San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
‘I just can’t stand by’: American veterans join fight in Ukraine
Hector served two violent tours in Iraq as a U.S. Marine, then got out, got a pension and a civilian job, and thought he was done with military service. But Friday, he boarded a plane for one more deployment, this time as a volunteer in Ukraine. He checked in several bags filled with rifle scopes, helmets and body armor donated by other veterans.
“Sanctions can help, but sanctions can’t help right now, and people need help right now,” said the former Marine, who lives in Tampa Bay, Fla., and like other veterans interviewed for this article asked that only his first name be used for security reasons. “I can help right now.”
He is one of a surge of U.S. veterans who say they are now preparing to join the fight in Ukraine, emboldened by the invitation of the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who this past week announced he was creating an “international legion” and asked volunteers from around the world to help defend his nation against Russia.
Ukraine’s minister of foreign affairs, Dmytro Kuleba, echoed the call for fighters, saying on Twitter, “Together we defeated Hitler, and we will defeat Putin, too.”
Hector said he hoped to train Ukrainians in his expertise: armored vehicles and heavy weapons.
“A lot of veterans, we have a calling to serve, and we trained our whole career for this kind of war,” he said. “Sitting by and doing nothing? I had to do that when Afghanistan fell apart, and it weighted heavily on me. I had to act.”
All across the United States, small groups of military veterans are gathering, planning and getting passports in order. After years of serving in smoldering occupations, trying to spread democracy in places that had only a tepid interest in it, many are hungry for what they see as a righteous fight to defend freedom against an autocratic aggressor with a conventional and target-rich army.
“It’s a conflict that has a clear good and bad side, and maybe that stands apart from other recent conflicts,” said David Ribardo, a former Army officer who now owns a property management business in Allentown, Pa. “A lot of us are watching what is happening and just want to grab a rifle and go over there.”
After the invasion, he saw veterans flooding social media eager to join the fight. Unable to go because of commitments here, he has spent the past week acting as a sort of middle man for a group called Volunteers for Ukraine, identifying veterans and other volunteers with useful skills and connecting them with donors who buy gear and airline tickets.
“It was very quickly overwhelming. Almost too many people wanted to help,” he said. In the past week, he said he has worked to sift those with valuable combat or medical skills from people he described as “combat tourists, who don’t have the correct experience and would not be an asset.”
A number of mainstream media outlets, including Military Times and Time, have published step-bystep guides on joining the military in Ukraine. The Ukrainian government instructed interested volunteers to contact its consulates.
On Thursday, Russian Defense Ministry spokesperson Igor Konashenkov told the Russian News Agency that foreign fighters would not be considered soldiers, but mercenaries, and would not be protected under humanitarian rules regarding the treatment of prisoners of war.
“At best, they can expect to be prosecuted as criminals,” Konashenkov said.
That has not dissuaded a number of veterans who are all too familiar with the risks of combat.
James was a medic who first saw combat when he replaced another medic killed in fighting in Iraq in 2006. He did two more tours, in Iraq and Afghanistan, seeing so much blood and death that 10 years after leaving the military he still attends therapy at a veterans hospital.
But this past week, as he watched Russian forces shell cities across Ukraine, he decided that he had to try to go there to help.
“Combat has a cost, that’s for sure; you think you can come back from war the same, but you can’t,” James said in a phone interview from his home in Dallas, where he said he was waiting to hear back from Ukrainian officials. “But I feel obligated. It’s the innocent people being attacked — the kids. It’s the kids, man. I just can’t stand by.”