James Vasquez just surpassed the one-year mark of helping Ukrainian fighters to defeat Russia.
Vasquez is among an unidentified number of Americans who have traveled to Ukraine to fight.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dymtro Kuleba said in a March 2022 statement that over 20,000 volunteers had already joined to fight alongside Ukrainians, including"an estimated several thousand" American citizens.NewsweekOthers have included U.S. Marine Corps veteran Andy Huynh and U.S. Army veteran Alex Drueke, both from Alabama, who according toNews were captured by Russian forces and tortured daily for 105 days—including one month in a Russian"black site.
Retired U.S. Marine Corps Colonel Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, toldthat Kuleba's estimates were likely way higher than the actual number of Americans fighting in Ukraine."U.S. citizens seem to be in ones and twos," Cancian said."If there were several thousand, there would be entire units made up of Americans.
One reason for his low estimate, he added, is due to what he described as reliable reports in the war's infancy that the majority of foreign volunteers were deemed unsuitable to partake in action. "They didn't have military experience and were ineffective in combat," he said."Ukraine instituted much stronger recruiting standards, so the numbers went way down. But the people who got through would be more suitable."
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