Re: WW3? Ukraine/US vs. Donbass/Russia
US veteran who volunteered to fight for Ukraine describes ‘suicide mission’
An American volunteer for Ukraine tells The Grayzone how his foreign legion tried to use him as cannon fodder.
A decade after Henry Hoeft joined the US Army at age 18, he was back on the battlefield, but this time as a volunteer for a foreign military engaged in a proxy war against a powerful foe. After answering the Ukrainian government’s call for foreign fighters this February, however, the American veteran quickly decided he was being sent on a “suicide mission” against the Russian military.
After escaping with his life, claiming his own allies had threatened to shoot him in the back, Hoeft posted a viral message advising other Westerners against joining the fight in Ukraine. Within days, he was at the center of a global information war, with the military for which he had volunteered publicly branding him a Russian agent.
It was not the first time Hoeft had placed himself in the middle of controversy. Years before his ill-fated mission in Ukraine, his passion for guns and the Second Amendment led him into the ranks the Boogaloo Boys, an enigmatic militia-style organization that confounds even self-styled extremism experts.
Members of the Boogaloo Boys uphold a staunchly anti-communist, anarchistic perspective that incorporates political positions and symbols familiar to both radical right and leftist movements. They have marched in support of Black Lives Matter, to the obvious discomfort of many liberal social justice activists, and protested coronavirus lockdowns, usually while openly toting assault rifles and sporting the Hawaiian shirts that have become their trademark.
Hoeft was a prominent figure in the Ohio chapter of the Boogaloos and appeared at the Ohio statehouse in Columbus to deliver introductory remarks at an armed “unity rally.” There, he emphasized the group’s non-partisan politics and defended a transgender activist from insults.
Henry Hoeft at a Boogaloo Boys event at the Columbus, Ohio statehouse on January 17, 2021
But Hoeft said it was not his former affiliation with a militia-style organization that drew him back into the field of armed combat. Instead, it was the emotional impact of news flashing across his Facebook timeline about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine this February and being taken in by heart-rending stories of civilian suffering. He was a father now, and he saw his own child in the faces of Ukrainian youth fleeing for their lives from the Russian military onslaught.
So the moment Ukrainian President Vlodymyr Zelensky implored Westerners to travel thousands of miles across the ocean to join his country’s fight, Hoeft mobilized. “Every friend of Ukraine who wants to join Ukraine in defending the country please come over, we will give you weapons,” Zelensky
appealed days after the full-scale war erupted.
When he arrived in Ukraine, however, he was forced to confront the dispiriting reality of a rag-tag volunteer paramilitary thrust into a proxy war against a powerful military machine. After about a week, he decided he had signed up for his own death.
“They’re trying to send us to Kiev with no ****ing weapons, no kit, no plates. The people who are lucky enough to get weapons are only getting magazines with like 10 ****ing rounds,” Hoeft complained in a viral video rant from the field. “People need to stop coming here. It’s a trap and they’re not letting you ****ing leave.”
Hoeft went on to make a series of explosive claims, including that the passports of Westerners trying to leave Ukraine were being torn up; that foreigners were being sent to the front lines without rifles; and that the Georgian Legion was threatening to shoot those who refused.
Once it became clear that Hoeft’s account was undermining Kiev’s public relations campaign, the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine denounced him on its official Twitter account, branding the American as a stooge of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and posting his photo beside the caption “Made in Russia.”
https://twitter.com/NSDC_ua/status/1507020340131729410
Next, Georgian Legion fighters joined the social media assault, denouncing Hoeft and branding him as a liar. “Whatever may or not be circling right now from Henry,” one American volunteer claimed in a video published by Daily Wire reporter Kassy Dillon, “it is completely false.”
Finally, the corporate media trained its sights on Hoeft.
“Ukraine’s foreign fighters ridicule American Boogaloo Boy who RAN AWAY,” a headline from the Daily Mail tabloid said. “A Boogaloo Boi Tried to Join the Foreign Legion In Ukraine — It Didn’t End Well,” claimed Rolling Stone. And via the aggregator Raw Story: “Boogaloo Boi’s attempt to fight in Ukraine ends in disaster and him fleeing.”
Amidst the corporate media’s taunting, Hoeft agreed to an interview with The Grayzone. He told this reporter that he was determined to set the record straight about his connection with the Boogaloo Boys, his political views, and most importantly, the serious dangers volunteers face on the Ukrainian battlefield.
“There’s no such thing as glory in death,” Hoeft told The Grayzone. “You’re going to die in a trench and you’re going to get left there and it’s gross and it’s bad.”
“We can possibly stop a world war”
When Henry Hoeft signed up for the Ukrainian Foreign Legion in late February 2022, he was convinced his experience as an army veteran trained in infantry tactics and mortar fire would make him a valuable asset. Tens of thousands of foreigners who flocked to Ukraine, pouring across the Polish border with the quiet assent of NATO governments, and zealous encouragement from Kiev, apparently felt the same.
“Being a veteran that has a specific skill set, I felt like I could put it to better use there in Ukraine than sitting here on my couch while watching women and children be targeted by Russian forces,” Hoeft told The Grayzone.
A few days before shipping off to Ukraine, he told The Columbus Dispatch, his hometown paper, about the raw emotion that was driving his decision: “Russia is firing on civilian structures, and there are kids who died. The fact that so many veterans across countries are stepping up, that’s very inspiring to me. We feel like if we can hold Putin for long enough, we can possibly stop a world war.”
Today, Hoeft says, “I still feel the same way. But I never had an intention of going to Ukraine on a suicide mission. I have a child. I have work. I have school. My original intent wasn’t even to be a frontline combat soldier. I intended to volunteer, which I did, and provide training, medical supplies and support.”
Hoeft submitted to the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington, DC a copy of his passport and proof of his military experience, the sole requirements of foreigners looking to fight for Ukraine.
Once he arrived in Poland, getting over the border was “a very easy process,” he said. “It was very fast paced. It took us probably five, ten minutes to get into Ukraine.”
But as Hoeft explained to The Grayzone, getting out was not so easy.
Inside the Georgian National Legion
After entering Ukraine, Hoeft and a few fellow volunteers made their way to Lviv. “In the town center of Lviv, they’re recruiting people from a bunch of different groups. You had Georgians, Ukrainians from local militias, and you also had more hostile groups like Azov and stuff like that,” Hoeft recalled.
Since the Ukrainian Foreign Legion required a contract, Hoeft opted to join the Georgian Legion, which was conveniently stationed nearby.
Incorporated into the Ukrainian military, the Georgian Legion runs three bases with hundreds of fighters. Previously a unit that fought on the front lines against Donbass, the Georgian Legion is now headquartered in the West where it is led by Mamuka Mamulashvili, a veteran of four previous wars with Russia, including Georgia’s disastrous invasion of South Ossetia.
Mamulashvili and a small group of men he led during the Maidan coup d’etat have been accused by fellow Georgian fighter Alexander Revazishvili of carrying out a dastardly false flag massacre in Kiev’s central square. According to Revashishvili, Mamulashvili ordered his snipers to open fire on a crowd, killing 49 protesters in a cynical attempt to escalate the conflict by pinning the blame on the government they were seeking to topple.
Mamuka Mamulashvili poses with then-House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel in 2017
Photos from both 2017 and 2018 posted on Facebook by Mamulashvili show the Georgian hard-man inside the US Capitol rubbing elbows with some of the top figures on the House Foreign Relations Committee. They included then-Rep. Eliot Engel, Rep. Carolyn Maloney, former Rep. Sander Levin, Rep. Doug Lamborn, and former Rep. Dana Rohrabacher. He posted more photos showing him visiting Senate offices, including that of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the former chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Over the years, a number of infamous foreigners have passed through the ranks of the Georgian Legion, including American veteran Craig Lang, who is accused of a grisly double-murder in Florida, Joachim Furholm, a Norweigan neo-Nazi and bank robber, and Ethan Tilling, a former member of the neo-Nazi Right Wing Resistance group in Australia.
American fugitive Craig Lang gives an interview on behalf of the Georgian Legion from the front lines in Donbass in 2016
The rest is here:
https://thegrayzone.com/2022/03/30/u...icide-mission/
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