"telling my boss I had to resign because of “long Covid” in a deadpan parody of their neuroticism."
*Sigh*. I pushed through the earlier bait, thinking 'it's good for me to read things by people very different to me' but having spent months with crippling fatigue and years with merely very bad fatigue, I really can't be arsed with this attitude. I hope the rest of the review was good
Writing this on shrooms so coherence might be low: this saddens me. I share your policy of "it's good [...] to read things by people very different to me", and what I observe is mostly people escaping echochambers they've grown tired of — but not by doing something constructive you might hope for — but rather by swinging wildly into whatever echochamber is opposite. So from "my corpo is obsessed with Covid-adjecent bullshit" to "long Covid is not a thing and also let's mock people for funsies". I expect the comment section underneath this to be another manifestation. And it's a shame that people like you, who are presumably pretty close to the target demographic, are turned away. If even you can't pierce the echochamber, then what chances does the rest of society have?
(I am also saddened by the LLM induced persecution of em dashes, but that's a separate issue)
As someone with about three years of chronic fatigue that may or may not be Long COVID, I still smiled wryly at that point in the post. The OP had to tell his boss something, and I don't think the Long COVID virus will be annoyed to get the blame for one it didn't do like this.
If you like this type of in depth look, I strongly recommend the similar accounts from the Civ Div YouTube channel of an American soldier in Ukraine the last few years: https://youtube.com/@CivDiv
Shit! I want to know more! It sounds like the author is no longer on the front lines. Did he get through his entire 3-year enlistment period serving on the front? Or did he move into some other role?
"This whole experience made me think about the concept of the 'gang' as a natural grouping of men, and the extent to which further military development has been based on adjustments to this naturally occurring phenomenon."
This is an interesting point. I don't know how we went from feuds between foragers clans to organised states staging pitched battles, but this seems to evidence that military hierarchies naturally emerge as you add more men to a stressful situation. I'm reminded of the Nika riots in medieval Constantinople, where crowds went from being angry about cart racing to full-on-January-6th mode and a spontaneous revolution (that was quickly crushed).
Once you push otherwise civil men over some criticality threshold, they chimp out. I wonder if anyone has tried to model this quantitatively.
Amazing piece, a few questions for the author if they choose to respond:
>Before my experiences in Ukraine I used to desperately feel like I had to do something, without even necessarily knowing what it was.
So you stopped feeling that way presumably? Was there a specific turning point, or did it dwindle? A bit more elaboration on this part would be fascinating, I felt like the ending could have used more detail!
>First of all there are actually two completely separate military units called the International Legion, each under completely separate commands. This is for reasons I will not discuss
I asked GPT, apparently there's just boring historical separation (one was originally a Georgian legion that expanded, the other one is a new one from 2022 directly under Ukrainian intelligence). Assuming GPT isn't hallucinating it sounds like this is less opsec and "boring org chart legacy reasons".
"Don’t be the guy. A lot of people out there saying someone’s gotta DO SOMETHING. About the left the right Zionists Hamas blacks whites troons Nazis etc. etc. etc. Don’t let it be you. You are gonna live a long life. A nice house. A nice dog. Not end up cold and alone in the woods on the run from big men putting knees on your neck. With everyone who said someone’s gotta do something saying you’re a piece of shit cuz you did something. Someone’s gotta do something. Never them. So not you. Live a long life."
I am a friend of the author and he has been living a very fulfilled life in every way you can imagine during and after the events of the post, in different ways. Everything indicates that he will live a long life as well.
Yes don't do this just because but there are plenty of people whose lives have meaningfully improved by volunteering to help people in dangerous situations, whether it be purely civilian or military as well, or doing both at different points as this author has.
But yes don't do something just to do something, I also think doing what the author did is in many circumstances a good and noble thing to do.
Yeah, I was wondering what the author does now. If he was feeling ennui before going to Ukraine, I feel like it's gotta be 1000 times worse after being there and going back to boring society
Ernst Junger lived to a hundred and two, as a renowned scientist, author, and occasional anti-Nazi activist as well as a husband and a father. I think that counts as a good life for a good man, and I don't think it would have turned out that way if he'd been hanging out in Switzerland from 1914-1918.
Great risks, properly calculated, can lead to great rewards. Let us hope that our anonymous author enjoys such a life.
This was very interesting to read, but I think it failed somewhat at being a good review. The takeaways portion felt too short and disconnected from the rest; it's difficult to see the connection between the story focusing on calmer times and the opinions centered around violence.
Honestly I think it's more of a review than a solid majority of the finalists, many of which or even most don't even seem to review their subjects or attempt to review them at all. It's even the only review that actually gives its subject a rating.
It's very clearly just an autobiographical story rather than a "review". But it was very interesting as an autobiographical story. I generally don't find those interesting to read at all but I made it an the way through this one.
Sincerely, thanks for the service to our ally, and for the review.
If anyone is interested in more of these kinds of Ukraine International Legion stories, Lindybeige has some fascinating multi-part interviews with British volunteers starting at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCbD4WBqPg4&t=3225s and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LcUj47_7S4&t=182s . If I'm remembering correctly, the first guy started out digging trenches after surviving that Yavoriv recruitment center bombing, moved on to evacuating civilians from the front full-time, and then eventually worked his way up to being an FPV drone pilot.
I wonder if ISIS would have managed to take over so much territory and enlist so many westerners if the Ukraine war happened earlier. Perhaps an active conflict somewhere in the world is needed to satiate the latent demand of people like this to be part of "something real".
I think the amount of territory would've been about the same, Westerner volunteers were not significant numerically or even that significant in the limited low tier leadership roles they mostly had to the degree they even rised to leadership at all.
Also it's worth noting that lot of the Western volunteers were disaffected Radical Islamist second generation kids of immigrants who were Muslim or from a Muslim background, and those kids clearly would never have volunteered to fight in a non-Islamic war like Russia vs Ukraine. Most of the others converted significantly before they decided to volunteer in Syria or Iraq.
I find it odious to take part in a war that you have no stake in and to kill people, all because you have a fairly banal and commonplace need to seek "meaning" and camaraderie.
I'm sure all the widows and grieving mothers you've left behind aren't any more thrilled that their son was killed by some affluent American looking to dispel their bourgeois ennui, rather than a native Ukrainian.
Personally I find your statement absurd. Do you support Ukraine's right as a state to exist and not be invaded and forcibly conquered against its will and for its culture to continue to exist? Then it is hypocritical of you to criticize those who are willing to do more for it. Frankly it's odious hypocritical if you think that your own country should be allowed to exist and to kill people who invade it. I have never fought in a war but I am grateful to those who have defended freedom from autocracy and their native or adopted lands against invaders.
Foreign volunteers and heroes have existed for thousands of years. Many are considered heroes, Lord Byron of England still has statues in Greece of him, he was an affluent Englishmen involved in a war very far from home.
Your last paragraph is particularly absurd, you refute yourself in that obviously the Russians aren't thrilled to be killed in their invasion whether it's a Ukrainian or an American or a Italian or a British man or whoever.
Whether fighting in a war is an act of heroism or savagery has nothing whatsoever to do with a person's individual stake in that conflict. A Nazi volunteer had a much greater personal stake in the Second World War than, for example, an American who chose to join the British Army before the US entered the war- but I would venture to call that American a hero and the Nazi a savage. In fact, I would say that the American's lack of personal stake in the conflict only increases their heroism.
What determines heroism is the degree to which a cause is just, and the defense of Ukraine is one of the most unambiguously just wars we've seen in a century. Here we have a despot attempting to rebuild a historically evil empire by invading the historic victim of that empire, a nascent European democracy. A man with Putin's stated ambitions will not settle into peace if appeased; war or tyranny are the only realistic options Ukraine has.
Few heroes are motivated entirely by ideology; most will also have personal motivations like a desire for meaning. But the OP chose to risk his life in a just war, and for that, he deserves to be lauded for his heroism.
I am a personal friend of the author, so let me get that bias out of the way. However I will say that the author has long had a personal stake in the war, he reads writes and speaks Ukrainian at an amazing level for somebody who learned it mostly as an adult, and has a deep love for Ukrainians, Ukrainian culture, their language, etc. And he knew much much more than the average person before he ever stood a foot in Ukraine. I assure you there's far more to it than your ill assumptions of his motivations.
He is also a deeply loving and generous person to his friends, family and strangers. He has personally hosted many people in Ukraine at no cost to them and been a great friend and host to Ukrainians and non-Ukrainians of all kinds alike.
Part of me wishes I could say more details but I will not now out of respect for my friend and will only say more about this particular issue if I talk to him first.
It's a fair point that it's probably not great to join a war just because you're bored. That got emphasized a lot more in this essay than Ukraine being a just cause. So I appreciate the additional information.
Yeah, I agree that he could definitely emphasize the personal aspect/ motivations/ ideological/ national determinations a bit more, but I think it's also kind of admirable in a way even if he probably significantly overdoes it here that he focuses a lot on the less "noble" motivations for wanting to join. It does open him up to easy assumptions and attacks though.
The more noble reasons etc. tend to be talked about a lot more elsewhere in mainstream publications and accounts so it certainly adds a uniqueness to the essay though. FWIW I think he'd be fine with me saying this, I think that he probably spent a lot less time on this essay polishing it then most other submitters if I had to guess based on what he told me about how he wrote it, though of course I couldn't know that for sure unless I talked to all of them.
”I'm sure all the widows and grieving mothers you've left behind aren't any more thrilled that their son was killed by some affluent American looking to dispel their bourgeois ennui, rather than a native Ukrainian.”
Their loss is a tragedy to be laid at the feet of the Russian oligarchs who started this war, as much as the lives of any Ukrainians killed.
It’s also a loss to be laid somewhat at the feet of the Russian populace in general who traded their agency for temporary comfort and are now paying the price for their acquiescence.
Once they were committed to this invasion these sons and fathers needed to die for justice to prevail, killing them was a just and worthy act. To pretend otherwise is to act as a willing tool of despotism.
I'm sure the grieving widows don't give two shits about the nationality of the person who killed their husbands. What about the families of the marginal Ukrainian who was spared because some American volunteer took the bullet that otherwise would've been meant for them? It's a bad look to criticize men who have more courage and character than you ever will. More often than not it comes across as a justification for cowardice.
> Years before I had read of the likes of Azov and its many foreign volunteers, and had even periodically fantasized about dropping everything and going to the Donetsk Airport.
In the end, did you get to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade … against Semite-led Untermenschen”?
The vast vast majority of Azov fighters aren't like this. And you will find in every military on earth some amount of antisemites and racists. Ukraine is actually one of the least antisemitic countries in the world based on opinion polls on citizens of different countries, not to mention how many countries that have less than 1% of its population being Jewish still have a Jewish leader? I'm guessing from your comment there's a decent chance you hate Zelensky though.
In fact you can find plenty of neonazis and racists in the Russian army, probably more. After all they have ethnically cleansed many parts of the Caucuses and are now attempting to effectively genocide Ukraine.
The quote I provided was from Azov’s founder, and the current commander of the Third Army Corps which was formed from former Azov units. So, not some fringe rando.
The vast majority Ukrainian fighters and people aren’t like him, I agree. But it’s not an insignificant portion. And the Nazis punch far above their weight in numbers, because they tend to be the most committed and effective fighters against the Russians, and they don’t hesitate to use violence against their domestic political enemies either. Their willingness to die for the cause makes them too valuable for the powerful to sideline—similar to how the US has covertly supported Islamic extremists at various times, hoping to direct them against our enemies.
> you hate Zelensky
I don’t. I think he is wildly out of his depth, not nearly sufficient to the impossible challenges before him. I reserve my hate for the architects of the Maidan coup who led Ukraine down its present path of suicide-by-Russian
I did say "there's a decent chance you hate Zelensky", not that you hate him.
There are military units in Russia like the Rusich Group that have kolovorat Swastikas as their unit badges, they also punch far above their weight in numbers in the Russian Army.
A. The Azov Battalion members from 2014 (i.e. the ones that were fascists) were very quickly replaced by your typical NCO and officer corps when they were incorporated into the National Guard and official military command structure. It is deeply disingenuous to claim that the Ukrainians are somehow dependent on neo-Nazis for their military manpower when one of their first actions was to eliminate those same people from any leadership positions. And that is not even getting into the Russian ideology. B. Euromaidan was not a “coup”. The protesters themselves were entirely baffled when Yanukovych left because it was in the middle of the night and without any warning at all.
If a woman's abusive ex-husband shows up at their door demanding that she come back, she drives him off by throwing cookery, and then he comes back and brutalizes her, we don't hate and blame the woman for having been attacked, even if the cookery was a tactical error.
In the case of Maidan, maybe that was an error, maybe it wasn't. I tend to think that an invasion by Putin was uncertain enough, and the difference in freedom and standard of living between becoming another Belarus and another Poland was great enough that it probably was not an error (though perhaps they should have gone through the full constitutional impeachment process rather than shortening it out of panic over the protests). Even if it was an error, however, the people of Ukraine have a moral right to separate from Russian influence; an error there should be met with sympathy, not hatred.
The moral violation in this conflict is on the part of Putin, and our hatred should therefore be reserved entirely for him.
Maidan wasn’t an organic upswelling of the true sentiments of the Ukrainian people for freedom, or whatever. Some Ukrainians wanted closer relations with the EU & USA, others wanted closer relations with Russia, yet others wanted to maintain a balance. Maidan was a violent, USA-instigated coup by one faction in the country against the others
It's always felt very weird to me that so many recent generations were never drafted to fight in a major war. Our ancestors seemed to always be attacking or defending something, and all us Millennials could do was volunteer to fight in some middle east country we couldn't care less about? I'm sure it's for the best, every history class I ever took discussed how terrible war is, but it's also like we're missing an important part of human development. Like maybe people would stop caring about pronouns if they actually had an existential threat to strategize against? Or jobs would feel more meaningful if there's some big victory at stake?
It's also surprising in hindsight that technological advancement couldn't fill this void. Whole generations adapting to new tech as fast as it releases could have been a great substitute, and maybe it was for awhile, but everything plateaued hard after the iPhone released 18 years ago. No one on the planet needs to adapt and become an expert to use Twitch or 4K TVs or the latest phone app.
The United States went without mass conscription up until the Civil War, then we dropped it until WW1. Rather than being constant, Peter Turchin has the idea that there are generational cycles in which a generation will become averse to war as a result of experience with it, but later a different generation without that experience will be more eager for it.
Obviously almost no one can confirm what I'm saying is true but all I can say as someone who personally knows the author for many many years long before the events of this essay is that it's all true and that in a lot of ways you could even argue that he underplayed many aspects of what he talks about/experienced.
But there are obvious reasons to be careful about revealing too much information about something like this so I can not provide more substantial proof other than my words above. But it is entirely possible that the author will reveal more in the future, and perhaps a lot more the further into the future we go.
well written, yes; insightful, yes, in its own way--but a review should be about truth-telling, and truth-telling about war has a kind of moral urgency that seems strangely lacking in this review. (And indeed, lacking in the reviewers' brothers-in-arms, judging from what he writes.) There seems to be a fundamental difference in worldview evinced here such that I certainly don't think I can vote for this!
If anything this review strikes me as extremely truth-telling in the sense that it tells many truths of the authors experience(and others seemingly) who have been directly involved in war that people in the West are almost always told the opposite. Namely that for many decades the overwhelming tendency in the West has been to everywhere and always for the most part emphasize that war is a necessary evil full of evils at every turn at best and almost always the worst kind of evil in almost every way at worst.
I'm sure if the author wrote a longer essay he could get deeper into the nuances on both sides about all the evils and goods that he has experienced in the war and in more general both the evils and the positive aspects of the war. But clearly in this short essay he's decided to emphasize the parts that go against the most commonly heard things about war in the West.
If you personally fought in a war and found the things that he said in this essay accurate or at least the vast majority of it accurate would it also be a strangely lacking of truth-telling by you to write an essay like it.
Truth spectacularly ugly, offensive, and unpopular sometimes. While I can't know with 100% certainty it seems that possibly you have encountered a truth that is painful, offensive, or ugly to you and that actually your comment has the reality reversed. It's just a possibility.
By the way caveat that even if it's truthful in many senses (all senses?) obviously we don't have to agree with it 100%, I certainly don't agree with it 100%. Otherwise there'd be a higher chance I'd be in some military defending an invaded country.
"telling my boss I had to resign because of “long Covid” in a deadpan parody of their neuroticism."
*Sigh*. I pushed through the earlier bait, thinking 'it's good for me to read things by people very different to me' but having spent months with crippling fatigue and years with merely very bad fatigue, I really can't be arsed with this attitude. I hope the rest of the review was good
Very sad
Writing this on shrooms so coherence might be low: this saddens me. I share your policy of "it's good [...] to read things by people very different to me", and what I observe is mostly people escaping echochambers they've grown tired of — but not by doing something constructive you might hope for — but rather by swinging wildly into whatever echochamber is opposite. So from "my corpo is obsessed with Covid-adjecent bullshit" to "long Covid is not a thing and also let's mock people for funsies". I expect the comment section underneath this to be another manifestation. And it's a shame that people like you, who are presumably pretty close to the target demographic, are turned away. If even you can't pierce the echochamber, then what chances does the rest of society have?
(I am also saddened by the LLM induced persecution of em dashes, but that's a separate issue)
As someone with about three years of chronic fatigue that may or may not be Long COVID, I still smiled wryly at that point in the post. The OP had to tell his boss something, and I don't think the Long COVID virus will be annoyed to get the blame for one it didn't do like this.
For what it's worth Covid is never mentioned for the rest of the review after that exact point that you quite the piece.
How dare anyone make a joke that offends you.
Put this man in charge of the Democratic Party
Incredible summary. Thanks so much for this.
Very interesting account. Thanks!
Tremendous essay. I'd love the coda. "I was part of something real and dangerous." Yes; now what?
Wow! This is gripping. Write a book, man. I would gladly buy it. And stay safe. Slava Ukraini!
If you like this type of in depth look, I strongly recommend the similar accounts from the Civ Div YouTube channel of an American soldier in Ukraine the last few years: https://youtube.com/@CivDiv
This was great. Thanks for writing it.
Shit! I want to know more! It sounds like the author is no longer on the front lines. Did he get through his entire 3-year enlistment period serving on the front? Or did he move into some other role?
Incredible. Thanks for writing!
"This whole experience made me think about the concept of the 'gang' as a natural grouping of men, and the extent to which further military development has been based on adjustments to this naturally occurring phenomenon."
This is an interesting point. I don't know how we went from feuds between foragers clans to organised states staging pitched battles, but this seems to evidence that military hierarchies naturally emerge as you add more men to a stressful situation. I'm reminded of the Nika riots in medieval Constantinople, where crowds went from being angry about cart racing to full-on-January-6th mode and a spontaneous revolution (that was quickly crushed).
Once you push otherwise civil men over some criticality threshold, they chimp out. I wonder if anyone has tried to model this quantitatively.
Amazing piece, a few questions for the author if they choose to respond:
>Before my experiences in Ukraine I used to desperately feel like I had to do something, without even necessarily knowing what it was.
So you stopped feeling that way presumably? Was there a specific turning point, or did it dwindle? A bit more elaboration on this part would be fascinating, I felt like the ending could have used more detail!
>First of all there are actually two completely separate military units called the International Legion, each under completely separate commands. This is for reasons I will not discuss
For OpSec reasons presumably?
I asked GPT, apparently there's just boring historical separation (one was originally a Georgian legion that expanded, the other one is a new one from 2022 directly under Ukrainian intelligence). Assuming GPT isn't hallucinating it sounds like this is less opsec and "boring org chart legacy reasons".
No I think it's just because it's just not very relevant to the essay or particularly interesting.
Not the most polished writing. My favorite by far. While my bet would still be the massively liked "men" of the bay-area. Dakuju & PTN PNX
This poem, published the same day by another, might act as a foil:
https://delicioustacos.com/2025/09/26/dont-be-the-guy/
"Don’t be the guy. A lot of people out there saying someone’s gotta DO SOMETHING. About the left the right Zionists Hamas blacks whites troons Nazis etc. etc. etc. Don’t let it be you. You are gonna live a long life. A nice house. A nice dog. Not end up cold and alone in the woods on the run from big men putting knees on your neck. With everyone who said someone’s gotta do something saying you’re a piece of shit cuz you did something. Someone’s gotta do something. Never them. So not you. Live a long life."
I am a friend of the author and he has been living a very fulfilled life in every way you can imagine during and after the events of the post, in different ways. Everything indicates that he will live a long life as well.
Yes don't do this just because but there are plenty of people whose lives have meaningfully improved by volunteering to help people in dangerous situations, whether it be purely civilian or military as well, or doing both at different points as this author has.
But yes don't do something just to do something, I also think doing what the author did is in many circumstances a good and noble thing to do.
Yeah, I was wondering what the author does now. If he was feeling ennui before going to Ukraine, I feel like it's gotta be 1000 times worse after being there and going back to boring society
Then you move out to the woods.
Did he mention what the dating situation was like there for American men?
Ernst Junger lived to a hundred and two, as a renowned scientist, author, and occasional anti-Nazi activist as well as a husband and a father. I think that counts as a good life for a good man, and I don't think it would have turned out that way if he'd been hanging out in Switzerland from 1914-1918.
Great risks, properly calculated, can lead to great rewards. Let us hope that our anonymous author enjoys such a life.
This was very interesting to read, but I think it failed somewhat at being a good review. The takeaways portion felt too short and disconnected from the rest; it's difficult to see the connection between the story focusing on calmer times and the opinions centered around violence.
Honestly I think it's more of a review than a solid majority of the finalists, many of which or even most don't even seem to review their subjects or attempt to review them at all. It's even the only review that actually gives its subject a rating.
It's very clearly just an autobiographical story rather than a "review". But it was very interesting as an autobiographical story. I generally don't find those interesting to read at all but I made it an the way through this one.
Thanks for sharing so honestly. I would read more of your stuff, fwiw
Sincerely, thanks for the service to our ally, and for the review.
If anyone is interested in more of these kinds of Ukraine International Legion stories, Lindybeige has some fascinating multi-part interviews with British volunteers starting at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCbD4WBqPg4&t=3225s and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LcUj47_7S4&t=182s . If I'm remembering correctly, the first guy started out digging trenches after surviving that Yavoriv recruitment center bombing, moved on to evacuating civilians from the front full-time, and then eventually worked his way up to being an FPV drone pilot.
I wonder if ISIS would have managed to take over so much territory and enlist so many westerners if the Ukraine war happened earlier. Perhaps an active conflict somewhere in the world is needed to satiate the latent demand of people like this to be part of "something real".
I think the amount of territory would've been about the same, Westerner volunteers were not significant numerically or even that significant in the limited low tier leadership roles they mostly had to the degree they even rised to leadership at all.
Also it's worth noting that lot of the Western volunteers were disaffected Radical Islamist second generation kids of immigrants who were Muslim or from a Muslim background, and those kids clearly would never have volunteered to fight in a non-Islamic war like Russia vs Ukraine. Most of the others converted significantly before they decided to volunteer in Syria or Iraq.
I find it odious to take part in a war that you have no stake in and to kill people, all because you have a fairly banal and commonplace need to seek "meaning" and camaraderie.
I'm sure all the widows and grieving mothers you've left behind aren't any more thrilled that their son was killed by some affluent American looking to dispel their bourgeois ennui, rather than a native Ukrainian.
Personally I find your statement absurd. Do you support Ukraine's right as a state to exist and not be invaded and forcibly conquered against its will and for its culture to continue to exist? Then it is hypocritical of you to criticize those who are willing to do more for it. Frankly it's odious hypocritical if you think that your own country should be allowed to exist and to kill people who invade it. I have never fought in a war but I am grateful to those who have defended freedom from autocracy and their native or adopted lands against invaders.
Foreign volunteers and heroes have existed for thousands of years. Many are considered heroes, Lord Byron of England still has statues in Greece of him, he was an affluent Englishmen involved in a war very far from home.
Your last paragraph is particularly absurd, you refute yourself in that obviously the Russians aren't thrilled to be killed in their invasion whether it's a Ukrainian or an American or a Italian or a British man or whoever.
Whether fighting in a war is an act of heroism or savagery has nothing whatsoever to do with a person's individual stake in that conflict. A Nazi volunteer had a much greater personal stake in the Second World War than, for example, an American who chose to join the British Army before the US entered the war- but I would venture to call that American a hero and the Nazi a savage. In fact, I would say that the American's lack of personal stake in the conflict only increases their heroism.
What determines heroism is the degree to which a cause is just, and the defense of Ukraine is one of the most unambiguously just wars we've seen in a century. Here we have a despot attempting to rebuild a historically evil empire by invading the historic victim of that empire, a nascent European democracy. A man with Putin's stated ambitions will not settle into peace if appeased; war or tyranny are the only realistic options Ukraine has.
Few heroes are motivated entirely by ideology; most will also have personal motivations like a desire for meaning. But the OP chose to risk his life in a just war, and for that, he deserves to be lauded for his heroism.
I am a personal friend of the author, so let me get that bias out of the way. However I will say that the author has long had a personal stake in the war, he reads writes and speaks Ukrainian at an amazing level for somebody who learned it mostly as an adult, and has a deep love for Ukrainians, Ukrainian culture, their language, etc. And he knew much much more than the average person before he ever stood a foot in Ukraine. I assure you there's far more to it than your ill assumptions of his motivations.
He is also a deeply loving and generous person to his friends, family and strangers. He has personally hosted many people in Ukraine at no cost to them and been a great friend and host to Ukrainians and non-Ukrainians of all kinds alike.
Part of me wishes I could say more details but I will not now out of respect for my friend and will only say more about this particular issue if I talk to him first.
It's a fair point that it's probably not great to join a war just because you're bored. That got emphasized a lot more in this essay than Ukraine being a just cause. So I appreciate the additional information.
Yeah, I agree that he could definitely emphasize the personal aspect/ motivations/ ideological/ national determinations a bit more, but I think it's also kind of admirable in a way even if he probably significantly overdoes it here that he focuses a lot on the less "noble" motivations for wanting to join. It does open him up to easy assumptions and attacks though.
The more noble reasons etc. tend to be talked about a lot more elsewhere in mainstream publications and accounts so it certainly adds a uniqueness to the essay though. FWIW I think he'd be fine with me saying this, I think that he probably spent a lot less time on this essay polishing it then most other submitters if I had to guess based on what he told me about how he wrote it, though of course I couldn't know that for sure unless I talked to all of them.
”I'm sure all the widows and grieving mothers you've left behind aren't any more thrilled that their son was killed by some affluent American looking to dispel their bourgeois ennui, rather than a native Ukrainian.”
Their loss is a tragedy to be laid at the feet of the Russian oligarchs who started this war, as much as the lives of any Ukrainians killed.
It’s also a loss to be laid somewhat at the feet of the Russian populace in general who traded their agency for temporary comfort and are now paying the price for their acquiescence.
Once they were committed to this invasion these sons and fathers needed to die for justice to prevail, killing them was a just and worthy act. To pretend otherwise is to act as a willing tool of despotism.
I'm sure the grieving widows don't give two shits about the nationality of the person who killed their husbands. What about the families of the marginal Ukrainian who was spared because some American volunteer took the bullet that otherwise would've been meant for them? It's a bad look to criticize men who have more courage and character than you ever will. More often than not it comes across as a justification for cowardice.
> Years before I had read of the likes of Azov and its many foreign volunteers, and had even periodically fantasized about dropping everything and going to the Donetsk Airport.
In the end, did you get to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade … against Semite-led Untermenschen”?
The vast vast majority of Azov fighters aren't like this. And you will find in every military on earth some amount of antisemites and racists. Ukraine is actually one of the least antisemitic countries in the world based on opinion polls on citizens of different countries, not to mention how many countries that have less than 1% of its population being Jewish still have a Jewish leader? I'm guessing from your comment there's a decent chance you hate Zelensky though.
In fact you can find plenty of neonazis and racists in the Russian army, probably more. After all they have ethnically cleansed many parts of the Caucuses and are now attempting to effectively genocide Ukraine.
The quote I provided was from Azov’s founder, and the current commander of the Third Army Corps which was formed from former Azov units. So, not some fringe rando.
The vast majority Ukrainian fighters and people aren’t like him, I agree. But it’s not an insignificant portion. And the Nazis punch far above their weight in numbers, because they tend to be the most committed and effective fighters against the Russians, and they don’t hesitate to use violence against their domestic political enemies either. Their willingness to die for the cause makes them too valuable for the powerful to sideline—similar to how the US has covertly supported Islamic extremists at various times, hoping to direct them against our enemies.
> you hate Zelensky
I don’t. I think he is wildly out of his depth, not nearly sufficient to the impossible challenges before him. I reserve my hate for the architects of the Maidan coup who led Ukraine down its present path of suicide-by-Russian
I did say "there's a decent chance you hate Zelensky", not that you hate him.
There are military units in Russia like the Rusich Group that have kolovorat Swastikas as their unit badges, they also punch far above their weight in numbers in the Russian Army.
A. The Azov Battalion members from 2014 (i.e. the ones that were fascists) were very quickly replaced by your typical NCO and officer corps when they were incorporated into the National Guard and official military command structure. It is deeply disingenuous to claim that the Ukrainians are somehow dependent on neo-Nazis for their military manpower when one of their first actions was to eliminate those same people from any leadership positions. And that is not even getting into the Russian ideology. B. Euromaidan was not a “coup”. The protesters themselves were entirely baffled when Yanukovych left because it was in the middle of the night and without any warning at all.
Andriy Biletsky (the “final crusade against Semite-led Untermenschen” guy) currently leads the Third Army Corps, commanding 20,000 men: https://www.thetimes.com/world/russia-ukraine-war/article/andriy-biletsky-azov-troops-tzfbj2v9p
If a woman's abusive ex-husband shows up at their door demanding that she come back, she drives him off by throwing cookery, and then he comes back and brutalizes her, we don't hate and blame the woman for having been attacked, even if the cookery was a tactical error.
In the case of Maidan, maybe that was an error, maybe it wasn't. I tend to think that an invasion by Putin was uncertain enough, and the difference in freedom and standard of living between becoming another Belarus and another Poland was great enough that it probably was not an error (though perhaps they should have gone through the full constitutional impeachment process rather than shortening it out of panic over the protests). Even if it was an error, however, the people of Ukraine have a moral right to separate from Russian influence; an error there should be met with sympathy, not hatred.
The moral violation in this conflict is on the part of Putin, and our hatred should therefore be reserved entirely for him.
Maidan wasn’t an organic upswelling of the true sentiments of the Ukrainian people for freedom, or whatever. Some Ukrainians wanted closer relations with the EU & USA, others wanted closer relations with Russia, yet others wanted to maintain a balance. Maidan was a violent, USA-instigated coup by one faction in the country against the others
It's always felt very weird to me that so many recent generations were never drafted to fight in a major war. Our ancestors seemed to always be attacking or defending something, and all us Millennials could do was volunteer to fight in some middle east country we couldn't care less about? I'm sure it's for the best, every history class I ever took discussed how terrible war is, but it's also like we're missing an important part of human development. Like maybe people would stop caring about pronouns if they actually had an existential threat to strategize against? Or jobs would feel more meaningful if there's some big victory at stake?
It's also surprising in hindsight that technological advancement couldn't fill this void. Whole generations adapting to new tech as fast as it releases could have been a great substitute, and maybe it was for awhile, but everything plateaued hard after the iPhone released 18 years ago. No one on the planet needs to adapt and become an expert to use Twitch or 4K TVs or the latest phone app.
The United States went without mass conscription up until the Civil War, then we dropped it until WW1. Rather than being constant, Peter Turchin has the idea that there are generational cycles in which a generation will become averse to war as a result of experience with it, but later a different generation without that experience will be more eager for it.
“It may be jarring for the reader to see me jump from preparing for war to writing a tourist guide, but it was also a surprise to me”
This was basically the first few hundred pages of Sherman’s memoirs to be fair
I certainly can’t verify anything in the story but it sure has the “no shit there we were” quality of a real army story.
Obviously almost no one can confirm what I'm saying is true but all I can say as someone who personally knows the author for many many years long before the events of this essay is that it's all true and that in a lot of ways you could even argue that he underplayed many aspects of what he talks about/experienced.
But there are obvious reasons to be careful about revealing too much information about something like this so I can not provide more substantial proof other than my words above. But it is entirely possible that the author will reveal more in the future, and perhaps a lot more the further into the future we go.
well written, yes; insightful, yes, in its own way--but a review should be about truth-telling, and truth-telling about war has a kind of moral urgency that seems strangely lacking in this review. (And indeed, lacking in the reviewers' brothers-in-arms, judging from what he writes.) There seems to be a fundamental difference in worldview evinced here such that I certainly don't think I can vote for this!
Tell the truth in what way exactly? Your truth?
If anything this review strikes me as extremely truth-telling in the sense that it tells many truths of the authors experience(and others seemingly) who have been directly involved in war that people in the West are almost always told the opposite. Namely that for many decades the overwhelming tendency in the West has been to everywhere and always for the most part emphasize that war is a necessary evil full of evils at every turn at best and almost always the worst kind of evil in almost every way at worst.
I'm sure if the author wrote a longer essay he could get deeper into the nuances on both sides about all the evils and goods that he has experienced in the war and in more general both the evils and the positive aspects of the war. But clearly in this short essay he's decided to emphasize the parts that go against the most commonly heard things about war in the West.
If you personally fought in a war and found the things that he said in this essay accurate or at least the vast majority of it accurate would it also be a strangely lacking of truth-telling by you to write an essay like it.
Truth spectacularly ugly, offensive, and unpopular sometimes. While I can't know with 100% certainty it seems that possibly you have encountered a truth that is painful, offensive, or ugly to you and that actually your comment has the reality reversed. It's just a possibility.
By the way caveat that even if it's truthful in many senses (all senses?) obviously we don't have to agree with it 100%, I certainly don't agree with it 100%. Otherwise there'd be a higher chance I'd be in some military defending an invaded country.