Elite Canadian sniper leaves family behind for Ukraine
A few days after the elite Canadian sniper Wali arrived in Ukraine, a SWAT team raided his hideout, where he was holed up with fellow foreign fighters.
“Despite being undercover, the population had alerted the authorities,” he said. “It was an experience that shook people up, having been shoved to the wall and sometimes to the ground with a boot close to their face.”
The SWAT team confronted him in Russian and Wali said he thought he would be captured as a Russian soldier and probably killed.
“Soldiers in the house put their hands up in the air like prisoners. One of the volunteers was talking to his wife on the phone. He was slammed to the floor.”
Pretty quickly, however, the SWAT team gathered that the group of foreigners was there to help and, at last, they joked and shared a laugh. “It put everyone in a good mood. It even allowed us to make more contacts in Ukraine,” he said.
The marksman, identified only as Wali to protect his family’s safety, has responded to President Volodymyr Zelinkskyy’s call for foreign fighters to assist in the war against Russia.
He left behind his programming job, his wife and infant son to cross the frontier from Poland with three other Canadian veterans with sniping gear and a camera in tow.
“Reality is today I am a programmer taking back his elite shooter carabine,” the 40-year-old retired veteran of the Canadian Armed Forces wrote on Friday. “I’m a good soldier no more. But I’m still good and I plan to contribute, at least a little bit, to the victory of this people who so want to be free.”
The Canadian sniper told CBC he received an enthusiastic reception from both Ukrainian citizens and soldiers when he arrived on March 2.
“They were so happy to have us,” he said. “It’s like we were friends right away.”
Wali served with the Royal Canadian Infantry’s feared 22nd Regiment twice during the war in Afghanistan, in Kandahar between 2009 and 2011 as a sniper, and battled ISIS in Iraq as a volunteer fighter with Kurdish forces in 2015. The 22nd Regiment is known for having elite snipers with worldclass training and equipment.
According to official figures, more than 20,000 foreign volunteers from 52 countries have signed up to join the fight against the ongoing Russian invasion.
Soon after Wali arrived in Ukraine, he embedded himself with British and Canadian veterans. In the days that followed, he would fill jerry cans with fuel to make Molotov cocktails and buy amateur drones to conduct surveillance, he told La Presse.
Wali explained that he answered the call from a friend who was providing humanitarian supplies to the Donbas region.
“He told me they needed a sniper. It’s like a firefighter who hears the alarm ringing. I had to go.”
Wali’s wife said she grudgingly let her husband go fight for Ukraine.
“I knew that if I didn’t let him go, I would have broken him,” she told the U.K.’S The Sun. “It would have been like putting him in jail.”
Wali says he was motivated to confront Russia after witnessing the suffering of Ukrainian citizens.
“I want to help them. It’s as simple as that. When I see a destroyed building, it is the person who owns it, who sees his pension fund go up in smoke, that I see,” Wali explained. “I’m going there for humanitarian reasons.”
The Quebec man keeps an online diary of his experience in Ukraine that details snapshots of homegrown resistance — along with close encounters in tandem with Ukrainian forces.
He described the resourcefulness with which Ukrainians have responded to the Russian invasion.
“A heroic atmosphere reigns here. We no longer count the stories of fighters and ordinary people defying the Russian Army. In one example, a farmer waited for the Russians to disembark their tanks during a break. He then towed the tanks with his tractor! Imagine that!”
He also related the quick thinking of residents in a city apartment block who trapped Russian soldiers in a building elevator by cutting off the power.
On March 7, he said he saw AK-47S pointed at him and ready to open fire as he approached a manned checkpoint at night. After several inspections, the soldiers understood they were volunteer fighters and the mood quickly changed.
Wali also details the hardships he witnesses on the road.
“This is an apocalypse in the making. Poor people. Soon we enter a service station. Looking at the menu ... Realizing there’s no more food available. I look around and realize the tables are empty. People will eat whatever is left over.”
He added: “the roads are filled with refugees and stopped cars,” while enemy helicopters fly overhead like “predators.”
The hardest part about leaving was missing his son’s first birthday, said Wali.
“I know, it’s just awful,” he said. “But me, in my head, when I see the images of destruction in Ukraine, it is my son that I see, in danger and who is suffering.”