NYTimes: An American in Ukraine finds the war he has been searching for.
After showing up in Poland last winter as a freelance journalist, he has built one of the biggest private military companies in Ukraine, The Mozart Group, and as the war has expanded in the past few weeks so has his repertoire of tactical services. The organization’s name was his saucy response to a Russian mercenary outfit that uses the name of another famous composer, the Wagner Group.
Mr. Milburn and his staff, mostly former special operations soldiers, are doing everything from rescuing civilians in the line of fire to conducting frontline training, nighttime training, officer training and workshops on the fineries of drone warfare.
Driven by the same pro-Ukrainian spirit that has put yellow and blue flags flying across the Western world, Mr. Milburn feels strongly that this is a just war. But there are other forces operating on him — boredom, guilt, his own sorrows and a quest for redemption, themes he explores, in quite searing detail, in a recently published memoir.
In Iraq and Afghanistan, he said, “our position was somewhat morally ambivalent; to many people there we were the invader. But here we’re repelling an invader. Here is something absolutely unambiguous. And how many wars in modern times are morally unambiguous?
An American in Ukraine Finds the War He’s Been Searching For https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/09/world/europe/ukraine-war-americans.html?unlocked_article_code=AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACEIPuonUktbfqYhlSFUbCibKWsIjolqLmOLI2LF7m3zkJSmTRHNdxv5QCo2N4UbGbKx4Idsv2jDRDPlwDIgSft0ghOlOIx4qDACyvpqPnJlCfn1oo4_vVz5z056QA_Vlq2-7K2Doebc6neDk4BnaOjS6D_CLwmRhcFg-2eZtclug330MwqvXQKUiipQlg6BXVt0tTiwAZSKKo_HqFxx1Xd2NZRvY4QUxMPpLDXCRxZXPruJdL3gBTA7OX3h94m0j6NpDO9lxPKb3LREofMaWkqyr5bngEhRD8rK7m2hz7Mnc
Should be no paywall.