Idaho Army veteran believed killed while aiding Ukraine
A retired U.S. military veteran from Idaho helping Ukraine combat Russia’s invasion is believed to have been killed on the front lines in eastern Ukraine.
Retired U.S. Army Sgt. First Class Nick Maimer, 45, of Boise, had for the last year been training civilian volunteers in Ukraine’s ongoing effort to defend its borders. Maimer, a former Army Green Beret, died when a Russian artillery shell destroyed a building where he was positioned during intensified fighting in the city of Bakhmut, according to Perry Blackburn, who helped recruit Maimer to Kyiv last May.
“From what I understand, he was providing them with firsthand training in that area so that they can continue to do the fight, and he got caught behind enemy lines,” Blackburn, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, told the Idaho Statesman by phone. “It’s just a crazy, crazy time right now. And then having Nick die over there, it’s just brutal.”
A video posted Tuesday by a pro-Russian military blogger on Telegram shows Yevgeny Prigozhin, chief of the Russian mercenary company Wagner, surveying a body in what appears to be Bakhmut, CNN reported. U.S. documents belonging to Maimer appear to be shown in the video.
Blackburn and Maimer’s uncle, Paul Maimer, each identified the body in the video as Maimer’s, they told the Statesman on Tuesday.
“He never let anything in front of him stop his goals,” Paul Maimer told the Statesman by phone. “He persevered through a lot in his life. I had the utmost respect for him. A lot of people can learn from who he was and what he had accomplished in his short life. In 45 years, he lived a lot. He went over there as a humanitarian trying to do good for this world.”
Russia stepped up shelling in the past days in Bakhmut, a city at the eastern front of the Russia-Ukraine war. The State Department could not confirm Maimer’s death, but acknowledged hearing word of an American killed in warfare in Ukraine.
“We are aware of the reports of the death of a U.S. citizen in Bakhmut and are seeking additional information,” a State Department official said. “Our ability to verify reports of deaths of U.S. citizens in Ukraine is extremely limited. We offer our condolences to the families of all whose lives have been lost as a result of Russia’s unprovoked and unjustified war against Ukraine.”
Maimer’s death would mark at least the ninth American killed in Ukraine since Russia invaded its neighboring country in February 2022, a U.S. official said, on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the matter.
“We’re just trying to get him home for proper burial,” Paul Maimer said. “I think he’s deserving to be put to rest in a veterans cemetery. He might not have been fighting for our country, but he was fighting for the right reasons.”
Maimer was a 20-year military veteran, including time spent serving in the Army Special Forces, and a 1995 graduate of Borah High School in Boise, he previously told the Statesman. After retiring from the Army in 2018, Maimer worked in the IT department for the Saint Alphonsus Health System, he said.