the border. And we got, for some reason we had to bring some Air Force guys up there anyway. We let them lead the convoy because they wanted to do it. For some reason, they ended up running over a donkey in a village and like, absolutely pissed off, like, the whole area. That was like. That was like the only, like, thing that like, like, I, like, it was like the funniest thing that I can remember from like, Afghanistan as far as that goes. But like, combat wise, like, looking back at the combat now, everything there was like, you know, you're getting shot at for the first time and like, it's like, oh, this is, you know, intense. And then I come to Ukraine and then I worked with. Well, I, you know, after that I went with the Kurds and we did operations in like, Bashika Kirkuk. And I'm like, man, Afghanistan was nothing. And then even Ukraine now it's like Ukraine, like everything previous Ukraine, I'm just like, it. It was nothing, you know, it was like Little League compared to what you see here. Yeah.
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C
And I mean, you and I are fairly close to the same age. I'm like three years older than you. I mean, so. And you've been in it, you know, pretty, pretty consistently and you have gotten to see warfare change and evolve in some pretty dramatic ways, I feel like, from when you and I were 18 to today.
- [10:18]
B
Yeah, I mean, like, so when I was in Iraq, so. So after Afghanistan, I did three more years in the Guard. In 2014, I actually went awall from the National Guard and just got a plane ticket. I got honorable discharge and all that. But I basically bought a one way plane ticket to Herbal, landed in Herbal, met up with some of the Kurdish guys who were part of like the security detail in 0708 that I knew. And basically they were like, what the are you doing? I was like, let's go. Like, this is right as ISIS was crossing over into Iraq. I think they had just gotten to the Yazidis where the Yazidis were trapped. I think I got to Iraq, I got to the Kurdistan region. I think, like right as they were approaching the macmore Guerrero frontline. And like, the guys were like, I think they honestly didn't think I was gonna actually come. When I said, hey, I'm coming in landing, I got to the airport, I had to borrow a local cell phone to get a hold of them. And they're like, what in the are you doing? And I was like, let's go. Like, you know, ready to rock. Like, let's see what happens.
- [11:24]
C
At that time, Ryan, like, you were. You would have been one of the kind of like, few foreigners, you know, trying to join up at that time. It exploded down the line, but kind of like early 2414, I think we're talking about here. You must have been one of the first guys.
- [11:40]
B
I think it was like March or April. I got. Might have been. Might have been mid April or I got there. But yeah, like, I was one of the first ones. I didn't do the Syria thing. I think there was some guys that crossed over from Turkey into Syria before I had gotten to that region and were like, you know, doing some operation. I think Jordan Matson might have beat me there and then a couple other guys. But as far as like Iraq goes, I don't think there was too many people, at least veterans that were wanting to, you know, back up whatever the Iraqi government or even get back involved in that, that type of conflict. So. And I think honestly a lot of Americans didn't think, you know, ISIS was going to be a problem for the Iraqis, but they literally melted away, you know, from everywhere.
- [12:28]
C
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I remember when they were closing in on Erbil, that's when we started doing airstrikes, you know, fear that we're gonna lose, you know, that city would have been disastrous.
- [12:40]
B
So I was in. You, I'm assuming you've been to Erbil? Yeah, so I was in Inkawa. So like the Christian neighborhood. Yeah, yeah. From our, from our like three story building, we could literally see the airstrikes. Like they were. People don't understand how close they Got to the Kurdish lines because before. Before isis, you know, the Iraqis controlled a lot of that area. And then, like, the Kurdish. The Kurdish part was actually much smaller than it is today. And like, during. It got really large during the, you know, occupation of isis. Yes, of parts of Iraq. But, like, yeah, we could literally see the strikes happening outside of Erbil. Like, they got within. I. I think, like, within 10 kilometers, if not closer at one point. But, like, when I got there, it was like. Like, every civilian has an AK and any. Probably in Iraq, like, especially in Kurdistan, like, every. Every household, for the most part, has either an AK or something in their house. And like, those first early days, you just have people drive up to the front line and, like, fight for an hour or two, then go home. And nobody, like, who was that? And I was like, oh, it's, you know, so and so from whatever district. They'll be back tomorrow. And it's like, okay. Like, they just come when they're off work. It's awesome. Like, the. Man, the. Kurt, the Kurds are just like, I love the Kurds, man. Like, they're just amazing.
- [14:04]
C
Was. What was it like for you? As, you know, you're still a pretty young guy coming from Iowa. Some. Some military experience in the Guard, but what was sort of the process of like, you joining a foreign military or a foreign militia and signing up at the Pesh?
- [14:22]
B
So, man, like, there really wasn't like a. Like, a process. It was basically like, hey, I'm here to fight. I got in the vehicle with the English speaking Kurds. They drove me to their commander over at, like, the Gu front, and he was like, what the. And he's like, oh, he wants to fight. They explain it in Kurdish. And like, at this point, I knew, like, zero Kurdish. It took me a while to pick it up, but, like, it was based, like, okay, here you're with these guys. Follow them around and shoot whoever drives at you type deal. Because at that point, like, ISIS was still trying to push. So they had VBAs, but they were still trying to push more. So as like, you know, straight infantry. They weren't trying to, like, suicide bomb everything, like, what happened later on. They were literally still trying to do, like, maneuver. Not really maneuver warfare, but like, probing. Very basic. Yeah, yeah, they were probing frontline areas. In some cases, they get through and then they get pushed back a little bit. Honestly, I think without the air support, it could have been a lot worse. I think it would have been. They would have got into the city, but I think it could have Turned into a really nasty city fight because Herbal is a pretty big city. And I don't think people realize that. It's not like, it's not like a hundred thousand people, you know, it's quite large, it's compact, it's very, very dense.
- [15:40]
C
And after you signed up, so to speak, or they just gave you the salute, welcome to the team. Where did they, where did they send you?
- [15:50]
B
So I bounced around from front lines. Honestly, I wasn't stuck in one unit. I worked over at the Guerre Macmoor front. And then when we started pushing ISIS back, I ended up over in Bexica. So a lot of people don't realize this when, when ISIS got close to Herbal, you had Iranian Kurdish groups like Party Azadi Kurdistan, pac, pdki, both sides. Because at that point they were split in two. Kamala, Zasmani, Kabat and a bunch of these other Iranian groups moved their troops in to help defend the Iraqi part. So like I bounced around between like Iraqi peshmerga, Iranian peshmerga. Basically wherever the guys were going that day is where I went. It was pretty fluid for like the first three or four months. Once the actual Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga, like their actual army was able to like solidify front lines and build those berms up, then it was more of like, okay, here's your sector, you're gonna stay here. And like, we predominantly fought around Bashika, which is like near the Yazidi area out west. And then I also spent about nine months in Kirkuk. Kirkuk was like 2016, 2017. I participated in like the four day civil war near Purdy, Kirkuk area with Hashid and you know, the Iraqi Kurds.
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C
Tell us about that. How did that happen?
- [17:19]
B
So we woke up one morning with our, our general. It was when I was with Party Azadi Kurdistan. The commander was Hussein Yazad Yazdan Hana. He was basically, get ready, the Iraqis are coming. And I was like, what in the. Like, you know, like you wake up, it was like 7 in the morning, like, hey, the, like the Iraqis are driving at us like, we're gonna fall back from this position and get to a more, you know, stable area. Because at that point in. So we were southwest of Kirkuk at that point, and Kirkuk, the lines had already fallen, like the PUK abandoned positions supposedly first. But like, I think it was just total confusion. There was fighting in the city. So we actually got in, our vehicles, pulled back to a village called Purdy, which sat on like a little bit of a higher elevation and basically. Sorry. Basically dug in there and just waited. And it was like. It was chaos, to be honest. Like, there wasn't really good command and control. The Kurds had their artillery in like, really dumb position. So they were like, trying to move their artillery around. And then I think they. Once they took control of Kirkuk, we went from Purdy over to a town called Divis, which is like a kilometer away from Purdy. And we basically. They had built burns for us. We put armor behind them. And basically it was like we just got told, hold the line. Don't move. Like, this is like. Like this is our last position. There's nothing behind it. Don't. Don't give in. And like, the first day, it was pretty quiet. The Hashim group tried to drive a Humvee down the road, actually, and we ended up hitting it with a Chinese cornet. What the hell's the name of it? A C8 or CH8 or whatever it is. It looks just like a cornet. Like ATGM missile blew the out of it in the middle of the road. And that was like the end of combat for the day. In the morning, when we were drinking tea, you know, every morning in Iraq, you have to have tea before you go to war. Tea, cigarette, whatever, chai. So we're sitting there behind the BERM at like 6 or 7am Drinking tea, and all of a sudden you see her. Well, boom. So what we didn't realize is overnight the Iraq army had brought up armor. So your M1 Abrams and basically whatever they had 272s or whatever. So they started smashing the out of us with tanks. And that was. That was like my first experience getting shot at by a tank, to be quite honest. And like, that's like the only thing in a movie that's pretty accurate when it comes to explosions. Like, you hear the initial boom from the gun going off, but you don't hear it whistling through the air. It's just boom. And then boom. Like, it's really quick and like, it hit a dude in the arm. So, like, I was like, trying to bandage. Like, we didn't have tourniquets. We had like. We had like our balaclava. So I gotta take my ball clav off. I wrap this guy's arm up, try to tighten it so it doesn't bleed everywhere. Throw in a vehicle. And like, we had pulled back a little bit and you. The peshmerga armor came forward. And so there was like a. There was like a temporary tank battle where nobody hit anyone. It was Pretty shitty. Like, Ukrainians would fire, or not Ukraine's, but the Peshmerga would fire. Then the Iraqis would fire, and, like, they would hit stuff around it, but nobody would hit the armor, really. It was a show. But at one point, one of the Peshmerga units, I think it was from the Black Tigers, one of Barzani's more elite groups, came up with another ATGM and actually managed to hit one of the Abrams tanks. And at that point they pulled the tanks back because, like, the Iraqis, when it comes to tank war for the Iraqis, just park the tanks and, like, they don't move. They just sit there and just keep lobbing rounds. So once we hit one, they were like, oh, they can, you know, hit our tanks. So they pulled them back. The one that got hit with the ATGM basically burnt up out there. And I think there's photos online of it.
- [21:27]
C
That's wild.
- [21:28]
B
But after that, we went back to the actual frontline, Bermuda. I ran into an another American there, actually. There was a journalist that showed up, Nolan Peterson. It was like, what in the. Like, why. Why are you at the front line? We're getting like, smashed with everything. He's like, I'm here to record. I was like, okay, man, have fun. Later on, I found out he's like a veteran, former Army, I think, if I remember correct.
- [21:54]
C
Yeah, name sounds vaguely familiar,
- [21:58]
B
but, yeah, like, we held that for, like, there was like. It was probably like five or six days of fighting. The Kurds would push forward into, like, some few. Some fields that had crops, and we would. They would set up ambushes on, like, the hash members or whatever trying to drive down the road. Like, the Iraqis didn't try to flank. They literally just kept trying to drive down the cement road over and over again like a bunch of idiots. So, you know, the Kurds would move RPG teams out into these, like, corn fields or whatever it was, and they just sit there and wait for him to drive the vehicle past. I ran a 120 mortar system for a while, and we were close enough that, like, I was on, like, a little hilltop. It was just direct light. Like, we didn't have a site on the side or anything. It was literally like they gave out a distance and then we would guess how many, you know, cheese rounds or whatever they call it. Yeah, drop it in and be like, oh, we just went like 6km too far, you know, come back. But, like, we ended up hitting a few of them. Yeah, like, the. The Civil War thing was fucking hectic. But like, that was like, the first, you know, dealing with armor. Like, we had the hot, like the isis, you know, suicide vehicles. But, like, that was the first time I've ever been shot at by a tank, which was interesting, I'd say.
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C
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B
Do you want to talk a little
- [28:23]
C
bit about, like, why this civil war is happening? Because if I recall correctly, Kirkuk has kind of a complicated history that it used to be a Kurdish city. Saddam Hussein moved the Kurds out and moved Arabs in to try to do a demographic replacement there. And then ISIS comes and takes over Kirkuk. The Kurds come and take it back, and now there's this conflict between the Kurds and the Iraqis about who owns the city.
- [28:50]
B
Yeah. So a lot of people don't realize Kirk Cook is a mix, so I'm gonna piss off some people. But, like, Kirkuk, historically in modern times, was Kurdish. You know, there's like, Turkmen roots in that too. Like, that's a long time ago. That's like pre Bathist era, like, a long, long time ago. But there's, like, Turkmen there, there's Chaldean, there's Kurdish, there's Arab. And when Saddam took over Iraq and to, you know, when the Kurds started uprising and stuff, they took back her cook from the Kurdish, and basically, like, that's the oil hub area. So whoever controls it controls a lot of the oil and, like, a lot of the main routes. So there's this contentious history here where. Where the Kurds are like, it's ours. The Iraqi government's like, it's theirs. And when ISIS came in, the Iraq army just disappeared overnight. Like, it just vanished. The Iraqi police vanished. Everyone vanished for security. So, like, when the Kurds took back Kuk, you know, for them, it was like, hey, you guys abandoned this area. This is all our territory now. And so in. In 2017, what led up to the civil war is the Kurds were like, you know what? We've dealt with the Iraq government long enough. It's not working. Let's declare independence. They held a referendum, and it got like 85 or 80. 80 to 90%, I think was like, yes, let's leave Iraq. The US didn't. The US was, I think, mainly against it publicly. But, like, I don't think they were really trying behind the scenes to pressure the Kurds to not do it type deal. I think Turkey was like, absolutely not. You're not gonna be able to do this type deal, predominantly because of their security situation with the PKK and all of that. So after the referendum, the Kurds are like, okay, we're gonna set a timeline of like, 12 months or two years, and then we're getting full independence. Like, we're not dealing with Iraq anymore. Our own trade will do everything. And obviously that pissed off the Iraq government, and they went after Kirkuk. They say it was to, like, bring about, like, equality or whatever, but it was, it was about who controlled the oil of Kirkuk, because you have large, large, large oil fields and refineries and everything around Kirkuk. And, like, it was a matter of if the Kurds were able to solidify hold over this. You know, there's their economy. They'll have money. If they have money, they can build up their defense forces properly. And then obviously, Iran doesn't want to see a stronger Kurdish group either. So Iran actually was probably, like, one of the main facilitators in making sure that didn't happen. I think Turkey, Turkey was upset with it, but, like, I don't think they were physically, you know, getting involved. Like, Iranians were, like, helping out during the assault on Kirkuk. Like, they were. There's literally photos of the IRGC and Kirkuk, so it was, like, directly there.
- [31:48]
C
Did you ever run across a couple guys with a Pesh named Kurt and Joey, both Americans?
- [31:57]
B
I'm terrible with names. Like, I ran across a few foreigners, but, like, by my second year, I was able to. I knew enough Kurdish that I could get around fairly easily. So I didn't really, I didn't really deal with foreigners. Like, now in Ukraine, I've led foreigners for a while, but, like, at that point in time, I just was sticking around with the Kurds. Didn't, like, foreigners always bring drama.
- [32:19]
C
No, I, you're right. I, I, I just bring it up. I, I like those two guys. I met them over there in 2015. I believe in the fighting around outside of Kirkuk when they're pushing ISIS further out. And I was out there as a journalist at the time, and I remember one of those dudes telling me about being down in Kirkuk somewhere, and he got out of his Humvee to go take a piss, and he looks over at one of the Kurds, and he's actually this guy with a beard and has this, like, green headband. And he's like, hey, man, is like the front line over this way and that way. And the guy just looks at him with, like, crazy eyes, like. And it knows that I ran,
- [33:00]
B
man. The, the. We, we did a lot of dumb during the ISIS fighting. We, like, we, we did good that we helped defeat isis, but we also helped bolster hash shabi.
- [33:14]
C
Yeah.
- [33:14]
B
And the other PMUs, because, like, we were handed, man, like, I was at the Bashika frontline, and this was with Iranian Kurdish groups. And this happened in Kirk Cook too. This happened to Guerrero macmore. But you'd have soft units show up, they'd hand out the weaponry. They wouldn't ask who was, you know, who you are. Like, we got handed stuff by some European countries and I was like, you know, you're giving that to, like, Iranian Kurdish, like, for lack of a better word, militant groups. Like, we're like, we're gonna take this when we're done fighting here and we're gonna go up the Iranians.
- [33:48]
C
Yeah.
- [33:49]
B
And like, they're like, they're like, not our problem. It's for the Iraqi Kurds. I was like, whatever. Like, they couldn't differentiate what group was, what it was. Like, if you're Kurdish, you're Kurdish, right? And in Kirkuk, they did the same. Like the, the. If you look at some of the Kirk Cook videos, after the Kurds lost it, you have Hashishabi, you know, inside of the Abrams tanks, you have them inside of, you know, western tech. And like, the agreement was like, hey, Hashashabi is not going to run this stuff. They're not supposed to use the U. S Stuff or whatever. And in reality, you know, the PMU was like one of the main donors of U. S A. To be quite honest. Like, it was extremely mismanaged. Like, it was so, like, we would. When we were. So I was over near Mosul for a little bit and like, you had PMU guys running, decked out M4s and like, if you ask them, like, where'd you get it? Like, oh, the Americans brought it. And it's like, what the guy, like, so bad. Like, I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't a group of Iranian engineers at one point, you know, hammering or hammering away to Abram's tank to figure out what made it tick, you know, and taking photos of whatever else we sent it.
- [34:59]
C
Let's talk a little bit about how you became associated with the Iranian Kurds, because this is a really interesting thing. Again, not. Not many Americans had the experience that you had working with them.
- [35:13]
B
Yeah, like, honestly, it was. It was initially by accident. I was on a front line and like, these guys showed up with different uniform because, like, a lot of the Iranian Kurdish groups wear the traditional uniform, like the Kurdish one with the fancy wrap and everything, and then they wear, like a chest rig. They don't wear body armor. They have a, you know, all their Kurdish clothes on their sweet ass ball club on their head, sometimes wrapped around their face. I was like, who the are these guys? And they're like, oh, we're. We're pdki. And I was like, who the is pdki? Never heard of you. They're like, we're from Iran. And I was like, what the. They're like, oh, we're from the good. We're like, we're from the good part of Iran. I was like, okay. And they're like, yeah, we're. We're fighting the isis, and then we're gonna bring everything back and fight Iran. I was like, okay, this is cool. And all this was happening. I met those guys, like, end of 2014, I think, and I think I actually met the leadership of the PDKI in December or November 2014. But, like, that was when Obama's nuclear deal was going on, too. And, like, you could see it on the front line when, like, where. Macmore? At one point, you had, you know, Iraqi forces there with Kurds. There was, like, a huge animosity because, like, there's Iranians intermixed with the Iraqis. And like, there was this huge threat level, and they're like, hey, do you want to come fight Iran? And I was like, let's, you know, let's go. Like, I was like, I'm already here, so, like, I can train. I can help train you guys to fight the Iranians, and I'll, you know, help fight ISIS when I can, so. Because they were on the front lines fighting isis, like, we just had a training ground right there. So, you know, teaching them small unit tactics and stuff, it was just the next step, I guess, and into. Into the adventure. And like, honestly, like, the Iranians that I met, so, like, Iranian Kurdish groups also recruit non Kurds. And I don't think people understand that. Like, we had guys from Tehran, like actual Persian Persians, we had Avazi Arabs. They don't care. Like, it's largely Kurdish, but they don't care what your ethnicity is as long as you can either speak Farsi or Kurdish. And, you know, you're. You. You politically align with whatever their ideology, whether it is, you know, like, liberalism or, like, there's some communist parties. But, like, you know, like, they're like, center left. I don't know if I'd call them social. Like, they call themselves socialists, but, like, because their culture is still conservative, it's more of, like, they're more of, like, barely democratic, honestly, outside of their economic policy. But, like, yeah, I worked with them. They were nice people. I was like, okay, let's continue this. They were extremely well armed at the time especially Party is out of Kurdistan. So I fought with them for a long time. In 28, 2016, actually, I ended up spending a year in the Candle Mountains with kdpi. And like, that was pretty brutal. It was cold, like through the winter in a mountain range, you know, like they have caves and stuff that they use, but like, it's not fun. But I think after that I sort of got some respect with them and like, more doors opened up with what they were doing inside of Iran. I got to see more of a larger picture on like, what they were actually trying to achieve. So like, yeah, I worked with on and off for the whole time, honestly.
- [38:45]
C
What was that that they were trying to achieve?
- [38:49]
B
So a lot of people say they're trying to separate from Iran, but they're not when I got there. So previously in the early 2010s, so like 1980, actually from the end of World War II up to like the 1990s and early 2000s, they wanted a separate Iran, like an independent or a separate Kurdistan. Independent Kurdistan, all four, you know, Iraqi Kurdistan, Iranian Kurdistan, Turkey, Syria. They believed in like this unified Kurdish state and they thought that they had to start by getting the largest part from Iran. So like they, they were traditionally a separatist group. A lot of them were traditionally Marxists, Leninists and all that because During World War II, the Soviets actually provided them a lot of weaponry before they him over after the Republic of Mahabad fell. Because they did declare independence in 1919 48, I think, and it was called the Republic of Mahabad. I might be off, it might be 46, but they had, they had like a temporary independence and then the Soviet Union basically left him out to hang. And you know, it didn't, it didn't work out well for him. Kazi Muhammad was hanged and above a bunch of their other, like, not like spiritual leaders in regards to religion, but like their spiritual ideology as far as like independence was ruined or at least pushed back into the shadows. But in the early 2000s, after we invaded Iraq, they moved into like a. More of like a, you know, we're not socialists, but we're. We want limited capitalism. You know, we want freedom of all ethnicities. Like, they went from. They went to like a federalist society type ideology where like the Kurdish area has their own sovereignty, but we still answer to the federal government. You know, the Arab minority in the south below us has their own sovereignty and you still have a federal government, like almost. I don't want to say similar to the US because It's not quite that way, but it was like each minority gets their own, you know, governance, but then they have a federal government that they answer to. Like what, what was supposed to be in Iraq?
- [41:00]
C
Yeah, I mean, they kind of like. I think part of that ideological change was kind of abandoning the idea of an independent Kurdistan or as a, as a state and more of this idea that there were these going to be these different cantons that were kind of loosely associated with one another, running from Iran, northern Iraq and into Syria and maybe Turkey. That was sort of like their idea of democratic Confederalism.
- [41:27]
B
Yeah, so. So like the, the Syrian Kurds, Rojava and the Rojalottis, they have a lot of similarities. Like they don't do the opposite stuff on the Iranian side outside of pjak, but like their, their ideology of like, hey, if you're a minority, you run your own area. And then, you know, there's like your council's local that answer to like a regional or federal level. You know, it's very similar. It's just how everything's worded. Even in like Iraqi Kurdistan, they have, they're gonna, like. Some of the Iraqi Kurds I know are gonna get pissed at me for saying this, but like even Iraqi Kurdistan, some of their very basic stuff that they've tried to do as a foundation is very similar to Confederalism. Iraqi Kurdistan is more tribal based versus, you know, like, hey, this city area does their own thing, the city area does their own thing. But like, they're all very similar in ideology. It's just they'll never agree on it together as one. Which is one reason why, like, I think a majority of the Kurds understand, like, we'll never have like, you know, one, all four parts is one Greater Kurdistan. It might have been feasible in the early 1900s if they would have got their stuff together, but like, like post Ottoman Empire it was probably possible. But nowadays with how everything's so interlocked, I don't think it would work. And being a landlocked country is not a benefit on it. It weakens you substantially to your neighbors. If your neighbors don't like you, you're pretty. And I, like the Iranian Kurds also knew for them to take on the Iranian regime, you know, they need to, you know, fight for more of a greater Iran and greater rights within Iran because like, you know, there's 11 or 13 million Iranian Kurds, depending on how you classify all the various minorities. Because you have like, you have like f. Kurds, which are traditionally Shia Kurds that are down, like, east of Baghdad, across the border, you have the Kanis, which are in the northeast of Iran, that were, like, separated a long time ago. Like, there's a bunch of minor groups that sometimes say they're Kurdish, other times don't. But, like, when you only have 11 or 13 million people that are somewhat disenfranchised with each other's ethnicity and how you. How they're classed, like, you can't really overthrow, you know, the. The country of Iran. It's just not feasible. But, like, I would say since, like, 2014, they've predominantly advocated for a centralized government with, you know, minority rights and minority leadership within those areas. Because traditionally, the Kurdish areas haven't had full recognition as far as, like, their political level has always been people from Tehran or everywhere else to help, you know, keep down the insurgency and, you know, keep down Kurdish support. Same goes with the Avaz area, which is the Arabs, which are south of the Kurdish region. Same with your Baluch. Like, they don't typically get a lot of representation within their own government. And same with the military. What you'll find is when they do conscription, when the Kurds have to do their mandatory service, they'll actually throw them all the way on the other side of Iran or put them in other areas so that they're not within their local area, because obviously. Oh, I see. No, a lot. Yeah. Like. Like, a lot of the Iranian Kurds go through their conscription and then they swap over to the Iranian Kurdish side. So, like, keeping them out of Iranian Kurdish areas when they're in the military is, you know, beneficial to the regime.
- [45:02]
C
Tell us about. I'd like to hear a little bit more about your personal experiences working with the Iranian Kurds and what you experienced that year more that you were up there in the mountains with them.
- [45:15]
B
So just like the Iraqi Kurds, what they lack in tactics and equipment, they make up for with, you know, willpower, high morale. Like, you'll never. They don't lose, like, Kurds. Kurds rarely ever lose morale. Like, you can have. You can suffer defeat in the next morning. They're dancing, drinking chai, and, you know, like, they're.
- [45:34]
D
They're.
- [45:35]
B
They still keep a really high level of happiness when it comes to that. But, like, working with, like, I think, honestly, if we were to invade Iran, it makes sense to work with the Kurds, but, like, we gotta make sure it's done in an appropriate manner because obviously, Turkey doesn't want to see a Kurdish threat. And, you know, like, having P. Jack pushed up to the Turkish border would be bad. But like, I think there's a way to work with the Kurds and I think it can be effective. Like what we did in Syria, I hope we just don't abandon them like we did in Syria if we do it in Iran. Like, the Kurds love the West. They're probably one of the most open cultures when it comes to people, especially the Iranian Kurds. Iranians are less tribal than your Iraqi Kurds. Like when you're in, when you're in herbal, everyone's like, yeah, you know, women wear whatever the hell they want for the most part in your main cities. The same goes for the Iranian Kurdish side. And then when you get out to the rural areas, it's more conservative as well. But like, they, they, the Iranian Kurds are just more open to foreigners, whether it's like, like Zasmani Kaba is more of your Islamist type group. And even then, like, I went and worked with them. Like they're not isis, but like, they're like, we like Islam. Islam has to be a, you know, a main part of our focus, which is whatever. They've actually since changed that a little bit since I've been gone. But like, even them, they, they're like, you want to go talk to our female fighters? You want to do whatever you want, you know, like, they, like, they're just open and like, they're, it's, it's, I think it's derogatory to say, but they're westernized, if that makes sense. Like, they're, they're, they're, their beliefs and their values are similar to ours. That's probably the easiest way to explain it, whether that's their family life. Like, yeah, most of them are Muslim, but like, at the end of the day, that's like, they keep their religion at home and they keep their family close. So like, they're very similar to how, you know, we are in the US Especially from the Midwest, where it's like, hey, we don't give a shit about the federal government, you know, like, like they're very independent minded people.
- [47:44]
C
And what were you learning about insurgency and counterinsurgency?
- [47:48]
B
What during this, I mean, I learned, I learned to build my first bomb with them, which was interesting. And like, I, I mean, I learned a little bit from some other Arab groups in Iraq too, but like, just, just like understanding how local insurgent groups or local militias or localized resistance groups, you know, how they operate among the local populace was interesting because, like, coming from Iraq and Afghanistan, where we're Doing counterinsurgency. You don't ever get to see like the inside picture on like, you know, like obviously Afghanistan was largely because the Taliban would threaten everyone. But like you don't get to see the other side of it where it's like okay, they're not threatening people, you know, they're, they're helping out the community, doing whatever. It's like building a school or delivering supplies through the mountains or you know, like you don't get us. When you're fighting an insurgency and you've never been on the other side of it, you don't see exactly like when you'd always ask why are these people working for them? Right. And then like when you're on the opposite side of it, you get a better understanding of like just how hard it is to defeat an insurgency, especially one that has a lot of grassroots movement, has a lot of local support. Like I don't think we ever would have defeated the Taliban or even a lot of like, or pacified some of these areas in Iraq just because of how rooted it is and like family, tribe and like you're one of us versus like an outsider. When it comes to like how insurgencies gather local support in a non violent way, like it's really hard to counter that as a foreign force. Like honestly. And if you don't have a strong local government that isn't going to act like to the local population when you know, flare ups happen, you'll never, you're never going to defeat an insurgency. Like I honestly don't think Israel is ever going to defeat the Palestinian stuff or the Lebanese stuff with what they're doing. It's just not possible. Yeah, it takes a lot of internal change within whatever government like for, for it to work out in Lebanon. Like the Lebanese government really has to push for change and breaking that like cultural tie to resistance and like that's something that like the Kurds have been doing it since the 40s, like and they still weren't broken. And you know, even today, so almost 85, 90 years later, they still have a low level insurgency. Like they do attacks once every couple weeks. It costs the Iranians a lot of money. But like trying to break that, that like era of resistance or like how the network's been built up over decades is hard. Especially if you keep killing like religious leaders or in like the Iranians case they hung like Qazi Muhammad who literally was like, okay, we'll lay down our arms and surrender. And then you know, they, they hung him in a city square. So they turned him into a martyr, you know, and like that, that's still even today. Like, most of your Kurds know who he is. Even like your Iraqi Kurds, Syrian Kurds, everyone knows who Kazi Muhammad is. So like that, that oral history and the history that keeps getting sent down after generations is hard to break that. So, like, insurgencies, I think are like, like, almost impossible in most cases. Like, obviously you have your outliers, like Tamil Tigers basically were defeated, but that also took 60 plus years and, you know, tens of thousands of lives. Like, insurgencies are just one of those things that are really hard to defeat. You know, especially. It's even more harder as a foreign force. Like, man, we would go into Iranian villages which like a day earlier had IRGC guards there that do their little patrols around. And like, we would stay in like a local's house. They'd give us food, water, and it. We didn't threaten them, we didn't do anything. We just knocked on the door. They're like, yeah, come in. You know, here's our pamphlet for like our political ideology for the Kurds. You know, what is your main issues around? And like, even if they're like, oh, well, we don't believe in your political system, they wouldn't kick you out of the village. Like, most of them are like, yeah, tomorrow, please leave. We don't want issues. Then we'd say, okay, hey, that's fine. Here's a number. If anyone in the village wants to join, they can call. And usually, you know, you'd get one or two people calling a week saying, hey, you know, the IRGC or the local SEPA just roughed up my relative. Know, I'm, I'm over it. Let's go. So, like, again, like, man, insurgencies, I like, you can write about them. Like, I don't think it's going to be like, they're just like an outlier when it comes to warfare. It's hard to defeat. And like, being able to see how an insurgency functions from the inside was interesting and like, it gave me a better understanding of just what we are up against in Iraq and even more so in Afghanistan. Because in Afghanistan you had the tribal ties, you had the religious ties, and then you also had, you know, the threat of violence. So, like, you have three things working against you. Four if you include an ineffective government. And like, we spent 20 years there and it's like, no wonder. Like, yeah, just. It was just a good experience. Like, it showed me. Like, I don't think. I don't think our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were for nothing. Saddam was bad. Most of the Iraqis you talk to that weren't former Sunni Baathists are like, yeah, thank you for getting rid of Saddam. Also, we hate you for screwing our country up after Saddam was gone. Most of your Afghans are pretty much in the same boat. They were like, thank you for getting rid of the Taliban initially, but, like, you completely us for the next 15 years. Yeah.
- [53:32]
C
Like, why are you.
- [53:32]
B
How, how, how this. Yeah. You know, it was like, they're gone. Give us our, our whole government back. We'll deal with it or attempt to deal with it. And like, yeah, we just, we fucked up the, the hearts and mind after. Like, what do you do after you get rid of the leadership?
- [53:50]
C
Right.
- [53:51]
B
You know. Right.
- [53:51]
C
So I guess I really need to ask you before we move on, because of our current war with Iran, America's war with Iran, and there was very predictably, I think, a week or two of news media coverage focusing on the Iranian Kurds and thinking that the Iranian Kurds were going to be like, our savior in this conflict and they would dispose of the Iranian regime and all this sort of stuff. I just want to ask your opinion, your unique perspective that you have on this. What role could the Iranian Kurds play in helping America like that? And would they even, Is that even in their interest?
- [54:33]
B
So I think the west, the wet. So the Iranian Kurds, if we wouldn't have over the Syrian Kurds and if we wouldn't have over the Iraqi Kurds, you know, eight years prior, I think the Iranian Kurds would have been fully on board to say, you know, if you're bombing them here, we'll. We'll send ground troops in. And, you know, the, the Iranian Kurds did mobilize. They did. I won't go into full specifics, but, like, they're, they're fully mobilized right now. They called their members back from Europe and other places just in case it gets to a point where they can push in. But the west misjudged them in thinking that they were just going to start an offensive without full support. And I don't blame them. Like, if you look at, from an Iranian Kurdish standpoint, it's like, okay, yeah, they're, they're bombing the Iranian regime, but, like, are they going to continue to back us, or am I just going to send all my men to slaughter? Right. Because, like, at the end of the day, there might be. They could probably get between 12 and 20,000 soldiers, but we don't. They don't have armor, like, they don't have tanks to drive across the border. They don't have heavy artillery. You know, they have light weapons, they have mortars, they have pickup trucks, they have guys inside of these villages and supporters all over. But if the Iranians are like, aren't occupied enough elsewhere, they're just going to send the full force of their military on the Kurdish parts. And not only will the Kurdish groups lose a lot of people, but more than likely the Iranians will just destroy whole villages, especially in the rural areas where there's not a lot of communications that'll get out. You know, like if you, if they, if they tried to, like, if they got into like Sanandash for instance, they probably wouldn't destroy that whole city. But if, if they were able to fight the Kurds in some of these smaller, you know, less populated villages, they just full on slaughter the whole village and, you know, level it. So like the Iranian Kurds saying, hey, hold up a minute, like we're not just going to jump into this without, you know, some actual backing. Like, I don't know how anyone expected that not to happen. Like I, like you saw on CNN and Fox, I was like, oh, the Iranian Kurds are behind us. It's like, well it should, it should be the opposite way around. Are we behind the Iranian Kurds? And you know, have we approached them properly and facilitated what they need to cross the border? Because like on the Iranian border, every two to five kilometers is an Iranian, isn't like an Iranian outpours, There's like a border guard, they have artillery. So like literally sandwiched on the border and sometimes even inside Iraqi territory, there's an Iranian outpost and then usually 5km behind that on a high hilltop is, you know, artillery grad or whatever else. So like if we were truly going to utilize the Kurds and build a partnership here, we need to hit these board. Like every one of those border posts should be getting bombed. And like after that there's some areas inside of the Iranian Kurdish as well as like your other minority areas where they have like QRF bases, those are pretty easy to hit too. But like we didn't do any of that. So I don't know how we expected the Iranian Kurds just to drive across the border. You know, like it's one of those things where it's like, it's wishful thinking and I don't think anyone in the admin really, really thought about it. Well, when they started voicing that and like when the leaks started coming Out.
- [58:04]
C
Yeah, they, they must have some conception that, you know, if America was serious, they would be embedding ODAS with us and sending us probing across the border and so that, like, we're in it with them, right?
- [58:17]
B
Yeah. Like, there was there, like, as far as I understand, there was none of that. Obviously there was some talks like, so I spoke with the Iranian Kurdish groups as well as some of the other minorities, like the B and the Arab. And like, there was some behind the scene talks that did happen, but it never really progressed into like, here is the support we're going to give you, whether it's like, you know, an ODA team with a JTAC or like, hey, we'll cover this area with airstrikes. So like, if they do try to push armor towards you, like, if the Iranians just try to do, you know, light infantry against the Kurds, if the Kurds are able to get into the cities in these other areas, like, it's not going to work out for them. But the biggest issue with the Iranian side is, number one, drones and then number two, armor. Like, we, the Kurds don't have weapons against armor. Yeah, you have RPGs, but like RPGs pass like 150 meters. If you're trying to hit a moving vehicle, it's not that easy. Yeah, yeah, done it, Tried it. I think I've hit maybe like two vehicles in my life with an RPG and I fired a lot of RPGs. So like, yeah, like, if we were serious about like regime change and if the admin was serious about regime change, you know, they would have approached the situation differently. I don't think we were ever actually. I think what we thought was going to happen is we bomb the out of them, kill the Ayatollah, the whole defense council, and the regime just collapses. Right. But that was a huge. That, that was about as dumb as the Russians invading Ukraine and thinking the Ukrainians were going to collapse. Right. Because like, you have the Ayatollah, obviously, who's a figurehead, but the Ayatollah is like the religious side of it. What really holds the regime together is the irgc. And like, even in like what we just saw, like, you can kill a bunch of the IRGC upper leadership, but at the end of the day, the IRGC are more of your hardliners. Like, obviously some will always flip sides, but a majority of them are not gonna, they're not gonna move away from that foundation of like, you know, Islamic Republic of Iran. We're the true resistance of the region type deal. So like I think we severely misjudged it almost on the level of like Russia trying to land all their VDV and host mill type shit.
- [60:29]
A
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D
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- [63:49]
C
So the next phase of your life, you did something that not too many Kurds can do is come down out of the mountains and where did. Where did you go next?
- [64:02]
B
So I messed around in Africa for a little bit. Boring. Just advising stuff. And then in, like, 2019, I was back in the U.S. i started up, like, an agricultural business doing, like, livestock repairs. So, like, I was huge with hog. Like, we have good beef, too, but not as large as some other states. But like, with our hog industry in Iowa, there's a lot of opportunities for, like, maintenance repair of the hog barns as well as, like, cleaning them out. Because, like, after each rotation of animals, you have to, like, disinfect it so they don't get, you know, diseases from previous ones. You have to clean everything and, like, mass. Well, what do they call it? Not mass farming, but, like, those big. Those big hog refineries. Like, while there's definitely disadvantages to them, you know, it's. It's. It's like a necessity now if you want cheap meat, basically. So, like, I opened a company up, started doing that. I worked for a local friend's construction company as well while I was doing it. And then in 2021, I was going to run for Congress for Iowa, started getting everything organized for that, and started doing, like, traveling in January, December 21, and then January 2022. And then basically that's when Russia started putting troops on the border. So I was like, well, I'm going to Ukraine. So I quit the congressional Thing, like the congressional thing was like. So I get really, I get really frustrated every time I go. So I've lived out of the US a majority of my adult life since 2014, but every time I go back to Iowa, I go back to my hometown and you know, I go, I'm a rural community person. My hometown's like 9,000 people, 10,000 people. Every time I go back to rural Iowa, I see businesses closed, I see family farmers struggling. You know, people who bought their family farm from their father. Like people I went to school with, you know, running a farm that their families owned for generations. And you know, they're struggling in debt, they're barely making ends meet. And so like in 2021, I was like, it, you know, we need. I wanted to actually try to bring a voice to like rural communities because I don't think, I don't think the Republicans or Democrats really speak for a lot of Americans, especially today. Like, honestly, like our two party system sucks. But without getting overly into politics and getting angry about it, I decided to run. I wasn't like, I was a super red district. I would never have gotten the support from the Republicans. So I ran as like a conservative Democrat. So I would go to the, I would go to. And like Democrats in Iowa outside of Des Moines are pretty much like, they're not like the D.C. democrat, they're more, they're more like center purple. But like, I would go to the, like the local Democratic committee meetings and stuff and I'd be like, okay, like, here's my view on abortion. Like some of it should be outlawed, some shouldn't. Like, you know, more women's rights thing. And then they'd always be like, what's your opinion on, on firearms? And I'd always be like, everyone deserves a gun. Like, you know, like I'm Pro2A. Like I'm from rural Iowa. Like, I grew up around firearms. My dad brought me hunting at a young age, taught me firearm safety, taught me like to respect it because it's a weapon. And I believe the right to self defense is like something that's inherent to everyone. So like saying I'm against weapons, like, that's never gonna happen. I don't think it should. I think we need less laws on firearms, to be honest, and we just need more education. Like, I'm not a fan of the ATF at all. I think they've overstretched their boundaries for years. But so I was running, I was running as a, like, probably I, I know I pissed off a lot of Democrats When I initially put my hat in the ring just because of like, I'm basic. I voted Republican, I voted for Trump in 2016. I've historically voted for Republican mayors, governors, everything. Up until that point, the only Democrat I voted for was J.D. vance. And like, J.D. vance was like, basically almost like me. He believed in Second Amendment, he believed in all that. He was a little bit more liberal on the political, on the economic side as far as like free health care and stuff. But he was like the first person that actually. I actually ended up helping campaign for him and doing some other stuff. But like, he was the first one where I was like, okay, not all Democrats are dumbasses. Like there are some. Like, not everything has to be about like D.C. democrat policy. Nothing has to be about like Republican D.C. policy. Like, we need to get back to like, like local issues, dealing with it and then pushing the local issues at like the national front. But anyway, In January of 2022, when Russia's really started pushing on the border and the US Was warning it consistently saying, hey, this is coming, I made the choice basically like, hey, I'm going to Ukraine, it's just a matter of time. And then I ended up in Ukraine end of February, and then I was fighting in March, like it was like land and like, so I crossed over from Romania. We actually drove across from like a nondescript checkpoint on like the very northeastern side. Like, like a dirt road border crossing. There was like no one there. Ukraine was like, what the are you coming here for? And I was like, they're like, what's the reason for your visit? I was like, I'm coming to fight the Russians. And they're like, haha, there's no, there's no war. I was like, okay. Anyway, I ended up in Kiev and at the start of the war, I didn't, like, I ended up with a bunch of Ukrainians. So at the start of the war, what happened is once the bombing started and everything, the local city governments and I think it was at the orders of like the Federal, like Zelensky's group. But basically it was like, if you want to defend Ukraine, show up to certain locations, bring your like your Ukrainian ID or your veterans card or whatever ID you have, and they would issue you a weapon. You get broken down into groups like Civil Defense, basically. And at the start it was just, it was, it was chaos because nobody there. There was, there was some semblance of order, but it was more of a semblance of order because Ukrainian society, not because of like policing or like, there was nobody, like, saying, go here, go here. Don't do that, don't do this. It was more of, okay, you know, we're a group of Ukrainians, and, you know, my friend said, the Russians are over on the western side. We're going to go over. We'll meet up with this person, and then we'll form an idea on what to do. You know, you didn't have chaos where people were breaking into, shot. At least in most areas. You didn't have people, like, looting stores, you know, committing heinous crimes, like it was a fairly united defense. And like, okay, the Russians, like, I'm gonna go fight. They're coming to my city type deal. And this happened in, like, a majority of the areas where Ukraine could get weapons out in time to the local. Local, like, the local people. And then Zalinsky said, like, on the 28th or March 1st or whatever it was 27th or something, he declared, like, they're doing a foreign legion. So I got put on a bus and we went south out of Kiev and then back up and over all the way to Lviv. And I didn't know it at the time, but I got brought to Yavari. So Yavari is that military base in the far west of Lviv. It was, like the main training ground for all of, like, NATO had troops there. Yeah, yeah.
- [72:31]
C
It was the one where it got blasted by ballistic missiles, didn't it?
- [72:34]
B
Yeah, like. Like three days after we. I. So I think that got hit on, like, the fifth or sixth, and by that time, we were already back in the war. So I showed up at Yavari. We get off the bus. I got brought. Like, some Ukrainians were with me. We go into the base. There's like this tent there with a guy speaking broken English. He's like, you're here to fight? I was like, yeah, I been in Keev. Like, I was fighting. He's like, okay, come here, sign this paper. He's like, you're going to be enlisting in the, you know, Ukraine armed Forces. Here's your contract terms. It was in Ukrainian. Couldn't read it. He's like, get out your phone, Google Translate. It's like, okay. I didn't even care. I was like, whatever. Just signed it. Didn't even read it. Like, no given. Because, like, I honestly thought even. Even with the. The stiff resistance at the start, I honestly thought we were fucked. So, like, I didn't give a. If my contract said, you're in the military for the next 20 years. Like, I was like, man, we're gonna have one hell of a good fight for a month or two. And then we're. But like, at that point, I was just in it, so signed my name on it, took a picture of it on my phone, and then he's like, okay, go over to this brick building. We went over there. I met a bunch of. At that point, there was like 12 other Americans. There was like a former Ranger there who had also been fighting in Kiev at the start, but he was here like six months before. I think he was going to university or something in Kiev. And then there was George in there, Viking. He's all over. He's pretty well known. And then there was some guys from. I think there was like five guys from like the 75th. So, like Rangers, there were some soft guys there. Dan Swift, the former Navy SEAL that was killed in Bakman, was there. And like, we all introduced each other, was like, you know, what's your background? I was like, dude, I was. I was Army National Guard, did Iraq, Afghanistan. Like, most of these guys are like, I was 10 years in, you know, third battle, 75th. And I'm like, me, like, they're up here. I'm like, I'm like, down here when it comes to like, like, training and skill level. Because, like, you.
- [74:43]
C
You have some insurgency experience. Experience, though.
- [74:46]
B
Yeah, so, like, like, I had more of the real world experience, but, like, to be honest, so like, even. Even now, like, I've got 12 years in war. Like, I've been actively fighting in war zones for actually over 12 years now. But like, when somebody from like an upper tier unit, like the. The way that upper tier units like your 75th, your soft guys, like Green Berets and like your SEALs and even some like your JTAC type people, when they. When you. When you watch how they do their maneuvers and how they like how they were trained, it's like I might. I might have the. The experience when it comes to like, fighting and understanding a battlefield environment. But they have like, the fluidity and like the technical skills to where it's like, like robot. Like, not robotic in a bad way, but like, you know what I mean? Like, they, like, you could blindfold. You could blindfold them and they'll hit a target at 100 meters because, like, their weapon marksmanship's on point. How they operate, how they move, how they communicate. Like, it's just on another tier level. And that's nothing against like, Marines, like your standard Marines or your standard Army. It's just like, you can. You can usually Tell in combat when somebody has that more advanced training, even guys, even like obviously some will always break. But even like guys who never had combat but they went through like rangers and they spent time at the regiment, like you can just tell, like a switch flips immediately for the ones that don't get scared. Like some people just freeze up. But like for a vast majority of your upper tier units, there's just like a flip that switches and it's just automatic. Like there's no, like, hey, come here, I need to move you over here. Like, if they've spent time in any of the upper tier units, just how they move and they do stuff, it's on a whole nother level. Even like with my experience, like I'm now I'm nowhere near like the technical level and I'll probably never be at that. Like, I'm sloppy compared to what they are and like, even with like an ak, I'm sloppy with it. But like, so we, I got in this group and like, I think there might have been like two civilians that were there. And we're like, okay, you're just like all the soft guys. Like they're going to be our ammo and just carry ammo ever for us. And everyone's like, okay, raise your hand if you want them in. Everyone's like, yeah, it. We need ammo, guys. So we're telling each other about our backgrounds. And I was like, oh yeah, I spent four years as part of like a semi insurgency fighting, fighting the Iranians and partly the Iraqis. And I was like, I can build bombs, shoot RPGs and like Soviet weapons, easy. So they're like, okay, that's interesting. And then I ended up getting a pkm. And then I went to. So originally they sent one of the Ukrainians to the warehouse to grab weapons. He brought back like the most basic. And there was like a huge argument like, where's your rockets? Where's all this? He's like, fine, you want to go get stuff, go do it. So I hop in the back of the, this troop transport truck with the English speaking Ukrainian whose call sign's Lou. And then I think it was another American. We go to this warehouse and there's this like rocket stacked everywhere. And like he's like, what do you want? And I was like, well, what do they have? And they're like, well, we have mortars over here. I was like, the mortars, we're not going to have time to deploy them. Like, let's like avoid the mortars. Let's, you know, Stay heavily mobile and quick. So they're like, we have RPGs. I was like, cool. They had M72 laws, like the new A3 model or A2. I was like, sweet, we need. And they're, they're, I think in a box. It's either six or 10 come in a box or six or 12. I was like, Sweet, we want 20 boxes. I was like, Give us like 200 laws. Put them on the truck. They're like, okay. I was like, cool, give us RPG 7s. They're like, okay, how many do you want? I was like, give us 100 anti tanks. Like, we. We basically pilfered this warehouse of rockets. I was like, give us Stingers. So we got these boxes of Stingers.
- [78:47]
A
Holy.
- [78:49]
B
We've. We found out later that when the U.S. or whatever country sent these over, immediately they shipped the handguards separate. And when they got to the Ukrainian warehouses, the handguards were not put back in the boxes. They ended up at another warehouse. So we ended up having like 40 goddamn Stinger missiles with no trigger assembly. So they were useless. But like, we found that out once we got to Kiev because we're idiots and didn't check it. It was just, hey, the box isn't open. Throw the whole crate in the truck. So we got on this. We ended up getting on like a Greyhound type bus that same day, or no, excuse me, that morning, the next morning, heading straight to Kyiv. They're like, load everything into this Greyhound bus. So there's like 18 of us on this bus. And like, we're. We packed so many rockets and munitions and everything that we're literally sitting on munitions. Like, there's no room to sit. And like, nobody knew where we were going. None of that. We get to Kiev and you can hear explosions. You hear artillery going off and they're like, okay, get in this building. It was actually a hotel right next to the Chinese embassy because they figured the Russians weren't going to bomb it because they didn't want to blow up the Chinese embassy. And they didn't. They never bombed the hotel. It wasn't. What was. It wasn't Hotel Ukraine. It. Oh, man, it was a nice one. I'd have to go look up what the name of it is. But, like, basically we were like within 200 meters of this Chinese embassy. And like, it was like, okay, we know for sure the Russians aren't bombing the Chinese or they're not going to risk blowing the Chinese up because the Chinese were still in their embassy. They didn't leave so we get there, we offload all these rockets into this hotel lobby. And at that point most of us still didn't know each other's names. Like, I mean, we knew each other's backgrounds and like, we were just usually like, hey, you, come here. Help offload this, help offload that. We didn't even zero our weapons. Like, we just grabbed our ride, got all this, went straight to Kyiv. It was like zeroed on the front line type. Like there was no time. I think maybe one of the snipers that was a former ranger, he was given a little bit of time to zero sniper rifle in Yavari, but otherwise nobody did anything. It was basically like, you know, figure it out when you get to Keefe type. That day we got in Kiev, we slept and then that morning they were like trying to figure out what to do with us. And our soft guys like SEAL Dan and some of the other rangers were like consistently arguing with the Ukrainian leadership, saying, hey, you know, let's go fight, let's go fight. We're ready, we're ready. Like basically being like typical pushy Americans. And eventually the Ukrainian command was like, all right, it you want to fight. He got on his name, his call sign name is Vadim. Got on the radio, screamed a bunch of Ukrainian and then he's like, get your shit ready, you're going to the front. We're going to go patrol a forest. So we grab all our kit, throw it in the back of these. Like LM like, like basically deuce and a half, like CAS trucks, old school. They drove us. We didn't know it at the time, but we actually got driven to the front line in Moshon. They dropped us off at the time probably like 3km from active fighting. And when we, when we initially got there, there was no, no one started shooting at us originally with artillery things. So we, he's like, okay, drop your kit. You're not going to need anything. Just get your weapons, bring ammo, bring rockets. Like, leave the rest your kit. You don't need your cold weather kit or nothing. We're just gonna patrol the forest. So we start walking through this forest and like 10 minutes in he's like, okay, we're going to the, we're gonna go to the trenches and fight and. And we're like, man, you just told us to leave all our kit behind because we're just doing a patrol. So we maybe get like 800 meters through this forest and then we start getting smacked with artillery. And I remember it was funny as like most the People took off running and, like, the artillery was going over top of us pretty far still. And I looked over to my right, there's a guy. We call him Doc Jesse for East Canadian, former military. And he's looking at me, he's like, do you think we should run? And I was like, I think we're good for a while. So, like, me and him are walking while everyone else is, like, sprinting through these forests. I was like, I'm not running. Like, there's no point. Nothing's even blowing up around us. And we're literally walking through the woods while everyone's in front of us smoking and joking. And all of a sudden you hear a whoa. Boom. They started dropping airburst rounds into the forest. And, like, I look, I looked over at Jesse and I was like, we should probably run now. So, like, we spread it out, caught up with our guys, but. But, like, it was just like one of those things at the start of the war is like, I wouldn't do that now. Like, I'd be like, okay, like, if they're shooting over top of us, they're probably actually trying to hit us. We were just like, oh, they're just lobbing rounds randomly. It's like, no, they probably knew where we were. They were just trying to, you know, grid us in properly. Like, that's just one of those dumb things where I was like, a really stupid decision that luckily didn't cost anyone their lives. So we get to the edge of this town. The town's name is Moshun. There's like. There's like a really shitty trench dug, like, waist deep. So everyone hops in it. And the Ukraine's like, yeah, we're trying to figure out where everyone is, and we're getting shot at from the Russians in this town. And, like, everyone's like, what the are we doing? So I was like, you know what it. Let's just push into the town. So I just like, take off running into the village, like a PKM. And I get maybe like a hundred. Like 100 meters in front of the trench. And I look behind me and the Ukrainians, like, come back, come back. So I run back through gunfire, hop in this trench. And the Ukrainians, the Ukrainian. Vadim was like, okay, now we go. I'm like, are you kidding me? So we. I ran back through the fire, got a machine gun position down, and then the rest of the guys pushed up. We got into this house and there was like four Ukrainians already there. The. Our Ukrainian commander, Vadim, was like, told The Ukrainians to leave. This is now our house. It was Ukrainian military. So basically, he's like, don't shoot. We're gonna stay in this house, and when the Russians come, then we'll shoot. Like, the Ukrainians were still. At that point, we're still pretty pessimistic. And, like, I don't think they fully trusted us on, like, what our capabilities were. Like, they're like, okay, yeah, your Special Forces, but, like, this is a real war. You don't know what you're doing. So we sat in that house for probably a day and a half getting, like, artillery is going off around us. Every time we would shoot a weapon, our. Our Ukrainian crime, like, okay, like, go up to the second floor. There's Russians down the road. You know, bring your sniper rifle, shoot them, then come back down. So, like, we would do that, you know, every other hour or whatever. And, like, the Russians. The Russians were like, so our. Our second story building looks straight down this road. Like, we could see 800 to a thousand meters down this road. And the Russians were at the edge of the village coming into it. And they had took over two houses at the edge of the edge of the village. And, like, they wouldn't stand. Wouldn't stand in the windows of the. Of the houses, but they would come outside and smoke cigarettes literally in the middle of the road. So, like, our ranger dude was just smacking the. Out of these rush, like, and it wasn't one or two. Like, it was, like, consistent. Like, they would come out, smoke a cigarette. And I was like, all right, shoot him. And he shot this one guy, hit him lower, mid, just dropped him, like, pelvis. Shot him. Not on purpose. It was accident, aimed low. But we had saw that there was, like, a group of, like, three. Like, the guy was alive, screaming, whatever. And there was, like, four Russians at this edge of. Edge of, like, we could barely see them behind a wall. I'm like, okay, they're gonna get their buddy. We'll let him. You know, we'll let him grab their guy so he off and we don't have to listen to him scream. So this Russian runs out in the middle of the road, and instead of grabbing his buddy, literally takes his weapon, takes his shoes, and off again. And, like, we're like, what in the. Just left, like, left this injured dude out there. So we just left him screaming. And, you know, he bled out eventually, probably a few hours later, hour later. By day two and a half, our commander at that point was like, we're out of food and water. I'm gonna go get food and water. Don't do anything. He's like, don't shoot, just stay in this room. Don't do anything. Literally like within 10 minutes of him being gone, the soft guys and the rangers are like let's up. Because like he's gone. Like we're like, he's basically was like we're in charge now. And basically it was just like they were like go up, go up on the second story. And like, you know, we know the Russians are in this building, go let off like a hundred round burst to your P cam and see what they do. So I go, I go up on the second, on the second floor where this bedroom is, there's a baby crib up there and I like move the baby crib like further back in front of the window so I can put the P cam on it. And I literally just unload a full like single 100 round burst through this PKM and just spray this building down. And like nobody shot back at me directly. And then I run back downstairs. I was like, yeah, I did it. And they're like okay, let's see what happens. They didn't do anything. So then it was like okay, let's, let's get the rockets out. And they're like okay, we have to go outside the building to shoot these. I was like, guys, you can shoot just, it'll be loud but you can shoot them inside. They're like oh back. They're like back pressure. I'm like, the back pressure doesn't matter, you know, over pressure. Bday on back blast. Just don't stand like stay downstairs, run upstairs, shoot the rocket. And like they're like no, we're not doing that. I'm like fine, I'll do it. So I grabbed these, I grabbed like a pack of the M72 laws and I go, I go up into the second, the, the bedroom again, one of the bedrooms, and I just let off two rockets into these houses down the road. Just smoked the out of them, caught them on fire, hit the roof, then hit hitting one of the windows. And at that point the Russians finally reacted. It was extremely loud, I couldn't hear. There's definitely over pressure even with laws and buildings. But like after that probably like three or four hours when things started calming down again, the Ukrainian drove back up in a van loaded full of ammo, food, water, and basically like loaded everything into the house. And he's like, he looked down the road, he's like why is there, why are there buildings on fire? And we're like, well, we got in a fight, so. And, like, he got out, binoculars, was looking, and then he came back downstairs. He was like, good job, good job. Go ahead. Like, basically do whatever the you want. Kill the Russians. And from that point on, it was basically like, we would send out, so the Rangers and like, the. The Navy SEAL guy, they'd be like, okay, we're gonna go out and do raids at night. Nobody had night vision. Like, they're basically like in pitch black. They're like, we're gonna go. Like, we know the Russians are in this house because we can see the muzzle flashes. And, like, they aren't pushing, so we're gonna push them. So they'd be like, okay, Ryan, like, go look through the window. See the chicken coop? You know, go get in that chicken coop. And like, we'll radio you or yell if we need you to, you know, lay down support by fire. And then, you know, typical lift fire, shift fire stuff. And I kid you not, like, the Rangers and this SEAL just went through that town creating hell. It was insane. And this is again, no night vision, nothing. Like, they were good. And so we did that for like seven days. And at one point, the Russians did try to push armor down the road. We had a Ukrainian shoot an end law at like a bmp. And the BMP was so close that the NLA literally just tinged off of it because the same. The safe arming distance is like 20, 20 meters or whatever. And like, it was literally blow. Like, our house is here. You could literally look out the window. It was directly below us. They had. They didn't have infantry with it. It was just. They sent a lone BMP up. It was like, okay, let it get close and then we'll blow it up from above. Stupid mistake. Luckily, the BMP drove backwards, tried to go down a side route, and then cut back up because they weren't sure what shot at them. And so our commander called in a Ukrainian tank. A Ukrainian tank just comes flying out of this tree line. And now you have a BMP facing off against the tank. The tank fired literally one shot. And I kid you not, that BMP just went everywhere, like, in pieces everywhere. Like the turret, like the top of it, where the 30 mil is just went flying. First time I've ever seen armor blown up like that. Like, that close. And you could feel the pressure off of it. So that got. That got blown up. And then the Russians were like, the tank drives back into the woods, they shoot artillery at it. Don't hit it. The Russians were dumb enough to like okay, like let's try two BMPs and this time we'll put infantry on both sides of the vehicle. So like they didn't even do like the typical Soviet behind it. They had them on the side of the vehicle. So we let them get like 50 meters from us and just machine gun the absolute out of these Russians. And like I kid you not, they, their, their reaction was just like a deer in the headlight. The bmps tried to like turn around on the road and like we were hitting them with like it was just a cluster. They didn't know, they didn't have a clue what the to do. Not once did our building get targeted in nine days by anything direct. We had a sniper that took some shots at us when we were being pretty stupid and like full on silhouetting ourselves and like, like standing directly in the building like I am right now, like torso on up just being retards. But otherwise not once did we get hit with a tank shell, not once with artillery. We had a Ukrainian tank shoot at us on, on accident. And actually at one point we didn't realize this but the Russians had gotten where we initially got dropped off. The Russians actually took that spot and then they took apart north of us from the Georgian legion. And so like at one point, at one point the, the Ukrainians in the tree line behind us like 5, 600 meters away literally thought we were dead. And we had left some guys in a trench behind us as well. And some of the non soft guys, we didn't know this at the time but a lot of them had abandoned their position when they thought we were overran. And there were some Americans, I'm not going to name names because like both, both the Americans that fled at that initial battle ended up coming back to Ukraine later. They redeem themselves in combat. But like there was some other foreigners that you know, just left us without trying to support us. Canada, Britain, like like, you know, just guys that were like not ready for you know, not ready to die type deal. And like once we, we found that out after the fact once we had gotten out of Mushuda back to the hotel and you know the Ukraine was like we're going to bring them back and they'll continue to fight. And it was basically like if you bring the guys that deserted us in combat back here, we'll probably, we'll probably shoot them ourselves because like you know they, they were our, they were basically our flank. They were supposed to like prevent us from getting you know, attacked from behind. And for like apparently a whole day, there was just nobody behind us. Like, it was just. There was nothing other than the tanks in the tree lines, you know, 2km back that they'd call up for support. There was just nobody there. Luckily, Ukrainians had backfilled where the foreigners off out of. And some of the foreigners, believe it or not, the two civilians that we took in never left the position. They were the only ones that really stuck it out there. So that was interesting. And I think one of them's still fighting here. So. So. But yeah, we did. We fought Mushon. And like, none of us got killed. Nobody got severely injured. Everyone got frostbite. Like, I remember when we, when we were pulling out, we pulled back to the trench line and it, it got to the point where it was so cold, all I had was a sweatshirt like this on, and like I found a big ass, like wood Soviet era ammo box. And I literally crawled inside of it and shut the fucking lid. And when, when we, when we were getting ready to pull out in the morning, one of the guys is doing a head count and they're like, where the is Ryan? Where the is Ryan? And I like, open this ammo crane. They're like, dude, what the wrong with you? I was like, man, I was freezing. Like, it's whatever. So then we actually had to run through artillery fire to get back out. And at that point, none of the, none of the, none of the, the guys that stuck around and actually fought, none of them were like, okay, this, we're leaving. You know, they were, they were like, it was still good. Like, we still had, you know, like, we did some good work. We killed a lot of Russians. So we get back to the hotel and at that point they had brought a bunch more foreigners in. The foreigners that came after us were, I would say, less professional minded and disciplined than what should have been there. Some of them had broken into a bar and were drinking already. One of them like, envied their rifle in a hotel room. Like, there was literally issues from the get go. So, like our more senior leadership for the like, senior leadership being like guys who had the most time in service. Because it was basically like, okay, you know, you were national Guard, so like, you're not going to be the one in charge. I was a former Navy seal. I'll do like the mission planning. And then you were like a former master sergeant, so you're going to take the actual control. So like we differentiated like the rules out predominantly. It was almost fluid. Like, nobody really said Hey, I want to be in charge or I want to be in charge. It just like fell naturally on certain people. The guys that were like the, the commanders of it basically went to the Ukraine, went to the Ukrainians, were like, hey, we don't want to be with these, like put us back out on an operation. So the next day we went to Irpin and Irpin was probably more of a force on force fight as far as like, you know, go into this town and we're going to, you know, like full on assault Russian positions.
- [97:49]
C
That's the area where the Russians committed like all kinds of heinous war crimes, right?
- [97:55]
B
So that was they, they tried, they did summon her peen. But like Bucha and another village like more west of that is where they did a lot of that. Irpine was where the Russians got bogged down in like one of the larger cities. So Irpin's here and then you have Bucha, that's like up here. They managed to get inside of Bucha and some of these outlying areas and they were pushing into Irpin. I think when we got to Irpin, the Russians had taken maybe like a third of it or it might have been like half of it. And basically at that point the Ukrainians were like, we're not sure what block the Russians are on. We know they're in this direction. Here's what we're going to do. You guys are going to take your squad, you're going to go down these roads and you know, you're going to find the Russians and you're going to engage the Russians. So we walk in initially, we walk through this field and then there's that blown up bridge that you see at the start going into. And we walk across like a little wood plank they put down it. All the vehicles are still like on the road. Some of them are blown up, most of them aren't. So we get to this little lodge area, it was like a, like a little resort right outside of European. They're like, okay, you're gonna follow us in. Like we didn't have a map. Nobody had a map. Nobody had like we had some guys with atac, but like the Ukrainians didn't do routes on attack. It was just basically like, look, we're gonna go down this road, we'll take our first left and then our first right and then we'll, you know, decide what happens from that or we'll get shot at, you know, figured out. And then it was like, we'll also maybe find out where the other Ukrainian units are because like, there's Ukrainians like all over Irpin that were fighting, but it was like a decentralized fight because again, a lot of the initial fighting in Ukraine was done by civilians, either veterans of the, you know, the Donbass war, the ATO from 2014 and they had gotten out, or it was literally just civilians that wanted to fight the Russians. And there was like a really lack of coordination and command at like the, the, the tactical level and movement of troops. So our first, our first day in our pe, we ended up linking up with a bunch of other Ukrainians. This was like actual guys in uniform and they were like, hey, up in front of us is one of the main parks of Rapine in that park. The Russians have dug BMPs somewhere on the back side of it. There's like a headquarters there. You know, be careful if you go into the area. For us, that was more of a, hey, let's see if we can basically assault a battalion sized element with 12 people and like, try to get the jump on them. Because like, from our fighting in motion, we understood that like close quarters combat, like they were, the Russians were just not even on a, on a, on any close level. So if we could get the initiative and keep the initiative going, like, we would be, we would be fine attacking a much larger, larger force. The problem with our thought process was we thought they were on the other side of the park, so we thought we could maneuver through, you know, the trees and the, the, the park and like get in close to them. What we didn't realize is the Russians were in the middle of the park. So we went up there and we sat down. Myself, I took two guys with me because I had the P cam. One guy had like a thousand rounds in his backpack. The other guy was carrying rockets and a rifle. And we get near this little hot dog stand hut, and basically I'm like, okay, I'm set. You guys can move in. I can cover you. You know, if something happens, I'll lay down fire. Don't run back to the. Like they were coming in. I'm like, right here. And they came in through the front gate on the right side. I was like, look, if you guys make contact after you cross past me, don't come back to the right. I'm just gonna unload. And hopefully, you know, hopefully they shift fire towards me versus you guys so you can run. And you guys should go to the left side. And basically these, our guys got like halfway into the park and just got like, next thing you know, is like, Just hell on earth unleashed. Like there's 30 mils from BMPs, you know, going off. You have machine guns, you have Dushka, like heavy machine guns. And like, I'm like, holy, those guys are all dead. So I'm looking to see if I can see where they went because they got into like the trees and you can't really see anything because they're thick trees. I'm like, luckily my A gunner is looking left down the road because there was no Ukrainians down there. So he's like our left, left flank. And I was like, look, if you see anyone come out, let me know. Do not shoot at them right away. It could be friendly. Luckily, the four guys that entered this park were able to not somehow didn't get hit at all. The sniper had to drop his bag and leave it. So like we lost a rifle but like none of the guys got hit. So where we were at, you have the park, you have the road that runs along the park. And then you had a parking area that dropped down and then you had where the apartments were. So I look at my two guys, I'm like, hey, we're going to fall back to this overhang. So we have like full body coverage. So I let loose the burst. Those guys run back once they get set, I then run back as well. At that point, the guys that got ambushed in the park are coming around and they, they're like 300 meters to the left of me. They jump down on the same like park embankment. And as they're running up, I'm like, hey, you know, stop. Let me, you know, do some cover. And this is all on video. Like I have this whole video, it's fucking shit. I'll, I'll try to send it to you. Like, it's ridiculous. You can see me around for like three minutes trying to prepare a rocket because I couldn't figure out, like, didn't do very good, you know, PCIs, PCs. I couldn't figure out how to take the safety off of a certain rocket. Like a. And at the time I was too dumb to read the pictures on this. Like, it's like the M72 law. Like if you actually turn it over, it says, hey, yeah, you know, there's a pin here, pull it. Like there's a little stick figure guy pulling a pin out. And I spent like four minutes trying to with this rocket as these guys are getting shot at before we had fallen back because I was just going to lob it into the park and like, I couldn't figure it Out. So I was like, oh, this Soviet just, just chucked it on the ground and gave up. But, like, always check your safeties. But. So anyway, the guys get to me and like, for them to get back outside of the kill zone, they have to run through maybe like a 20 meter road to then get behind this other apartment complex. And at this point, there's BMP's cracking rounds over our head, machine gun fire, some grenades are getting thrown, And I look at the guys, I was like, look, I'll provide you cover fire, but when you get back to that position, somebody needs to shoot down the road so then I can come back. And what ended up happening is I laid down cover fire, and then for some reason, the Ukrainian command had thought, like, there was an explosion that went off in front where I was, and the Ukrainian command thought I was dead. So they were like. And there's a video of this as well where, like, one of the guys, like, Ryan's still back there. Ryan's still back there. And the Ukrainian commander's like, he's dead. Let him be. And I like, so I got left behind. I got left behind in combat. It was me and a Ukrainian, and this Ukrainian had like, the oldest bolt action rifle I've ever seen. And so, like, you know, we're just trading some rounds with the Russians. I'm like, well, they left me. We're screwed. So at one point, I just, like, sit down behind this wall and start smoking cigarettes as the BMP shooting over top of me. And, like, they're throwing grenades and, and I look at the Ukraine and I was like, oh, what do we do? Do we go through the building? Because, like, there's an apartment complex like, 10 meters in front of us. And he was like, no, the door is probably locked. I'm like, oh. So, like, like, we're basically stuck here. What ended up happening is we decided to basically shoot a bunch of rounds, and then we would crawl our way along this embankment to get to the next block, and then hopefully there wasn't Russians there to where we could run behind it. So we, we got to the, to the end of this, this parking thing, and I'm like, man, we're gonna get smoked on this run. And mind you, I don't, I don't really run. If you ask any of my other guys, I'm like, I, I, I despise running. Like, I.
- [106:53]
D
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- [107:32]
A
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- [108:04]
E
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- [108:27]
A
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- [108:35]
B
I hate it to the point where I typically won't do it. Like if it's a small sprint, I'll do it. But I'm not quick at it. Obviously I'm fat now too because I do more of the drone stuff. But at the time I was smoking like a pack and a half of cigarettes. So like a 25, 50 meter sprint for me is like, like, like you know the thing when there's, if there's a bear chasing you, don't be the slowest guy. I was the slowest. I was definitely going to be the slowest guy on this. So I'm thinking like very dangerous over short distances. Yeah. Like, I'm thinking like when this Ukraine, this Ukrainian's like 145 pounds soaking wet. Like you can tell. He's like, I'm like, I'm gonna get like, he's gonna take off. We're gonna both take off running, and I'm gonna be the one that's in the middle of the road as he makes it to this apartment. I'm like, I'm. So luckily, we both sprint, and we get, like, just around the corner, and there's some Ukrainians there. We scared them. They scared us. And once they realized we were Ukrainians and we were. We thought we were somewhat safe, we stopped, and we're smoking at the edge of these. You know, like. Like, if this is the corner, we're, like, 10 meters set back from it, so, like, we can't get hit directly. And the Ukrainians are on the other side of the street. And what ended up happening is we're sitting there talking, and a BMP somehow managed to shoot down the edge of this road. They hit the edge of this building with, like, the. The wall with a 30 mil and just smash this dude's face off. Like, just obliterated it. And I was like. So we all ended up leaving the Ukrainians, we drugged this, you know, dead Ukrainian on the back side of the building. And then they were like, we'll come back and get him. Let's go regroup. So now it's myself and a bunch. A bunch of Ukrainians that don't speak English. I'm wandering around Irpin for, like, an hour and a half, wondering what the. The we're doing. And at one point, we go through this backyard, and all of a sudden, over the wall hops one of my guys. I'm like, what the? And they're like, dude, you're alive. And then another guy hops over, and I'm like, where the have you guys been? They had gotten stuck on the other part of the town, like, four blocks away. They weren't able to come back. Another foreign team had got bogged down in an apartment complex. But, yeah, they're like, dude, we thought you died. And I was like, no, you. You basically left me, but. And, like, it's what it is. I also got left on position in motion. So that was, like, the second time I got left behind, but not on purpose. It happens. So we fought there for a few more days, and at that point, one of the Ukrainians that I had hooked up with at the start of the invasion, his name's Ivan. He was killed in Severodonetsk. He was with a group called Arrow Rizvika, and he was messaging me on signal saying, hey, leave the legion and, like, join us. We're. We're doing operations in the woods near Ivan Keev. Ivan Keefe. At that point was under Russian control. It's that highway of death where they got stuck at. But what the Ukrainians had done is they went through the old logging forest and got behind them and were using drones to, like, hit the. Hit the Russians on the road. So I was like, that sounds sweet. I don't have to deal with dumb foreigners back at the hotel. Like, my guys were. The guys I were with were. Were good, but, like, some of these other foreigners that were coming in were just, like, not the type you wanted to go to combat with. So I ended up leaving. I told my commander, I'm like, hey, I'm, you know, I'm gonna go with these guys. And he was like, no, you're not. I was like, yeah, I'm gonna go with them. And, like, so they showed up and I just, like. I left my weapon at the hotel, and then I just, like, literally hopped in this vehicle. And we ended up over in, like, northwestern Ukraine, up in a place called Bazaar. And basically we're going through the forest up towards, like, the exclusion zone, you know, bombing Russians with drones. It was. The first month in Ukraine was interesting to say the least.
- [112:40]
C
Yeah, and how did that. That's still kind of like, I guess the early days of how this all evolved. What were those operations like and how were they using drones at that time?
- [112:56]
E
So.
- [112:57]
B
So when I was in Iraq, we had. So people. People need to understand drones were used in the fight against isis. You know, ISIS wasn't doing, like, dropper, like, bomber drones. They weren't doing a lot of kamikaze. But they would throw up these, like, cheap Chinese things at the front lines, especially near, like, Moel Telf Telar. And basically they would use them for isr and then they'd try to lob mortars at the forces. So, like, drones weren't new to me, but how the Ukrainians were doing it was definitely new. You know, I had never seen how they put the little grenade on the dji. And like, at that point I started learning, like, okay, cool. Like, and like, this is. This is all. This is all like, pre integrated system. So, like, what you would have is you'd have your Ukrainian with, like, the DJI controller, and they would be piloting it. And you'd have a guy on the radio overlooking the shoulder, you know, saying, hey. You know, radioing to the other Ukrainian units, saying, hey, this is where they're at. You know, nobody had your slip down phone, you know, where you can view your drone streams. It was all over radio comms, and you had to be pretty confident that the Ukrainian guy on the other line was like, on the. With the drone, was giving the right directions because otherwise, you know, he's going to lead you directly into a Russian ambush and you're. It was pretty. It was, it was pretty basic compared to now. But for me, seeing it for the first time, I was just like, holy. Like, you can, you can drop a grenade on somebody from 8km away. I was like, what in the is this? And it was accurate. Like the, the arrows Vidka guys had started doing drone, like, DJI drone stuff, I think in 2016, I think is when they were initially foreign, maybe 2015, and they had been like early adopters of utilizing drones as much as possible. It never really took on in the Ukrainian side initially because they were like, oh, this is like, it's not a military thing. It's, you know, you're using a commercial drone. Cool. You can see stuff. But like, we don't need that. We have forward observers. Or, you know, like, it wasn't. It. It wasn't fully recognized by the Ukrainians on why this needed, why it was needed. They were like, drones are like these big Q9 Reaper systems. It's not like everyone at the squad level should have an ISR drone. And then they also had. So that was the first. So we had gotten some 40 millimeter rounds and I met one of the engineers and they're like, hey, like, do you know how to take this apart? And I was like, like, we don't take apart munitions in the US Military. It's like, not allowed. So I, I kid you not, I, I watched these guys get on Google and they found a 40 millimeter, like, patent that showed, like, the whole system as it was, like, assembled. And then they also googled like a 40 millimeter, like your M320. They also go, it was the Mark 19 round or no, it was the M320s. But they also, no, excuse me, it was Mark 19 at that time. They also Googled like a photo cutaway of it. So, like, these engineers were basically like, okay, so we can cut into the bottom of this explosive and it shouldn't blow up on us. And then once we cut into it, we can then, you know, pipe wrench it apart and try to figure out how the safety works. So I, I kid you not. The first people that started dropping 40 mil frag grenades were this eras Vidka group. And they did it. They learned how to do it by looking at like a Google image where the munitions cut in half. And, like, a patent from 1962 or something. And, like, that's how they learned. And they did it in a room with, like, seven or eight other people. Like, it wasn't, like, there was no safety on it. There was no, like, any of this. And, like, once they figured it out, they're like, okay, cool. So they showed me how to do it, and then I started doing it for them. But, like, then they. They brought up. It's called a R18, which was, like, the very first. It's basically an agricultural drone that they had modified to drop mortars or large explosives from. So, like, I went from, like, seeing DJI's being used, and now it's like, hey, look at this. We're gonna drop a mortar, like, an 81 mortar on these guys from, like, 8 kilometers away. They're not gonna expect it. We can, like, do whatever the hell we want, repeatedly. And, like, my mind at that point was like, holy, drones are sweet. Sadly. So I did that probably till. Probably till April time frame. And then I went and rejoined a group of the legion guys, my old group, because, like, at the time, I thought drones were cool. But I was also like, I'm here to shoot people in the face. Like, I don't want to stare at a screen. I want to go. I want to go do direct action. You know, I want to. I want to go do assaults, recon by fire. So I went back and joined my unit, and we did some more operations around the Kyiv area. And then we ended up down in my live. And in my live, the Russians were near Ochaki. They hadn't gotten pushed back out of, like, the Kirson region yet. So a lot of our operations down there was like, hey, here's a Javelin. We're gonna drop you off in this village. You guys will move two or three kilometers forward, find the Russian armor, and then smoke the out of it with Javelins. We did that quite effectively, quite often. And then at some point, it went from, okay, you're doing, you know, destroying armor. Like, what do you guys think about boat operations? And obviously, the Navy SEAL guy with us was like, this is what I trained my whole life, my whole life to do. This is what I do. And, like, we had a South Korean Marine or former soft guy, too. And so everyone was like, yeah, we could do boat operations. So the goal was basically to get on these rapid inflatable, like a rib, and basically we would drive the boat or pilot the boat from our area southwest of Mikola on the coast. We were going to take A boat all the way over into Kirson and then like further south of Kirson and basically do like sabotage operations. I, the operations once we got to land was amazing. The boat side of things. I will never do a boat operation again in my life. Absolutely terrible. Like, like, I was never naval anything. So like I always, you know, like, you see the movies and like, you see the guys driving up corn quick in the boats and they hop off and blah, blah, blah, shoot people and like, it looks cool and like, even in like the recruitment videos, it looks cool. But driving a rib or being on a rib going through a dude. Yeah, yeah. Like it's up and down. Like it was terrible. It's cold. You, you get wet. Like you can't stay dry. So like by the time we got to the shoreline and it's like a six hour boat ride across the block Black Sea, you know, like number one. Like, I was like, oh well, it'll be like an hour boat ride because the boats are quick and you know, it'll be, it'll be nothing. It'll be fine. It was the worst experience of my life to be like, I don't know why anyone wants to be a Navy seal, quite honestly. Like, like any, any dealing anything with combat water and driving a inflated boat across an ocean, let alone a sea or something. Like, I, I honestly do not understand, understand why anyone would volunteer for that.
- [121:28]
C
What were those, what were those ops, like through like infiltration. This is like behind enemy lines type stuff.
- [121:34]
B
Yeah. So like Ukraine had, I don't know what you want to call them. Like they had like stay behinders, like people who literally partisans either got got. Yeah. So like, like initially I don't think it was like, hey, we're partisans. We volunteer to stay behind. I almost honestly, like the Ukrainians make it sound that way. But like in the early days of the war it was more of. We were unable to get the, out of the area before the Russians took over. We're now hiding and we're working with like our local families while we hide. Like they'll go out at night or when they think it's clear, and then they'll say, hey, you know, Russians are moving into this area. There's artillery over here. But it wasn't, I don't, I, I, There might have been some like partisan stay behind soft guys at the very start. But I think a lot of it in Kiran and some of these other areas, it was more of a. The Russians got in there so quick because the lines collapsed in certain parts so quick. That it was like just the guys were stuck there. They still wanted to fight. They knew that if they surrendered, they would get, you know, more than likely disappeared or they would never see their family again. So it's like, okay, they'll fight. So we got a lot of good intelligence and like, there's still some of these areas that it happens in. It's. It's less, it's less likely to see it in areas now though, because, like, when the Russians, when the front lines move, every village that was where that front line was is pretty much destroyed at the start of the war. Russians were able to get into some areas where, like, your infrastructure is still in place. So you still, if, if you didn't have running water, you had electricity still, you still had cell coverage. Usually, like, it wasn't, it wasn't like a wasteland because there was no, like, high intensity fighting. But like, these operations was basically the Ukrainians, we partnered with some Ukrainian soft guys from like the 73rd Naval Regiment. It was basically, hey, we're gonna take this bigger boat and then we're gonna go over to this area. We need you guys to get on these inflated boats and we'll tow you out like a cold, like a half a kilometer. And then from there you got to drive yourself because we're not going to go that way. And then basically they're like, you need to go. You'll land. At this point, somebody said it was clear here. There's no mines, there's no Russians within, you know, two kilometers. But you need to be quiet, you need to be quick, and you need to get into cover once you land. And like, basically the Navy SEAL guys, so like the, the Navy SEAL and then the Korean SEAL basically did the whole OPER planning for it. They briefed us on roughly how it would look. Didn't really tell us how the boat rides would be, but like, I don't blame them for that because we probably been like, get. We're not doing that. But like, we, we tried to plan it as much as possible internally. But like, the Ukrainian side was based like, here's your objective. Just go do it. Radio when you're done and we'll come pick you up, you know, or message on signal when you're done. Initially it was like 20 kilometer movement that they wanted us to cover. I think it was basically get dropped off on this western shore and then you're going to do a patrol all the way through this part of the area to this village. And then when you get to the village, you'll see, you know, estimate how many Russians are there. If there's. If you estimate that you can take it, take the village, you know, kill the Russians, take it over, and then either leave or we'll send more guys in. We never got to that point. This is. So I think this was actually in May, maybe, maybe it might have been June when we started these actually, but the Ukrainians didn't tell us. This peninsula is apparently like, so Kirsan, especially near the Black Sea and then some other parts of Crimea, is basically like the mosquito haven of Ukraine. So it's like, you know how everyone jokes in Minnesota, how the mosquitoes are like, yeah, the size of birds. So they dropped us on this. In this area. And I kid you not, there's like swamps around and like, it's just miserable if you dig, you. You dig into water because again, it's like, it's. It's like below the water table in certain areas. So, like, we're. You can't really dig in anywhere. There's mosquitoes everywhere. We actually had to. Literally, one of our medics had to keep giving guy blood, like injections of Benadryl because he swelled up so much from mosquitoes. I didn't find it that much of an issue. But, like, I just have a high tolerance for living in the. I guess after being in Iraq for like four and a half years, it takes a lot to really be like, this is a shitty living situation. Like, I mean, we lived in a tent on top of a mountain range. Like, nothing gets worse than that. And like, so, like, I didn't really care about the mosquitoes too much. I cared more that that boat ride was horrendous and I was wet. Like, I didn't pack an extra uniform. I didn't pack. I packed like two pairs of socks. And then a lot of guys loaded up with like, MREs. I had, like, I packed meat and cheese, which I was happy about. But, like, nobody was like, hey, you should try to like, wrap a. Wrap an extra set of uniform in like plastic bag or something because you're gonna get soaked. So, like, I'm all pissed off because I'm soaked in salt water. Nothing's drying out because it's summer and it's humid. So, like, I was not in a very good mood. So, like, mosquitoes were the least of my problems. So we got there and then we started doing night movements. And it quickly became apparent that some people, like, the non soft guys that we had with us were just eating a bag of dicks. Some guys Were like misestimated the amount of water they, that they needed. Like I brought, I brought like three liters. That's usually my loadout. Any, anytime I go, whether it's seven day operation or two days, like I just bring three, three liters of water. If I need more, I'll figure it out. Dig a hole, drink that, whatever. I wasn't having too much of an issue with it. I had more of an issue that again I was, I was wet and miserable. But like we had, we had some guys that were like running out of water really quick. So we got our first night movement. I think we got like four or five kilometers in and like the SEAL guy and the soft guys were like, all right, we have got to get a resupply. Otherwise, like, otherwise we're so luckily the Ukrainians, they, they organized a resupply and one of the Navy Seal, the Navy SEAL guy, Dan basically scouted like him and one other guy went and scouted like 3km of shoreline, found a good shoreline where like the boat can basically they can cut their engine and they can drift in so they don't alert because like if you, if you drive your boat all the way up, you can hear a boat engine for quite a ways on the shoreline. So they had found like a little alcove to where the boat can get in. They can offload supplies. And then he was able to like walk the boat back out to a far enough point to where then like they could either row and get out past the waves or they could start their engine. But like if we wouldn't have had, if we wouldn't have had those guys, we probably would have been like, I mean it was just a show. But so we get resupplied, we bury the extra food and water which is probably still buried somewhere on that beach and then we, we continue on. So the second night we had some more issues with guys and some physical fitness. I was sucking ass because like I was still wet and like getting rash. Like, I mean like you can't dry your booze. I was wearing like at that point I still had like your thick ass leather boot. Like the ones that they don't dry out ever.
- [129:57]
C
Yeah.
- [129:58]
B
And so like my feet are, I was being a little whiny. Some other guys are being whiny. So we, we found a wood line and again nobody has night vision and nobody's going to turn a light on. So we, we camp out in this wood line, just make you know a 360 everything. The sun starts coming up in the morning. And I think I actually sent you some of the photos of these. If not, I can send you some. But funny enough, we ended up camping out in a Russian position. Luckily there were no Russians there. But like it's where they had, you could tell where they, they dug the positions to like hold down your BMPs. There was fighting positions for infantry and like none of us in the night time stumbled into any of these positions. We just like literally camped out in the middle of this like brigade size. Like there was hundreds of fighting positions in this area and like we just camped out there. Nobody realized that. Luckily there were no Russians there, otherwise we probably would have died. So we ended up going to one of these villages. We spotted some Russian infantry and some Russian military. So I had brought explosives with me as well as like a battery, electrical wire. So we basically made some IEDs, buried them out in this road and then we set up an ambush. We did, we waited there for, we waited in this spot for like 10 hours. We're like, yeah, we're gonna these guys up and not a single Russian drove down that goddamn road. We didn't, we got, we got, there was, there was some Ukrainians that got engaged a little bit away from us. They took some captives but like our team didn't get fired at. We didn't have a chance to shoot at anyone. And this is like a seven day operation. So we get back to these boats or to like the drop off point or the X fill point and like guys are pretty pissed off at this point because we did all this. Didn't get to shoot anyone, didn't even get engaged. Like we had artillery and like grab rockets but like it was nothing, it was nothing to write home about. Like when we started this, a majority of us had never done boat operations. Like, yeah, this is like, this is going to be the best thing in the world. We're going to finally get to experience amphibious landing. And like it was, it was not what we expected. And so like we're getting, we're getting ex filled, our morale is pretty. We throw everything in these boats and we start leaving to go back to our shore. And maybe like an hour after driving the boats into the Black Sea, we start running into problems. The Ukrainians that came to pick us up in their lovely infinite wisdom or accidental. When we loaded back up everything, one of them had pulled the bilge plug out of one of the boats. So in the middle of the Black Sea we have a boat filling with water. Nobody can figure out why it's pitch black. There's no night vision. And like when, I mean, filling with water, like if you're sitting down in the rib, it was like up to your knees, like it was sinking. And I think at this point we're like 4km from the Ukrainian shore and now we're drifting back towards the Russians. So we're like, okay, well, or. Well, we weren't drifting back yet. So we're like, okay, we'll be able to make it to shore because the boat shouldn't fully sink. It'll just be an extremely, you know, painful next hour and a half because we're going to be really wet. And then we ran into a problem with our other boat. The boat that wasn't sinking ran out of fuel. The. When the Ukrainians left, they didn't fill up the fuel in one of the boats. So they drove a boat that was like half full of fuel. So now we have one boat out of fuel, one boat half sinking. It's just a cluster. So we, the, the SEAL guy gets. We, we like pull up to the other boat with the SEAL guy driving it and then like they do their little knot thing. So the boats are like sandwiched together tight and like, they're like, okay, let's try to radio for help. Or we'll, we'll try to get them on signal. They're looking, trying to figure out where we're at in the big ass sea. And then the Ukrainians on the shoreline are like, we can't come get you. Figure it out while we try to unfuck things to get a boat out to you. So at one point, and like at this point, the one rib that was filling with water, it was actually like probably it was started we had so much in there and we had like 10 people in it. Like it was overloaded. So then we started throwing stuff out of the boat into the water to lighten the load. Like, like the end laws we had with us and some of the other rockets. And then we had guys ditching their gear into the other boat just to try to get it back up higher. And at one point like one of the guys in the boat is like so scared that he's gonna drown that he's like having panic attacks. The Navy SEAL guy sealed Dan was like, hey man, if we strip down our kit, we can swim to shore. And like, everyone's like, that's not a bad idea. But then somebody asked him, he's like, what? They were like, what's your longest combat swim? Or like, what's your longest swim ever? Whatever. And I don't remember what he said. It was like 2km or something, but it was, like, much shorter than where we're at. And, like, I look over at one of the other guys is Dakota. I look at Dakota, I was like, man, I'm not going to be able to swim 100 meters, let alone, you know, four or whatever kilometers we are. I was like, look, I will just sit on this boat, and if we sink, we sink. If we get to the Russian shoreline. Because I'm thinking, like, if everyone jumps off this boat and starts swimming, you know, the boat will come back up a little bit because there's no weight on it and ribs are not supposed to sink, right? So I was like, go ahead. You guys can jump off and off to the shoreline. I'll drift my ass to the Russian shoreline and we'll figure it out from there. I would say we were probably within minutes from guys doing that. And like, the Navy SEAL guy is like, oh, guys, this is no problem. Like, we could do this. Like, just follow me. And I'm like, man, you're psychotic. Like, I, I, I, I absolutely hate boat operations. Like, at that point in my life, I was just like, we are so, like, this guy's nuts. He'll be the only survivor. Everyone, everyone else of us is either going to end up on the Russian shoreline fighting or drowning in seawater. And like, the SEAL guy, I'm not joking. Like, when I say he was pumped to actually attempt this, he was like, full on. Like, I can do this. You guys can do this. You know? He wasn't saying, like, yeah, you're fat, you're going to fail, or like, you don't know how to swim, so you're gonna die. It's like, oh, we'll all make it, guys. And I'm like, man, like, we're not gonna make that. Like, sorry. Like, you're positive because, like, again, you're psychotic and you're like, you're good at this, but none of us. I don't think I've ever swam a kilometer in my life straight, honestly. Like, I've swam in, like a pool, you know, which. Yeah, yeah, yeah, 25 meters. Or what's an Olympic pool? 50 meters. And like, this guy's like, you can swim four kilometers in, like, a cold water environment. At night, in. It was like, after doing seven days of being a complete show and being tired, I was like, I'm not gonna do that. But luckily, right as I think our SEAL guy was going to talk us into this, the Ukrainian that was with us got word from the command that they were sending a boat out. And so now the whole argument was how is the Ukrainians going to find us? And it was like, okay, when we hear an engine we'll start yelling because nobody wanted to white light in the middle of the O in the black sea in case there's, you know, whatever drones were close to a shoreline. So he's gonna shoot at us. The boat got close to us, we're yelling, they can't figure out where we are. So at one point, so on this operation I brought out 12 RPGs, RPG tube and a pistol. I didn't bring a rifle. I was like, I didn't want to carry rifle. I was like, I'm just gonna shoot RPGs and, and if I need to have a pistol. So the boat that we're yelling at can't figure out where we are. So I was like, I got an idea. So I pull out my little Makarov and I just like started shooting it up in the air and luckily they ended up getting to us. But like we had to get, they, they also forgot fuel. So the one boat that had fuel, so they, they, the one boat that had fuel, we offloaded the fuel into the non sinking boat that was out of fuel and then we got towed all the way back in on like a half sunk boat. Like it was, it was the only time I will ever get on a boat for any type of operation ever again. I, it was again. I don't know, I don't know what drives people to be Navy SEALs, but like all the props in the world, never again.
- [139:51]
C
No, you were pretty much done with Marops after that.
- [139:56]
B
Yeah, like I like my whole infatuation with like amphibious landings and sneaky boat operations pretty much died that night. Like I never again. I actually haven't been on a boat since, to be quite honest. Like I, I don't even, I don't even go swimming anymore. Like my, my Ukrainian wife, like we'll go to like a spa or something on vacation when we get a chance and she's like, get in the water. I'm like, no, I'll sit on the, I'll sit on the lawn chair and you know, watch you swim. Like I have no clue. I just have no ambition to get in water anymore. Like, honestly call it ptsd, whatever, but like I'm just, I'm good. I, I don't want any, I'm, I'm not going around water anymore.
- [140:42]
C
Like, so from there it sounds like you ingratiated yourself with the local culture and also got more into the drone side of things. What was sort of like the next couple years, like.
- [140:56]
B
So I ended up leaving. So. So by August, so after, after the boat operations, I ended up leaving the Legion and my guys continued on into like, the unit I was with continued on into Severo, Don Esque and then Bakmu and some other stuff, whereas I transitioned over into back doing just like some drone stuff. To be quite honest, at that point in the war, you could start to see that it was going to like, the Russians were still obviously pushing areas, but it was turning into more of a. A static line defense type stuff. But I, I honestly, I left that unit because that boat op, I was just. They were going to keep doing them and I was like, I am. Like, I'm over it. So I went back and started doing drone operations. I did drone operations probably till November of 2022. And then I ended up in Harkee with some more foreigners. Some. There was a few Swedish guys, some other Americans, and basically up there. We started helping out with the Harkey Counter offensive. We did some training with some Ukrainian units. And then a while we were up there, one of my Ukrainian friends, who's an officer, call signs Lev, was like, hey, we're starting up a assault unit, like Western maneuver warfare, you know, Humvees, infantry fighting vehicles will do it by like the Western standard and not by the Ukrainian standard. Because at that point in 2022, the Ukrainians still weren't doing. They weren't getting trained on like NATO standards. So it was like, okay, let's try it. So I ended up back in Yavari with a bunch of people. Since the first time in the war, the buildings are all blown up. So this is when, like chosen, basically, like chosen company. The unit I ran for the last three year, four years became a thing. We got to Yavariv, there was another Swedish unit that was already there, and they're like, hey, we're three, one, two. Company or team or squad. And I was like, hey, I'm Ryan. And like, we basically decided to like build out like an infantry assault unit styled after, like, you know, utilizing initiative and then like basically pushing versus, like the Ukrainian style. So at that point in time when Ukrainians would take fire from the enemy, they would just stop and like, all the. All your initiative, all your momentum and all your advantages, they like it. It would just dead end. And like, they wouldn't know how to like, you know, okay, if we get shot at, your machine Gun lays down fire and then you have your swooping maneuver, like your flanking maneuver. They didn't did that. They did. They didn't do that. At that point in time. Most units, when they took contact, everyone would get on the ground, they might shoot a couple rounds, and then they pull back or they would all try to move at once. So we trained in Yavari for a little while. Some guys went and explored other areas of the front line while some guys were in training. And then in, I think it was March of 2023, at that point in time, up in Chernihive and Sumi in the north, they were having a lot of issue with Russian infiltration, like the DRG teams. So, like your Russian soft, but like, at that point in time it was like your soft units, your VDV and some of your, even your regular army. It wasn't all like Spetsnods. It was just basically there was holes that they were able to cross into the Ukrainian side, and they'd get like 10 kilometers deep. They'd set up an ambush and they'd kill a bunch of Ukrainians. So we got told to go up there to the north and basically see what we can do to either, you know, prevent these or help solidify the Ukrainians to where, like, we can figure out why they keep getting through. We linked up with, I think it was the 1st Tank Brigade or 1st Tank Battalion, and like, we started helping them out. We quickly got bored of, you know, walking through forests, doing recon, like, because at this point we're not near the Russian border. So we're up in a place called semenivka. It's like 25 kilometers from the Russian border. 10, like 20 minute drive. And so we're like, we're basically around in these woods for no reason because 90, 98 of the time no one's here. And like, Ukrainians are moving around now. So, like, guys, attitudes are getting bad. We're trying to keep it in check. But one day up there, a DRG team got into the Ukrainian side, ended up killing like 25 or 30 Ukrainians. They called in some missile strikes, killing even more. And then they ended up hitting the town of Semenivka. At that point, they, the Ukrainians, they were like, hey, can you come out and figure out, you know, like within like an hour of this all happening, they called us and hey, figure out where these guys are or where they went, because there's no way they crossed the border. So, like, they had to walk in. So we went out there, looked at all the blown up Ukrainian vehicles, all the bodies and that are still laying everywhere because like again, this happened like within an hour. And so like we found the trail that they had broke through to get to like where they set their ambush. So we started looking around the area and almost stepped on a palm two landmine because they had set some stuff out so we couldn't follow them anyway. Nobody got hurt there luckily. And what we ended up doing is tracking these guys all the way back to the border. Basically. Like we got within 500 meters of the border before. I was fine like, hey, we're stopping here, it's getting dark. Number one, number two were like, like in 2023, nobody was patrolling the border on the Ukrainian side. In certain areas it was basically like they're not crossing so we're not gonna. If you put guys within like 2 km of the border, the Russians will just shell the out of it. So the Ukrainians, there's basically a giant gray area of like 10-15 km. Once in a while Ukrainian units would go around in there and then they'd come back, but nobody was really holding down like your frontal area. So like we were really far out in front of the Ukrainians. So at that point I was like, all right, we're calling it quits, let's go back to base and then we'll pick up where we left off tomorrow. So we get back, shower everything, build a game plan out for the next morning. Eight of us are going to go on it and then we'll have a reserves team. So we ended up walking all the way to the border and I think I sent, I might not, but I'll send you a photo of it. We get to the border and there's like the Ukrainian border signs that say hey, Russian territory. And like it's all in Ukrainian and like we're like, let's go get, let's go take a picture next to it. Like a bunch of. So like instead of being like we like, we lost all military bearings, go up, take pictures next to these signs and then someone's like, hey, we're not getting shot at. So like if ours, like if no one's shooting at us, nobody's really here either on the Russian side. So at that point like the terrorism light bulb in my head sort of went off and it was like, well, let's cross the border. So, so we take all our photos and then we took some of the border signs and then like moved them into Russia a little bit. Like haha, we moved the border and then we took a couple of them back to sea, but we stole some border signs. But so then the next morning I was like, hey, we approached our command saying hey, we can cross the border here. Our command was like absolutely not, you're not doing any of that. The only thing we heard was just don't tell us what you're doing type deal. So we formed a plan basically to cross about 10 km into Briansk Oblast and set up a, set up an ambush on one of the main MSR roads that, that like, because we could fly like a DJI on the border and we could see where they're moving traffic all the time. And the Russians weren't like going like north and then around, they were taking a road within 10 km of the border. So like we could, we could move through these wood lines and get to this border. The Ukrainians had a map of where the Russian minefields were. So we had to clear through about a kilometer of mines on the Russian side of the border and then we would basically be scot free in the woods to do whatever we wanted. So what we decided to do to make sure there weren't Russians is we ended up bringing you know, jerry cans like the, the ones on the vehicle.
- [150:18]
C
Gasoline. Yeah.
- [150:19]
B
Well, we did it. Yep. So we packed in like three or four jerry cans repeatedly closer to the border. Then we'd go back sleep and we did this for like 7 days until we moved like 20 or 30 liters of diesel fuel plus food, plus water, plus ammo and had even dug positions at the border like, like bunkers. And what we ended up doing is basically going into the Russian territory and basically starting fires at the border. And then we would pull back and go hide in our little bunkers and wait out to see what would happen. What ended up happening is the fires would, because there was no fire break and because the forests weren't managed on the border for so long, there was so much kindling and tinder. We basically lit half of like southeastern Bryansk and parts of Ukraine. Like I'll send you like we, we had a hole area that was like on fire for like a week straight and it was like we were walking through like the smoke and stuff. But the interesting thing was, and this wasn't something that we like planned for but like the minefields that the Russians had laid were new enough that when the fire went over the area it would set off the anti tank mines first off. But secondly where the, the anti personnel mines were in a lot of areas it left a divot like it sucked the earth down because it pulled the oxygen out. So I was like, aha. Like we can actually like get through this minefield. So we went and grabbed. I think it's a Veilon mine sweeper. And basically I was like, look, I'll take point. And I just basically was like walking point for like two days, marking these paths through this minefield. And what we did on the Ukrainian side, we had marked it with blue paint. And then on the, the Russian side we tied ribbons. So. So like if you're facing Russia, you won't see the paint. If you're facing, if you're from Russia facing Ukraine, if you're not paying attention, you might just see some trash hanging from the trees. So we did like a left and right limits. Anything in between that's clear. If you step off the path, you're probably going to blow yourself up. So we cleared this minefield. Probably not like the whole minefield, but we cleared a path through it probably within a day and a half. And then we went back and then we built out. We found like our little ambush spot next to the road, you know, 10 kilometers deep into Russia. We realized that there was literally no, no one was defending it. Like it was, it was, there was, there's. They weren't expecting anyone to cross the border and you know, ambush a bunch of Russian infantry guys on the road or whatever. So we ended up going back to our little like base of operations area. We built out an OP order. Basically what we were going to do is we would do like, like a offensive action and then like defense retrograde. So we, we prepared multiple positions. We would prepare multiple positions. So we'd initiate the ambush. We'd fall back 100 meters. When they would come and investigate, we would hit them again and then keep doing that all the way until we got back to the Ukrainian border. It was probably like every 500 to a thousand meters, not like a hundred. So basically we had like seven or eight like fallback positions where there was more ammo, more rockets. We brought a bunch of OZM mines with us, claymores. And basically the whole goal was like to see how far we could suck these idiots in repeatedly. It didn't work out that way. So we ended up the day of the, the, the like ambush. We brought pink spray paint with us. And once we would, after we would cross each blue mark on each tree line that we did or each thing on the Russian side, we would spray paint hot pink. So that way when we're retreating back, instead of looking for Ribbons in different areas. It's like eye level, you see two hot pink lines. Stay between it. Number one, number two. The other thing was every so often we would have the OZM mines place. So the last person that runs through a certain area, bend over, pull your pin out of the OZM so they arm. It was a great idea if it would have worked effectively. The problem is, so we, we ambushed the Russians and I, I got video of it. We hit a blacked out lot of Neva but before that we sat at like within 5 meters of the edge of this road for 3 hours and like you would have civilian traffic. There was even like a babushka that drove by on a bicycle. Luckily they didn't see us. And like at that point it's like how are we gonna. Like there was some police vehicles that drove past too, but it was like we're not there to kill the police. It's like we want to get like army, like yeah, people in camouflage uniforms. So at a certain point I was like, I have an idea. Like we had RPG 7s with us. I was like I'll go put a rocket out in the middle of the road and I guarantee you someone's going to stop to pick this up. We had a Estonian guy with us, his just call him T. He was like that is the dumbest idea I've ever heard. It's not going to work. They're just going to drive past it. I kid you not. I got out there, put the RPG down and like slid it like a slow crawling in the road, slid it, ran back to position, I kid you not. Within five minutes there's a blacked out lot of Neva coming down this road and like they slam on the brakes and they sit there for like two or three minutes like looking at it, like not getting out of the vehicle, like it just sits there and I'm like okay, like we can't shoot yet because we can't see who's inside. It could be a bunch of civilians for all we know. And I was like, I hope it's not because I don't want to pick up the rpg. Luckily the passenger side guy opens the door and he goes to get out of the vehicle and you can just see a multi cam uniform. And it was like okay, game on. And like the what was to initiate the ambush is I was going to shoot the first rocket. So he goes to get out, turn straight towards me and I'm like, he definitely sees me. So I just grabbed, I grabbed my AK and I just stand up in this full auto into this truck from like 10 meters away at max. And at that point the everyone else in the unit, everyone else on that ambush line was told, basically, once contacts initiated, shoot one rocket at whatever we're shooting at. So you just have like eight rockets come flying out of the trees and just obliterate this car. Somehow the driver managed to get out of the vehicle and he tried to run. He got around to the front end.
- [157:12]
D
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A
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E
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A
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- [158:52]
B
Under the vehicle. And he was like injured already, but he tried to run and one of my guys just smoked him, just dropped him. And so like we're just unloading on this vehicle for like five minutes and at some point I'm like, okay, ceasefire. Let's fall back thinking that, hey, we created a big enough disturbance that the Russians are going to come in and you're like, you know, qrf. So we fall back to this position where we had a machine gunner set up and then we had a couple other guys set up. I could. We sat there for probably 30, 40 minutes and like, we can still see a little bit of this road. And I'm like, where the are the Russians? And like, at this point, the Russians are lobbing artillery into Ukraine, and like, they're hitting stuff super far behind us. And so we were probably there for like 45 minutes to an hour. And at that point I was like, okay, they're not gonna follow us. So like, we fell back to the next position, waited for like 10 minutes. And like, at that point, everyone's losing military discipline. We're smoking cigarettes, laughing. And so my second in command, T the Estonian, was like, okay, we're calling the op before we all get, you know, before we end up doing something stupid and getting called caught by someone unexpectedly. So as we walk back through our little pink route, we pull the pins on the mines, thinking, you know, maybe later on they'll. They'll come down it. There was some gur, like military intelligence guys that were also with us because when we did the ambush, these guys were actually launching.50 cal machine gun fire at a military checkpoint within the city. So we all link back up, we go to cross the border, and we got maybe like 500 meters on the Ukrainian side, and then you start hearing the explosions in the woods behind us. So like, like three and a half hours after we just slotted a bunch of Russian military on this road, the Russians finally like, did something about it, and they were dumb enough to go down a very obviously marked path and tripped a bunch of mines and stuff. So we get back on the Ukrainian side and we're walking back towards our vehicles that are in a little town near Lazova is what it was called. And so we get in our vehicles, we go to drive out, and someone starts shooting RPGs at us. The Ukrainians that were guarding further away thought we were Russians, so that was a show. But we get back to base, our command is like, where the have you been? Like, what have you been doing? Because, like, the Russians at this point are like, full on smashing the border with everything. They brought tanks out and they're like, where were you guys? And like, at that point it was like, hey, here's the video, idiots. Like, we just. We've been crossing the Russian border for the past like 10 days and we just killed a bunch of Russians. And at first, like, the command was upset about it. But then they're like, you have video of it? And I was like, yeah, we have video of it. And at that time, like, two days later, the Russians had posted on their telegram, we ended up actually ambushing three Ministry of Defense officials. Holy. That we killed. Yeah, so we. We thought we just killed some random military. It ended up being like, two colonels and a major were in that lot of Neva heading to a meeting at, like, the town over, and we luckily, like, I'll send you. It's hilarious. Like, they're like, oh, it was from a drone. And I was like, well, no, here's the video. Like, this is us. Like, we're the ones that actually killed your officers. But, like, we got very lucky that, Number one, because we didn't know that they had tanks, like, on the other side of that village. Like, we didn't even think about it. We got lucky. Number one, they didn't bring armor in. Number two, they took so long to get organized that we got all the way back. On the Ukrainian side, Like, we got really lucky. It was a really risky thing because, again, there was, like, 12 of us at the time. It wasn't. We had no reserves. There was no supporting element coming in because we didn't tell anyone where we were. Like, it was. It was a not so bright idea that turned out in a positive manner, I guess you could say. Our Ukrainian leadership initially was pissed off until they got, like, the pat on the back saying, hey, good job for destroy. Like, they took all the credit, which is whatever. Like, we never. We didn't do it for credit. It was just like, we found an opening, and we took. You know, we. We took the initiative to exploit what. What. What we saw. So, like, we didn't really care about the awards. And again, like, we just thought we killed a bunch of random Russian infantry driving to their base. You know, after that, they were basically like, hey, if you want to cross the border again, you can do it. I was like, well, it's not a smart idea because, like, we literally painted a pink line across the border on how to get through their minefield. If we cross that position again, we're gonna get hit. So, like, we did some other operations there after that. We helped the tank battalion get better positioned closer to the border so that they could actually defend against the DRG a little better. And, like, the rest of the deployment, we're there for, like, another month, and it was mainly, like, help out the Ukrainians. At that point, we didn't cross the border anymore because, like, we thought that because of what we did, the Russians should have like put more stuff like they were going to be prepared next time. And like, honestly I didn't want to be trying to probe through a minefield and get shot at. So we just said it. We didn't do any more cross border stuff. We did some mortar operations, but largely we just like moved Ukrainians around into like new positions and then went and dug positions for them. So we, we ended up getting back to Yavrev after that deployment probably like three weeks later. The tank battalion commander, his call signs tankist. Odd, like dumb nickname for a tank commander, but so Tankus messaged our. One of our Ukrainian speakers was like, hey, thank you for the help. Here's some of the results of like what you guys helped us do. They ended up capturing two DRG guys and like killing like eight of them because they had moved a position actually at the border and caught him crossing. So like it was overall it was a decent operation. It was or like decent, decent deployment. It was pretty slow pace from what guys wanted. So we got back to Yavariv. At that point, half the unit was, had deployed with us, the other half had been sitting in Yavary for like three months. And like Yavre is like, it's like where, where you'd go if you just want your soul to die. Because like it's boring. Like it's. And you know, like Ukrainian training isn't like go shoot ammo every day. It's like go yell bang, bang every day. So doing that for like three months when like the guys just wanted to fight. And like they were at that point, some of them had been there for like six months. So like they were like gearing to like fight. So we get back, we talk with command and so at this point I. So because I was deployed with guys, they had put another person who I didn't know in charge of the rest of my unit or my guys back in Yavari. And the guy was a complete Canadian. John, if you watch this, you can go yourself. Same with you British John, you're both. But so we got back to Yavariv and there was like a pretty big falling out with the Ukrainian leadership because of who they put in charge. Because they didn't ask anyone. They're like, this is who we're putting in charge. One of them was a former artillery officer that had his head so far up his ass, the Canadian. And the other one, while decent with infantry stuff, honestly had a very huge alcohol problem. And you know, there were times where he had gotten drunk on the military base, which you're not supposed to do, and had threatened people, got in a fight with people. Like so like when I got back to Yavre, it was like full on, like almost to the point of mutiny with, with the guys that were back there. So I ended up getting everyone in our big like company tent where everyone slept. I said look, if you guys want to, we have an option to go to the 59th Brigade. The 59th Brigade is a fair. At that point was fairly well known. The brigade commander, I think he's A colonel now, Colonel Sukarevsky, he was one of the initial officers in 2014 that said the separatists, like they, they fired the first shots against the separatists. It was his unit. They also defended the Luhansk airport, not the Donetsk one where cyborgs, you know, that cyborg thing happened, but they defended another part and then they took a lot of, they did a lot of work at the start of the 2014 issue. So they, they, he was a fairly well known commander, didn't put up with a lot of. And basically like when I contacted him he was like, look, if you want to do storm operations, like, like have at it, like more than welcome. If you're volunteering to like do frontal assaults, we'll let you do whatever the you want. Like, perfect, we need that. So I got the guys around in the tent and I said basically like, look, anyone with military experience, you're welcome to come. If you don't have military experience, sorry, like, sorry, we're not taking you because like what we wanted to do was literally it's not something you don't want to bring guys without experience in. Because when I say frontal assaults, like we basically said to the 59th Brigade, like we will do full on frontal assaults, whether it's through open fields or whatever. And our whole goal, if we were going to move to the, if everyone, if we had enough people that wanted to move. Our whole goal to move to the 59th was to basically show that you can build out a foreign contingent that can do, you know, they, they, you could be the sledgehammer of a unit. So like when there's an issue, send in the foreigners, let us go everything up and then, you know, we'll come out and then you guys can put your defenders back in. So we didn't take anyone without military experience except for one guy, he was a Canadian Ukrainian. He spoke fluent Ukrainian, fluent English and he also was extremely disciplined and he caught on quick. We took three foreigners, but two of Them had deployed up north to us. So otherwise the majority of the unit was all foreign. Obviously everyone in the tent that was prior service is basically like, yeah, we'll join you. It's, it was for a while known as Ryan's Rebellion because we basically all went straight to the battalion headquarters, walked in his office and like, like I talk with them now, we're friends now basically we had some choice words that were said and basically said, you either cancel our contracts right now or we're all just going to go awol to the 59th anyway. It probably like hindsight, it probably should have been handled much, much more respectable than what we what like what happened. But it is what it is. So within a week of all of us basically mute like rebelling against the command, we were on a bus heading to a Crows basically. And I, I think we, we might have overestimated ourselves a little bit at the beginning. But like so we, we got there. Our battalion commander, his name was Kozak, he had, had been in command of the reconnaissance Unit for the 59th Brigade for a while, was previously in the military before that as well. So he's had experience. We initially got there and within like, so they, we had contracts within like two days which is unheard of in Ukraine. And then we had weapons within like three days. And after that he was like hey, you have two days of training for a trench assault and then you're going on your first assault. So like five days from signing a contract, it's like Dubai, you're gonna go to a frontal assault. We were like okay, perfect, not a big deal. Here's the list of equipment we want for the assault, like rockets, all this other dumb. And at that point a lot of us haven't hadn't done like a full on trench assault because most of the fighting in 2022 was you know, CQB in urban environments or it was like tree line to tree line. And like there wasn't always like in the east of Ukraine because that's where the front line was. You had actually like developed trench systems. So like you would have 50 to 70 meter long trenches, they would have bunkers in it, they would have firing positions, they would have wired radios into them. So like you actually had like full on trenches where in the west, like north of Kiev or even up in Sumi. A lot of those trenches were like you know, knee deep trenches that were just hand dug. They weren't, they weren't very good. So we go out to do this first operation, I think we called it Mars. It might have been, I don't know what we, I think it was Mars. So it's myself, Dave and four other guys. So a six man group. And basically we didn't plan this one, the Ukrainians did. We let them do it all however they wanted. We were gonna infill on foot. So we got dropped off like 2km away, infilled the rest of the way through random trenches and then like sometimes you'd have to sprint across open ground. We get to this trench line and we meet up with the Ukraine that we're supposed to. His name's Cop. Cop is like, okay, like Kozak told you, tomorrow morning we're going to bring some tanks up and some heavy machine guns. We're going to shoot at the Russians to your right. Like it was like a position that stuck out in between like a Russian position here, here and then you had Ukrainian up here. But basically what they were going to do is they would pull the tanks up and the heavy machine guns and they'd shoot at the Russians on our right flank. And then we were supposed to hop over top of the trench and run like a hundred meters into machine gun fire to take the enemy trench. And like none of us at this point were like, no, like it, let's do it, let's see how it goes. We can handle it. So we get woke up in the morning like 5am everyone preps their stuff and what ended up happening is they pulled the tanks forward and before this operation could even take off, it was just an absolute cluster. The Russians on the right side had managed to get even further down. So now the trench that we were in, they could shoot RPGs and stuff straight down the trench line. It was just a total show. The command ended up saying, okay, everyone needs to fall back, include like basically abandon the position. The assaults called off, we, we got stuck there for like two hours just getting our, pushed in by the Russians. None of us. I, I got hit in the face with some minor debris. So like we all tried to like crawl into like this one little dugout and like it, it was mainly meant for like two people and we had like six guys crammed into this. And I'm at like the front of it and like I'm in this, I'm inside, but like I'm not inside because there's not enough room. A mortar goes off right above on the other opposite side of the opening and like I just get smashed in the face with rock and dirt. My eye up because I wasn't wearing eye pro. Because I'm a dumbass. Like wear I pro, it'll save your eyes. But like, well I, I, I'm mainly okay mine now I have like 60 vision but I also got hit later on in 2023 again in the eye and that sort of it more but so we ended up getting X filled. We get back to base and like some of the guys that did that operation had never been in combat. So like we get back to base and some of them are like what in the did we sign up for? But it was, it wasn't in a bad way. It was just like, like one of the guys like I had to tell Dave's gonna get mad about this but I don't know if you've ever heard about Chosen company Aussie Dave, the one that's always like screaming stuff and when he's like in combat, like when we were exfilling we were getting shot at and like you would hear it snap above your head and like I would get down and this kid had never been in combat before and he's just standing there. I'm like dude, like they're shooting at us like that, that noise is the round coming over top. Like you need to get down. Like they are directly shooting at you. And like he had never heard what it sounds like to be actually physically shot at. So he was clueless on it. I think he was a little concussed too from all the artillery, all the artillery rounds we ate. But like it was just like we got back to base and all the guys at base were like, yeah, did you guys like, did you like, was it successful? And we're like, man, like no, we got obliterated basically. Like they wiped the position off the map. Luckily the command wasn't mad at us because it wasn't really like, it wasn't like they're the ones that told us to leave the position. So then they're like, Kozak comes up, it's like, okay, you have two more days, you're going to try another position. This time we're not going to wait. Like once you go out there you're just going to go like no, no wait overnight, just full on go. And so I were, I basically told Ryder, who's a Ukrainian Israeli, I was like, okay Ryder, tell him that if we're just going to launch assault, let's just do it with the humvees instead of getting dismounted. Because we have, we have the old, we had mostly the two door humvees. So like, you know like your, your front's Armored and then the whole back's open. And then we had two like gun truck Humvees that you can mount a 50 cal on or mark 19. So I basically told Ryder, I was like, look, tell them we're gonna take three humvees in, we'll have a gun truck in the front and then we're just gonna stack as many people in the open top humvees as we can and we're just gonna bum rush the position. Like I want the Ukrainians to drop us off on top of the enemy, like 5 meter, like as close as they can drive. Like we're just gonna pile out of these humvees directly into the Russian trench, like within 60 seconds in the trench. That video I believe is on YouTube. It went extremely well. We, we spent two days basically rehearsing like how to dismount out of a open top Humvee so that nobody would eat and people would like, if, you know, if you're on the front right and you're on the front left of the back end, you know, like you're filtering out the doors and then you immediately cut down and start covering. But you have to get, you know, get out of the path so people can keep going. So we did, we rehearsed for two days. Operation went off flawlessly. The, the Russians just didn't know what the was going on. A majority of them tried to run away from the position and unlucky for them, they literally ran out in front of our gun truck and like our 50 cal machine gunner just ate lunch on him with like a whole belt from like 30 meters away. Just like just laid down religious hell on them. And like you can see in the video where they, they try to scoot out but like the rest of them fled another direction and anyone else in the trench, it was like pretty, it was, it was like, it was like done within like 10 minutes. Like we had taken the trench. So then they called out Ukrainians, Ukrainians came out and then we off immediately out of the trench back to our base camp. Command was like, holy, it works. Can you guys do it again? And we're like, yeah. Like as long as you give us the vehicles, we will drive. Like, as long as you, you have the armored vehicles, we'll do the planning. Like, give us what we need, tell us what the objective is, and as long as you drive us directly up to the front line into the position, we will storm it. It doesn't matter where out on the front line. Our next operation was basically to try to take back a Village that they had lost per. So this is like 8km from Donnet City. So it's like at the very. It's been like a battleground. It was a battleground area up until February, March of 2024. So it held for two years basically under constant attack. And actually 2023 we were able to push line even closer. At one point a Ukrainian unit got with like within 800 meters of the Donetsk airport. So like we like the line got pushed back. Yeah, and I don't think it's fairly well known like that that was going on because like when all of this, these assault operations were happening, you had the southern offensive happening in robotny and then you had like the Bakmu defensive happening. So like we were like this little. It was, it was not like a sector wide operation. It was like the 59th Brigade worked with like one or two other units and it was like, hey, let's push our front as well. And we did decent work honestly for up until the ABA counter offensive. Then it turned into more of a. So, so we did, we. We attacked Paravas. We took back on our initial. On our initial village attack, we cleared well so on. On Parable Myus 1. The whole thing was basically clear every position up to what we call called Objective Kyiv. Objective Kyiv had like a backyard pool, so it was fairly easy to figure out which building you were in. In reality, the command wanted us to clear every bunker on the way up. In reality, what we devised as a strategy, it was myself and he was sadly killed on the next operation. But Andrew Weber, he was a former, I think officer in the 173rd. Our strategy was basically like instead of stopping to engage each bunker on the way, we would basically run the gauntlet through the Russian positions. And then once we got to the objective, we would radio that were at the objective and then we'd send teams back to back clear the positions because like in these houses they would sandbag the front of it. But they never had any fighting. Like once you got around behind them they could, there was no. They couldn't really defend the position because it's basically an open doorway. You can throw grenades in it. So we basically it was sprint through or like move as quick as you can through this village. If you get engaged, engage and keep moving to get to the objective. Once we got a foothold of the objective, then we'll send like four man teams backwards to back clear the Russian positions. That way they're not behind like sandbags. It's basically like a more even fight. Number one. Number two, again, like if you get in like with Irpin motion and the other CQB environments, if you can hold the initiative and you can have like the violence of action. The Russians don't have good NCO core. So like they just, they melt. Like they don't understand what to do. And when you get intermixed in their lines, it makes it even harder for them to understand like what they should do. So it's like, it's like, for lack of a better example, like shooting school children because like they just, they just don't, like they're, they're just like, they just stand there.
- [184:06]
C
Yeah.
- [184:08]
B
So we got to objective Keef and like we didn't take a single contact. We were throwing grenades the whole way in. Like the basement, like the cellar basements from the blown up houses. We didn't get shot at a single round until we got to this objective. Once we got there, I pushed a two man team even further past the objective than, than what we realistically should have. And they got engaged from a house that had a bunker system in it in a tunnel. So they're off engaging that and anyway we engaged this house for a little bit and like the videos online with it, you'll see it. And then they come back and then on our X fill, we basically back cleared all these positions and not a single Russian in these, these other positions turned around and fired at us. They would hide in the houses. Like I went, we, we found a machine gun position where there was like two P cams in it. And I went to reach in and grab the P cam and like start looting the out of this building. And there's literally a Russian in a feudal position under the stairwell. So like I'm like, oh, I lean back, grab a grenade, just chuck it around the corner and chested him with it. Like they just didn't know what the. I don't, like they just didn't know what to do. Like they just lost all.
- [185:27]
C
Yeah, they weren't trained.
- [185:28]
B
All sense of anything. Yeah, yeah. I mean it was. Well, it was like the Vostok battalion. Like some of them had experience but like they just didn't have command and control. Like once they just didn't have. Nobody could tell them what to do. They didn't know what to do. They didn't. And like the Russian military as well as the Ukraine military is really bad at like seizing the initiative or like, you know, making, making decisions without a commander. So like it was literally like nothing. Like it was piece of cake all the way back, just slotting Russians, and it was probably like 800 meters. We had to clear back through.
- [186:06]
C
I mean, yeah, you spent a long time fighting. So tell us how that leads into where you are today.
- [186:16]
B
Yeah, so. So we, we did assault operations up until. Probably October of 2023. And at that point, the Avdiivka counter offensive happened, and we were basically like the southern flank for avdiivka. We got absolutely mauled by the Russians. So we were. We were never set up. So we. We never trained for defensive operations, which is probably largely a failure on my part for never doing it. Our whole agreement with the 59th Brigade was always like, hey, we'll go out, do an assault. We will, you know, get the foothold. We will kill everyone up to that position, and then we will radio in, and then you need to send Ukrainians within, you know, six hours. If you don't, we're just gonna off out of that position. We're not here to defend it. We're here to kill everyone and make it so you can defend it. Like, basically, we were just there to assault. Like, we didn't. We weren't going to defend anything. If we assaulted an objective, we took a foothold, and then we had to temporarily defend it because of a counter assault, that's fine. But, like, we never. We trained every day, seven days a week on trench assault, cqb, dismount, getting in and out of vehicles, like, nothing but assault actions. We never once trained for defense. And like, that's probably as. As being a commander, that's like my, my up. Because what happened later on in 2023, because the lines were faltering and the Ukrainians were taking such high casualties, we basically got used as a. As gap fillers. So the, the Ukrainians typically knew if we got into the fight, we would stay in the fight. And that's regardless of like. Like, we did one operation where we had 48 guys go out parabola minus two. We had two killed on that operation, Andrew Weber and Lance Lawrence. And then 44 people got injured. Instead of retreating, we did like, a retrograde defense where people basically fought their way back to the Ukrainian side. And then even after, we didn't actually pull out until the next morning, so we had guys with gunshot wounds, half their calf muscle blown off, you know, still gunning it out with the Russians. And that's like one operation. We had another operation where we lost another good soldier, Gimli. We assaulted a position, took that position, and then we realized that if we didn't take Another position nearby that if the Ukrainians came into this position, they would likely get overran. So we attempted to attack another position after we had just got done clearing two positions. Ultimately we lost one soldier, Gimli, in that, and we had six or seven guys severely wounded. But like, typically, like the Ukrainians knew that if, if we got somewhere and there was a fight, we were going to stick it out and fight. It doesn't matter if it was like three tanks driving through a field at us. Like, the guys, we don't run. It's just everyone, everyone knows, everyone's disciplined enough to listen to the team leader that's in that position to say, hey, you're either falling back or no, like, this is where we stand, this is where you stay. You're not leaving it. So, like, we started getting used as the, the last ditch effort to prevent line collapses. We got repeatedly abused insofar as we would go out and take a position back from the Russians, they would move the Ukrainians in it, and then within hours we would get called back. Like, we cleared. We cleared one position like eight times in one goddamn day. And instead of the. The upper sector command at the general staff level saying, hey, you have permission to just avoid holding that position anymore, you know, they basically forced the 59th Brigade's hand saying, no, you need to go get that position back. Like, the land is more important than your lives. So we got pretty beat up from October, you know, October, September, like, October, November, December, January, February. So up until that point, we had basically lost like three guys, like killed in action on assault. Everyone had been wounded. We had like a 90. We, we joke around that there was like a, like a 98 injury rate, but we had like an 85 injury. If you went on an operation, if 10 people went out, eight of you were coming back with a bullet hole or fragmentation. We had guys, literally, we had one soldier get shot in the leg, went to the hospital, three days later, was back on an operation where we would just patch them up in the field if it started bleeding again. Like, it's just what we did. We did it for seven months straight. But once we started getting utilized for defensive measures, we started taking casualties fast. We lost. 11, 11 guys in three months. But, but again, like, it, it was, it was sort of a root. I like the 59th Brigade in the command, so, like, I don't want to blame them because it wasn't them. It was a. It was above their pay grade level. But, like, we had this agreement where we would be the assault force and then your Ukrainians would defend it. We were perfectly fine, you know, re. Clearing positions when it made sense, when. When it tactically made sense to, like, hold that position, it made sense, you know, we would do it, but, like, we would go out to positions that were like a dick out in the middle of, you know, three other Russian positions surrounding it. So that sort of grinded my gears for quite a while because we lost some good men for no reason other than somebody at the General staff level having their head up their ass. So in February 2024, I had a meeting with some of my other NCOs, and we basically put it up to a vote. Like, I don't ever make my own decisions. I always put it up to vote for the men because, like, yeah, I'm. I'm leading it. But when it comes to, like, making decisions on how we. How we're going to operate as a unit, as a whole, as, like, as our little family, I always leave it up to the men to decide. We put it to a vote. If we leave the 59th and then we take up an offer from another organization in Ukraine, it was pretty much a unanimous vote at that time to, like, basically say, you know, the last nine months was an honor, but, like, the deal we had is no longer the deal we had. Right? We're not. We're not going to put up with it anymore. And quite honestly, I made it very clear a few times out in the field, like, we. We. The positions that the 59th was meant and was. Was. Was told to hold were positions that held no strategic value, held no tactical value. And it was just. It was not a decision that anyone militarily would make. It was obviously more of a political statement on, you know, every meter at any cost. And so, like, the decision to leave the 59th was unanimous one, because, like, none of us signed up for that. We signed up for
- [194:41]
C
strike operations.
- [194:42]
B
Proper military. Yeah, like, proper military operations. That made sense. Wasting lives is not tactically proficient in anything. So we did what we could. But when it, you know, when. When it was very, very obviously clear in February 2024 that the very upper leadership was going to waste manpower at that point, it was like, we're done. You know, it's not. It's not worth it. So land. Land, like Ukrainian land, obviously is always worth it, but there's a point where you say, is a hundred meters worth worth a thousand men?
- [195:24]
C
Right?
- [195:24]
B
You know, or is it better to pull back, create a kill zone, and then make the Russians fight through that hundred meters and that wasn't happening. It was basically, you need to go out on position, you need to sit there and hold that. And like at that point it was just not, it was no longer acceptable. But so we took, we took an offer to join another organization. I can't go into
- [195:50]
C
what the name
- [195:50]
B
of the organization is. It's part of the Ukrainian military, Ukrainian defense, to do drone operations. So then we went back to Kiev and we spent six months. So some, some guys stayed in training. Some of us, like I went and did some operations with the organization
- [196:14]
A
in
- [196:14]
B
regards to some other stuff that I had experience doing from Iraq. But a majority of the guys went back to Kiev and they went through like three months of drone school, drone training. We had to do a assessment course and then we did a month of like training at one of their operational centers. And then our first deployment after we joined them was for drone operations back to Pakros, believe it or not, basically where we just were. But at that point all of the area that we had fought for was basically gone. The Russians after we left in February, the Russians in March, April and May basically steamrolled that whole sector. They took celadove almost without a shot. Like they basically collapsed the front lines and like they got to where they were up until recently with the Pakro stuff. And honestly that's largely just because of how much, how much we wasted trying to hold that neveleski and pair of my surround. If they would have pulled out sooner, we probably would see some different things. As far as the eastern land goes, like Picros might still be Ukrainian. Instead we got it treated on a zero sum piece of land out in the middle of a field. But we deployed doing drone operations, I think drones was. So we had drones in the 59th Brigade, but we didn't fly them. So when we would do assault operations, we would have an ISR team for every, for every like four man fire team. We had one DJI team, we, one bomber team. And then usually we would have FPVs. So like our, all of our call for fire instead of artillery, it was like, hey, we're getting hit with machine gun fire. Fly a drone into it right now or drop a bomb on it from a, from a bomber drone. So like we understood like from the infantry side of it, but I don't think we really understood how complex and how quick the drone warfare aspect was moving until we started doing it ourselves in 2024, like for the, for the FPVs. I never worked with an FPV up until 2024. Like actually sat there and flew. I mean like I flew it, but like when it comes like programming it and understanding like your, your radio frequencies and everything else, like that was, I was like, okay, cool, I can take off. Like, woo. You know, I never did an operation with it. So like going through the school, it, the, the initial school we did was four weeks and by the time we got out of that four week school, everything that they originally taught was already changed. Like that's how quick in 2024 drone warfare was changing. Like almost every week. Like it was like, like your frequencies would change, your tactics in regards to how you engage the enemy would change. Like air repeaters were showing up, new flight software that Ukrainians were creating. Like every week there was like a new innovation. So like it was, it was from an infantry standpoint. It was like, it was based like, like infantry stuff is going to be screwed. Like, you know, it's, it's going to put a halt on everything or it's going to make the cost extremely, extremely high.
- [199:54]
C
Ryan, as we start to like wrap up here a little bit, you've had some wild experiences in life and you know, you're still in it over there in Ukraine. Where do you see yourself going next? You're still with this drone unit as I understand it. What do you think is next for Ryan?
- [200:12]
B
So, so we, so we, we shut down the unit. So there was some other issues with some unit that we worked with where we basically called it quits publicly with Chosen Company at least as like me being a full on commander of foreigners. Due to largely what I would say is like some Ukrainian command issues, not within our organization, but like an organization that also more like a land forces, like your army, army type. I disagree with some of the way that they utilize manpower and still do. So we shut down chosen company in 2025. At the same time we had guys who have been fighting here since 2022, like me. They wanted to move on from Ukraine for a little bit. They were burnt out due to some of the bad, poor decisions that were made. So in 2025 we actually started up an advisory group based out of Europe to basically teach drone tactics, drone awareness, how to counter drones and like to help show like the evolution of how drone warfare was in like 2022, 23, 24, where it's at now and where it's likely progressing. And we mainly started it up to help bolster like not so much the American side because like we're never going to learn. Like, and I say this all the time, and it sounds terrible, but for the American drone warfare program, like, we're getting there now, but for us to fully embrace and fully understand it, bodies are going to come home in boxes. Just like in Iraq with the IED threat and how it took three years to get V bottoms. Like, we don't make changes to our doctrine or recognize threats until America.
- [202:04]
D
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- [202:43]
A
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Americans come home sadly and usually that's coming home, you know, disabled or not breathing. But so we started it up mainly to teach the Europeans saying, hey, like, you know, your eastern border is with Russia. If you don't understand and respect what's happening here and like learn or try to engage with the Ukrainians to learn what's going on. Yeah, like you're going to be like, you're drones. Like, I. I'm a firm believer that you can still do maneuver warfare in a drone environment, but it takes a lot more planning. Now. There's a lot more data that your commander and, like, the command staff have to sort through to understand what the drone threat they're going to face is. Like. There's a lot of nuances to drone warfare, and it takes a while to learn. And, like, what you're seeing now in the Middle east, like, now they're like, oh, shit, maybe we should have paid attention to, like, interceptors. Like, not necessarily, like, Ukrainian interceptor technology is the greatest, but how Ukraine has integrated interceptors with radar groups, with early warning, and, like, the expertise on how to properly engage your shahed or whatever drone. Like, that's what they need. Like, they don't need Ukrainian technology necessarily. It's all of the experience that Ukraine has earned in blood. And, like, I think now some countries are changing, but, like, the future for me, personally, like, I've. I've lost 16 guys under my command. Sorry.
- [205:25]
C
That's okay. It's been a long war and, you know, you guys were in the thick of it.
- [205:32]
B
The. The future for me is I'm going to stay here and fight until the end of it. I think, Like, look, I've asked a lot for the. The men under my command. A lot of guys have been severely injured. There's 16 guys who died, so there's 16 families, plus wives, sons, daughters who will never see their loved one again. For me to quit now, in my opinion, is dishonorable and wouldn't. Wouldn't show the respect that those men deserve. So I guess I'm. I'm in it to win it. And then, to be quite honest, I'll probably go after Russians in whatever country they're into. It'll probably be Africa. I really don't give a. I'm at the point in my life where I. Trying to phrase this politically correct. I'm at the point in my life, I've been here four years. I've seen what the Russians have done to the civilians here. I'm at the point in my life where if you're in the Russian military, you deserve nothing but death. So I'm going to follow wherever their military goes. I will support whatever group, whether it's the Tuareg rebels, the Syrian government, whatever group, just to kill the Russians. At this point, like, I. I just have. I have nothing that, like, that's. That's my motivation, honestly, at this point in life, Like I did like what they've done here in Ukraine, what they did to the Syrians, what they're currently doing in Africa, like the Russian military and the current Russian government is, is applied on humanity. So the more of them that I can either send to their deaths or back home disabled and, you know, block the Russian geopolitical, you know, I'm gonna do it. Some people might disagree with that, but like, you know, it is what it is. Like, this is, this is just, this is how I feel.
- [208:00]
C
Yeah. I mean, they're just thugs and butchers. There's not anything there to admire. And I mean, there's like one part of me that I can feel a little bit for like an 18 year old Russian conscript. It's not their fault that their government's a bunch of. But at the same time, it's like if you're serving that, that country, then I mean, you're a legitimate target. And you know, just like you and I were when we were in uniform, you know.
- [208:25]
B
You know, I used to, I used to think that. But like the, the thing is, is the ones that are committing this, the one, the ones that are in Ukraine aren't your 18 year old conscripts.
- [208:37]
C
Not anymore.
- [208:37]
B
Yeah, yeah. Like your, your conscripts that got mobilized in 22, 90 of them are dead, man. Yeah, they're dead or they're wounded. And back in Russia, the ones that are coming to Ukraine and the ones that initially invaded Ukraine and the ones that were in Syria, they've been motivated by money or they're motivated by this whole Russian superiority.
- [209:03]
C
Yeah.
- [209:03]
B
And like, like, it's just, it's not like I, I'm not, I don't hate all Russians. Like there are good Russians. But like if you voluntarily join the Russian military at this point because it's a paycheck and you knowingly know you're going to go kill civilians and you're fine with your government flying drones and missiles into schools and apartment complexes nightly. Like, you don't deserve any, any sympathy when you get killed. Like, I honestly hope, like all the drone videos where you see Russians getting hit, I hope, like I hope it continues and I hope we increase the death rate to like a half a million, to be quite honest, a year. Because like, they don't deserve to live in this world. Like, if you sign up to go kill people for money, it's inhumane. Like there's, there's no. Like, it's one thing to sign up to defend your country, it's another thing to sign Up, Say, hey, you know, there's. Even if it's something as stupid as, like, there's an existential threat for Ukraine being a country, I can understand that. But, like, when. When your military is signing up to make basically what amounts to blood money.
- [210:15]
C
Yeah.
- [210:16]
B
Like, that's not a professional military. That's just a bunch of thugs.
- [210:21]
C
Ryan, I don't know how public your group is, but is there a place that, like, if people wanted to hire your consultancy firm for this drone stuff, a place that they could go to find you guys?
- [210:32]
B
Yeah, so we do have guys that are off contract that do a lot of that, because I am on contract. I don't really do much of that. But, yeah, I can. I can send you, like, an email and, like, our pamphlet on that, too, so. Okay. Yeah, a lot. A lot of it. A lot of it's like, just the very basics, you know, like, hey, like, here's what a drone is. Like, here's how to count. Like, it's not. We don't. We're not teaching, like, civilian stuff like that. Although, like, to be honest, people in general should understand what drones are because, like, we haven't seen terrorist attacks yet with it, but, man, like, yeah, it's coming. It's coming. Like assassination attempts. Like Trump. Somebody keeps trying to kill Trump every six months. Luckily, they fail. Whether you, like, the president or not, nobody should be trying to kill our president. But, like, the drone threat to sitting heads of state, it's there. And, like, it's. It's coming quick. Like, I, like, I think within the next year, somebody ahead of state will be assassinated. Well, who knows where? Europe, Africa, South America. Like, it's coming. Somebody's going to get killed with an FPV drone or a bomber drone.
- [211:44]
C
Well, Ryan, thank you for sharing your experiences with us today. And I hope our listeners take away a lot from this about the future of warfare and how things have developed, and you should consider writing a book at some point. This is a wild, wild story so far, and I hope you stay in touch.
- [212:06]
B
Yeah, definitely. Hey, thank you again. Hopefully nobody thinks I'm too big of an asshole for that last Russian part.
- [212:11]
C
No, no. It's natural to be angry about some of this stuff.
- [212:18]
B
Yep. All right. Hey, thanks again.
- [212:20]
C
Yep. Everyone else out there, we will see.
- [212:22]
D
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