Ukraine war volunteers are coming home, reckoning with difficult fight

Dakota, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran who fought in Ukraine before suffering a head injury, is now back home in Ohio. (Megan Jelinger/For The Washington Post)
To Dakota’s surprise, it wasn’t the shelling that terrified him most.

A Marine Corps veteran who volunteered to fight in Ukraine, he has taken cover behind walls as Russian gunfire punched through and felt the throttle of artillery so many times that his catchphrase, “It’s normal,” became a joke within the unit.

What wasn’t normal, he said, was the feeling of dread while he hid and listened as Russian attack helicopters strafed the position his team of tank hunters had just fled. That moment, he said, “was quite honestly the most unsettled I had been the entire time.”

Dakota, who is home in Ohio now after seven weeks of fighting abroad, is among the legion of Western volunteers who have taken up arms against Russia. Like others, he spoke on the condition that his full name not be disclosed, citing concerns for his safety and that of family and friends.

In interviews with The Washington Post, foreign fighters from the United States and elsewhere described glaring disparities between what they expected the war to be like and what they experienced. They recalled going into battle underequipped and outgunned, the occasional thrill of blowing up Russian vehicles, and feeling torn over whether to go back to Ukraine. Some intend to do so. Others saw friends die and decided enough is enough.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said Saturday that its forces now control Lyman, a key transport hub providing access to bridges over the Siversky Donets River, and the British Defense Ministry said most of the town has probably fallen into Russian hands. Ukraine’s military hasn’t confirmed the capture but said Russian troops had consolidated positions around the city.

The British Defense Ministry said Saturday that Russian advances in the area “would give Russia an advantage in the potential next phase of the Donbas offensive, when it will likely seek to advance on key Ukrainian-held cities” deeper in Donetsk.

About 20,000 people lived in Lyman before the war, and although many were evacuated, the head of the city’s rescue service told The Washington Post this month that there were many civilian casualties.