Nick Maimer's send-off was like any other family event, filled with laughter and fond memories. The Army Special Forces veteran and Idaho native was heading to Spain to teach English in early 2022.
No one at the time, not even Maimer himself, knew he would end up in the thick of war in Ukraine. The retired staff sergeant, 45, was killed in the eastern city of Bakhmut, Ukraine, this week after an apparent barrage of artillery destroyed the building he was in.
Like other American veterans, he was drawn to the struggle and need there, as Ukrainians fend off an invasion of Russian forces — a David and Goliath conflict, Western democracy against the aggressive authoritarian military might of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
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“He's a protector,” Nate Peterson, a judge advocate general in the Idaho National Guard and Maimer's step-cousin, told Military.com on Thursday. “I know a lot of people who would die for family, a lot of people who would die for country, but I know very few people who would go somewhere else and die for someone else's freedom, somebody else's rights and liberties. And that was Nick.”
In a grim twist, Maimer's death was broadcast around the world by a Russian mercenary group. In the video, the Wagner Group's chief, Yevgeny Prigozhin, flashes Maimer's ID cards and stands over his body amid the ruins of the besieged…
