‘Underequipped and outgunned’ – foreign fighters recall Ukraine tour
Americans and other foreign fighters, who had come to help the Ukrainian military repel the Russian offensive and have now returned home, have spoken of their disappointment to the Washington Post.
They lamented, among other things, a lack of equipment and weapons, and poor lines of communication.
One of the fighters who agreed to speak to the paper, asked to be named only by his first name, Dakota, over concerns for his own safety and that of his family. Being a US Marine Corps veteran, the man arrived in Ukraine just days after Russia launched its military operation.
He and several other foreign fighters were reportedly tasked with assisting and training Ukrainian troops in the use of US-made anti-tank Javelin missiles. In early March, the Ukrainian unit Dakota was attached to, he told the American daily, was deployed to an unnamed town northwest of Kiev, where they came under heavy Russian fire. The Marine Corps veteran recalled that while his unit had been issued Javelins and other anti-tank weapons, they had no batteries for the launch units, which effectively rendered the missiles unusable.