A plea last week for foreigners to join the fight against the invasion of Ukraine was met Friday by a warning from Russia — don't expect to be treated as legitimate combatants if you're captured.
The Russian warning, leaning on language that echoes America's own history of legally questionable imprisonment from the War on Terror, comes as the initial surge of popular interest in joining the nearly two-week old fight for a democracy against an authoritarian regime is met with the reality of conflict, risk, and a soup of uncertainty.
Top officials including President Volodymyr Zelenskyy have touted numbers of volunteers that exceed 15,000, but scattered media reports from Ukraine suggest that only a tiny fraction of that number actually make it to the front lines. Military.com has repeatedly reached out to Ukrainian officials for details on the numbers of volunteers, including the number of American veterans seeking to join the fight, with no reply.
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Some veterans are making their way into Ukraine for humanitarian purposes, like Chad Robichaux, a Marine Corps force recon veteran who founded the group Save Our Allies that was created during the fall of Kabul, Afghanistan, to help evacuate interpreters and other Afghan allies.
Their ranks are primarily made up of U.S. veterans, most of whom come from the special operations community, and in…
