Macer Gifford is a former currency trader who volunteered to fight for the Kurdish People's Defense Units, or YPG, against the Islamic State in 2015, and for the Ukrainian army against Russia in 2022.
Gifford speaks with Business Insider about what it was like being in Kyiv during the outbreak of the war and his motivations for joining as a volunteer fighter. He recounts stories from his reconnaissance unit, the 131st, and their activities in Lyman and Kherson. He also explains how FPV drones and antidrone technology are used.
Gifford covers Zelenskyy's call to action; Putin's military tactics; Russia's links with North Korea, Iran, and China; the conditions and medical welfare of Russia's troops; and his predictions for the upcoming months of the war.
He is the author of "Fighting Evil."
2025 marks three years of the Russia-Ukraine war.
For more:
https://www.amazon.com/Fighting-Evil-Ordinary-went-Against/dp/1409195708
Gifford speaks with Business Insider about what it was like being in Kyiv during the outbreak of the war and his motivations for joining as a volunteer fighter. He recounts stories from his reconnaissance unit, the 131st, and their activities in Lyman and Kherson. He also explains how FPV drones and antidrone technology are used.
Gifford covers Zelenskyy's call to action; Putin's military tactics; Russia's links with North Korea, Iran, and China; the conditions and medical welfare of Russia's troops; and his predictions for the upcoming months of the war.
He is the author of "Fighting Evil."
2025 marks three years of the Russia-Ukraine war.
For more:
https://www.amazon.com/Fighting-Evil-Ordinary-went-Against/dp/1409195708
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TechTranscript
00:00My name's Mesa Gifford. Since 2022, I've been fighting alongside Ukraine against Russia as a volunteer.
00:06And this is everything I'm authorised to tell you.
00:10The Russian war machine is incredibly efficient, incredibly big and incredibly dangerous.
00:16So for them, it's a war of annihilation.
00:19And the people you're fighting against are incredibly dangerous,
00:24often times fanatical or desperate people that would torture you and kill you if they caught you.
00:30So there was an agreement. No one in the unit was allowed to be taken alive.
00:40Tens of thousands of volunteers from all around the world went out to Ukraine,
00:43most to fight, but many more also went to act as humanitarians.
00:48I reached out to some friends of mine who were going to join a unit called the 131st,
00:54which was a battalion in the Ukrainian army.
00:56And it was only in really actually September, I suppose you could say, of 2022
01:04that I joined the Ukrainian army for the first time.
01:07In the south with the 131st, in the first two stages of the three stages of my war,
01:12I was under the southern command.
01:14Ukraine is split into various commands in the north, east and south.
01:18The front line is vast. There are hundreds of thousands of soldiers.
01:23When we fought on the front line, we deployed as a unit of between five and ten.
01:29And we were all international volunteers.
01:31Ukraine, in many ways, is a war of innovation.
01:35Adaptability really is what could win or lose the war.
01:38The Ukrainians have had to expand their capabilities to meet this massive threat that they've faced.
01:43The most obvious place that is making the news in the West on a daily basis now is the utilisation of drones,
01:51particularly commercial drones as well.
01:53In the early days of the war, it was DGI, a very popular Chinese brand,
01:59was utilised by both sides to act as a reconnaissance vehicle to locate Russian units.
02:06As time progressed, so did the innovation and the commercial drones suddenly began dropping munitions.
02:14The munitions themselves evolved from being able to kill and wound a single soldier to suddenly blowing up a tank.
02:21And suddenly that drone that's worth just $2,000 is suddenly blowing up a tank worth a million.
02:26And then that becomes even more magnified with the utilisation of FPV, first person drones, or first person view drones.
02:33These FPVs are commercially obtained.
02:35They utilise radio waves between the controller and the drone itself with ammunition on it,
02:42which can be impact detonated or electronically detonated to strike a vehicle or a bunker or a set of people.
02:50Now, the Ukrainians really pioneered that.
02:55But because of the support that China gives to Russia, the Russians have been able to build
03:01and have been able to scale up their drone provision even more and much more rapidly than the Ukrainians.
03:07I think in more recent months, things have started to equalise a little bit.
03:12But there was a period just before I set up our own FPV team,
03:16where I noticed that the Russians suddenly had the upper hand in the drone war in the south.
03:22We were struggling to move.
03:24Even drones themselves, these FPV drones have changed.
03:27My friends have been fighting in Kursk.
03:29And the drones that have been pioneered since that battle started have been fibre optic drones.
03:35And these fibre optic drones are unhackable, quite essentially,
03:39because the way that the Russians and the Ukrainians have countered the FPV drone,
03:44traditionally with the radio waves, is to actually introduce anti-drone technology that can bring these things down.
03:49And there were missions that I went on where we would lose three, four drones going after key assets.
03:57I have one in my mind right now where we were on a mission and we saw this, I think it was a T-90 or something, a T-90 tank.
04:04And we launched a drone at it and it flopped out of the sky.
04:07What happened? No idea. Could have been chance. Send another one.
04:10We sent up another one and it flopped out of the sky.
04:13We launched a third drone and sure enough, within 50 metres, it flops out of the sky and lands near them.
04:19So clearly that had an anti-drone technology on board and it was stopping us from hitting it.
04:23The utilisation of these fibre optic cables has changed everything because that drone will hit you.
04:30If it spots you and it's got a good pilot, you will die.
04:33And if you don't have anti-drone technology, the proliferation of drones means that the amount of casualties in the front line now is absolutely atrocious.
04:44In the first few months of my time in the 131st, we began a very rigorous series of missions.
04:54And those missions were confined mostly to the fields outside of a city called Kherson.
05:00Now, Kherson is a vast city in the south of Ukraine.
05:03It had been taken by the Russians very early on in the war and the Ukrainians were determined to get it back.
05:09And they had a good chance because Kherson is on one side of the vast Dnieper River
05:15and all the supplies getting to Kherson and to the front line were all having to come across this river.
05:20And with the introduction of American-made HIMARS and other weaponry, suddenly these landing points became a target for the Ukrainians.
05:29So the Russians in our area were very weak and the Ukrainians were pushing incredibly hard.
05:36The early missions that I did were actually just intelligence gathering.
05:40So we would push out in patrols all along the zero line, just literally skirting the very edge of the Ukrainian positions,
05:49looking for minefields, looking for speaking to local Ukrainian units, asking them what they've heard, what they've seen.
05:57And we did that for weeks and weeks and weeks prior to the final push towards Kherson, which liberated the city.
06:05There was one particular mission that we were deposited in a wood and we walked through it.
06:10We finally found this sort of Ukrainian position, it was at the very forefront of the Ukrainian army.
06:15There was nothing but no man's land in front of them, which also happened to be a long tree line
06:20leading towards a distant tree line about 900 metres forward.
06:26The Ukrainians were spooked.
06:28They'd been there for a few days, but they'd heard a lot of movement ahead of them
06:31and they were worried that their small platoon of sort of eight to ten people wouldn't be able to hold the tree line if they were attacked.
06:37They asked us to go down as a patrol and to see what we could find.
06:41We were so close we could hear them cutting wood.
06:44We could hear a generator going.
06:45We could even hear them laughing.
06:47When someone shouted at someone else or laughed really loudly, their voice carried to us really easily.
06:52And that would have been an opportunity to pull back.
06:55But in the end, what we did discover at the end of the tree line were a number of trenches, which we then quickly cleared.
07:01There wasn't anyone in those particular trenches, but we did seize radios, we seized weapons, a number of other items.
07:09It was clearly a place that they used to do guard duty.
07:12As we were robbing their trench, about 25 metres away in another dugout,
07:18a Russian spots one of our guys jumping in one of the trenches or moving between the trees
07:23and opens up with an automatic grenade launcher.
07:27And soon enough, our entire tree line was being absolutely obliterated by PKMs, AK-47s.
07:34Thankfully, as the bullets cracked around us, we were able to crawl out of that situation and get back to the Ukrainians.
07:42And we were able to report to them, yeah, there are definitely Russians down there.
07:45And we carried on.
07:46We kept on pushing down the tree line.
07:48And we met different units all the way along the front line for miles and miles and miles.
07:54And it was just a constant fear and a constant level of activity.
07:59From the moment you get up in the morning, you get into that armoured vehicle to get to the front line,
08:03to the moment you leave, your life is constantly in danger.
08:06On that one day, I nearly died about a thousand times.
08:09But after the liberation of Kherson city, which, by the way, was one of the most defining moments of my time in Ukraine,
08:15sort of patrolling through those villages and seeing Ukrainian civilians coming out crying,
08:20I genuinely saw so many grateful people coming out of their homes after months and months of torturous Russian occupation.
08:31And it was a sense of fulfilment, of a realisation that I'm doing exactly what I'm meant to be doing in Ukraine.
08:37That mission ended, the liberation was over, the city was free, and the new front line was the river,
08:44was where these islands were.
08:46That kicked off what I like to call the river war.
08:54So the 131st, it was fighting on the river in Kherson.
08:59The fight was terrible.
09:01There were a vast number of islands in the sort of Dnieper Delta.
09:06All these little islands became battlegrounds for reconnaissance units.
09:10And the 131st was perfectly placed, deploying in five-man teams, pushing forward, taking ground.
09:17In 2023, something changed, and that was the Chinese began providing the Russians with a vast number of drones,
09:26FPV drones, DGI quadcopters capable of dropping munitions on people's heads.
09:32It became so dangerous on those islands that you couldn't even move without being spotted by the Russians.
09:37And the moment you're spotted, all hell breaks loose.
09:40There's mortars going off, there's shellfire, there's drones coming after you.
09:45And it's a terrifying environment to be in.
09:48But we would land on these islands, and then you'd hear that horrible hovering sound, the whirring sound of a drone.
09:54And then within seconds, you're still getting your kit out of the boat.
09:57And then, bang, like the earth-shattering roar of a mortar or a tank shell.
10:07And they come in, they come in fast.
10:09And as you're walking to your position, there are buildings around you blowing up.
10:13But you'd get to your position, hold the position for a while, for a few days.
10:18Sometimes you were replacing somebody.
10:20Sometimes the Russians wouldn't know exactly where you were.
10:23They later had a policy of actually just destroying everything.
10:26So if you were in a village, they would try and burn the whole village down just because they know you were there.
10:32They had a tactic of just sending drones over, dropping flammable munitions on top of the houses just to burn, smoke us out.
10:40And that happened a few times.
10:42And then the drone would then watch.
10:44And as soon as it sees people running out of the burning houses, they'd then call in artillery.
10:49So we would dig into the basements.
10:51We'd rip up the floorboards, dig into the basements.
10:54We'd find forested areas, dig into the ground.
10:57And it was one week on, one week off.
10:59And we needed that because the tension is so horrendous.
11:05You're constantly on edge.
11:08You're sleeping underground most of the time.
11:10Or if you can't be underground, you're inside a house and there's constant shell fire.
11:15And it's just awful to wake up at one o'clock in the morning and suddenly, bang, the house is on top of you.
11:22You're buried in the house.
11:23And that happened a few times to us.
11:25There's no safety at all.
11:26You're hiding in a house and you hear the drones buzzing around the house.
11:31And it's 24-7.
11:31It's in the middle of the day.
11:32It's in the middle of the night.
11:33They fly around the house looking through the windows.
11:36You can try and shoot them down.
11:38But if you do that, there's a danger the drone can't hear you.
11:41But observation groups might do.
11:43So if they say, oh, we can hear there's gunfire.
11:45And then sometimes good drone pilots can tell that they're being shot at.
11:49So it will then fly away and then call an airstrike on that area.
11:51Or they'll start shelling that area.
11:53If they spot you, they'll also airstrike you.
11:55So the drone won't necessarily kill you, but it will lead to your death if it spots you.
12:00One thing that gives me comfort, and people mocked me for it in my battalion and in my unit,
12:04was I was obsessed by bunkers and being underground.
12:08So every time we moved positions, the first thing I said as I walked into a house,
12:13is there a bunker?
12:14Is there a cellar?
12:15Is there somewhere for me to go?
12:17And the first thing I'd do was check it out.
12:19I'd jump in there.
12:20If there's a hole to jump in, I was always in it.
12:22And people would tease me for that, because I was like a rat.
12:26I'd become almost rodent-like in how I operated.
12:30And what I mean by that is you spent most of your time either in a cellar
12:34or trying to take cover from mortars or drones and that sort of stuff.
12:37When you emerge into the light, your whiskers are flickering,
12:40your nose is twitching, you're looking nervously from side to side.
12:44And any hint of trouble, you're running for safety.
12:48It kept me alive.
12:49It's kept me alive over the years, and it kept me alive in Ukraine.
12:52There's one particular incident where we were
12:54able to take personal effects from the Russians,
12:57and that was on the islands when we pushed forwards to a house.
13:02Thankfully, the Russians had pulled back to another position
13:05just a few hundred yards away.
13:07But as we cleared that building, going through the different rooms,
13:11the Russians had left just a few hours before
13:13and had left everything behind, from their body
13:16to some of their weapons, but also their personal effects.
13:19I read letters in Russian to their sweethearts at home,
13:21to their wives, diaries and other things.
13:25As per usual, we gleaned everything for information,
13:27packed it into bags and sent it back to be processed and took war trophies.
13:33In fact, two of the patches from that particular incident,
13:38this patch here and this patch were from that house.
13:42I understand this is the hometown of where these Russian soldiers came from.
13:48My unit was actually stood down from a tempo of one mission a week,
13:53one week on, one week off, to suddenly not doing a mission in three weeks
13:58because of the danger of the islands.
14:00And it was that reason that I said to myself,
14:03there's a need here for our own FPVs, our own drones.
14:07So it was just an incredibly challenging environment,
14:10but we made it work.
14:11And the proof is in the pudding.
14:14Most of the islands in the Dnieper are free,
14:16and it's because of those efforts.
14:23The Russian war machine, it has many strengths and many weaknesses.
14:27Its strengths are the sheer size and the volume of the military forces
14:33it's able to put into the field.
14:35Firstly, its professional army,
14:37but also the fact that it's got a vast conscript pool,
14:40which on top of that was a vast amount of Soviet weaponry inherited from the USSR.
14:46It's also partnering very closely with China and with North Korea and Iran,
14:50sharing technology, sharing money, sharing resources for their own mutual benefits.
14:56The Russians have adapted to the fact that they aren't as strong as they thought they were.
15:02They thought the war would be over in three days.
15:04In the early days of the war,
15:05they sent their creme de la creme of the Russian armed forces to Ukraine,
15:11and they died in their thousands in vast convoys,
15:14either just north of Kiev or in the east and south on the way to Kherson.
15:20They had to adapt by recruiting thousands more.
15:22They had to recruit people from abroad.
15:24They had to adapt their actual assaults, their ability to fight on the front line.
15:29They could no longer do combined arms warfare because of the lack of trained soldiers.
15:33And instead, they started the human meat wave assaults because that's all they're good for.
15:38And also just the level of despair for the Russian soldiers on the ground.
15:42I saw those cases of Russian soldiers piling up dead bodies, essentially piles of bodies
15:47and people just being forced to do the most dreadful things by their own commanders,
15:53digging in the open.
15:54There was one position that I don't know whose idea it was on the Russian side.
15:59They were digging a trench directly towards the Ukrainians in the hope that,
16:03obviously, they had tried going over the ground and running over the field,
16:07but they weren't making it.
16:08So they decided to just dig and go through the thing.
16:10But the trouble is there's still no cover.
16:12There's no tree lines.
16:13There's no branches of trees to stop the drones from hitting you.
16:15You've got a shovel in your hands.
16:17You're exhausting yourself trying to dig through that cold, hard earth,
16:20only to have an FPV after five hours of labor crash into you.
16:25And then you've got to then crawl back with either no legs or one leg
16:28back to a Russian position, which the vast majority of the time,
16:33their ability to treat their casualties effectively is really bad.
16:37It's terrible, in fact.
16:38We'd see bodies and also capture positions where we'd look at their IFAT kits,
16:43we'd look at their medical supplies.
16:45And they were utilizing ropes as tourniquets.
16:50They had this strange sort of 1980s sort of rubber band thing
16:54that they would tie around their legs.
16:58There was reports that they were bringing tampons to the front line,
17:02and they were being told to insert tampons, commercially bought
17:07tampons, into their bullet wounds to stop the blood loss, which
17:11is ridiculous, which is just not going to treat you effectively.
17:14So Russia has gone to every depth of depravity
17:20you could possibly imagine in Ukraine.
17:22There's famous memes online of Russians running off
17:25with everything from toilets that they've looted
17:28to washing machines and refrigerators.
17:31And more than that, the Russians have obviously
17:35bombed entire cities to the ground, everything from Bakhmut to Maripol,
17:40the targeting of civilians, hospitals, including
17:43hospitals that cater for children.
17:45And it makes you wonder, what are their tactics?
17:48What is the end goal of that?
17:49Is it worth fighting on if there's nothing
17:53left to inherit at the end of all of this?
18:00Broadly speaking, I would prefer to use a British military uniform,
18:05primarily for quality reasons more than anything else, and comfort.
18:10Also, I had a quite slim body armor, predominantly because of the fact
18:16that we were a reconnaissance unit.
18:18We had to squeeze through gaps in buildings.
18:20We had to run between thorn bushes and tree lines and all the rest of it.
18:24So I tried to keep my personal kit as close to my body as possible.
18:28I had a battle belt with magazines on.
18:30I only had a couple of magazines on my plate carrier, a couple of grenades.
18:35I did often have an assault pack, which I would go and fight with.
18:40My personal weapon initially was a AK-74,
18:44which was the standard issue for the 131st
18:46in the first month of my time with them.
18:49That would change to the Polish Grot, which is a NATO standard weapon.
18:55I customized it with a full grip and red dot with a magnifier.
19:01I obviously had Russian or former Soviet grenades, mostly.
19:06The prized ones for the Ukrainians were the American and British ones.
19:10But the ones I always had were the Russian ones.
19:13In regards to a secondary weapon for me personally
19:16was a grenade launcher, 40mm American-made single-shot grenade launcher.
19:23We sometimes would bring an RPG, a rocket-propelled grenade,
19:26which was a sort of former Soviet design to the islands
19:29to hit buildings on the islands sometimes.
19:33But in regards to actually anti-tank, it was always
19:36NATO that would provide the best kits.
19:38Enlors, Javelin, Amantador, I think it was Spanish-made.
19:42We'd also have drones as well that we'd bring with us.
19:45Those were reconnaissance drones predominantly.
19:47But when we became an FPV team, when we actually set up a drone team,
19:51we actually did deploy always with FPV-related kits.
19:56And that was always sort of batteries and controllers
19:59and signals equipment, also a number of drones
20:02to actually utilize the munitions themselves, the batteries.
20:05The vast majority of the time, we are light infantry.
20:08Obviously a knife as well, a knife constantly on my plate carrier.
20:12That's a habit I've always had since Syria.
20:15And a realization that you're going into an environment
20:18where you have to be self-sufficient, so enough food and water
20:22for however long you're going out for.
20:25Functionary and half-decent equipment was very common
20:31on the front line in Ukraine.
20:33But if you wanted the really decent thermal scope,
20:36if you wanted the very best drone that could be bought commercially,
20:40then oftentimes it is up to the military themselves
20:44or international volunteers to fundraise for that kit.
20:46I began doing things like buying drones for the units.
20:50I began buying anti-drone software and hardware to go on their vehicles.
20:57I also purchased and delivered vehicles to the battalion as well.
21:01And the best way to do that, to get the financing together,
21:04is not to rely on the Ukrainians to navigate the bureaucracy of the system,
21:09but instead go directly to my followers on social media.
21:17I suppose the third phase of my time in Ukraine, personally,
21:21was the shift from the south, from Kherson to the east,
21:25to a place called Lomon.
21:26It was the summer of 2023, and the Ukrainians were on the march.
21:32The Russians were desperate to stop them,
21:35and they were counterattacking.
21:37With us being in the south, a reconnaissance group
21:39that now specialized in drones, help was needed.
21:43Suddenly, we're fighting these waves of Russians
21:45coming in tank columns.
21:48And then we also saw the terrible casualties
21:50that the Russians were getting.
21:52But again, it was strangely distant, yet also intimate,
21:56because there's something very strange about loading up
22:00your car with FPV drones and reconnaissance drones,
22:04driving to the front line, but not going to the very, very front line,
22:07maybe coming a mile off the zero line, and then sending drones over.
22:12And you're targeting people.
22:13You're trying to blow them up.
22:15You can see them running around.
22:16For several more months, I was in the cold, snowy grounds
22:20of eastern Ukraine with the drone team,
22:23doing my best to support them in getting as many drones
22:26to the front line as possible, and as many Russians sent home
22:30as possible as well.
22:31I was there as a protection team for the drone units,
22:36but also as a driver as well to get them in,
22:39also as the designated medic to try and help them if they got injured.
22:43We'd set up laptops in these bunkers.
22:46We'd have big batteries for the power source.
22:49And we'd put up a little cable, sometimes tie it
22:51to a tree for the signals.
22:53And then we became observers, like sort of ghosts
22:58over the battlefield, either looking for targets
23:01or just keeping a constant eye.
23:03And again, the most abiding memory is just the fact
23:06that the number of kills increased rapidly
23:10from our time in the south.
23:12There was a lot more vehicles being destroyed.
23:19My time in Ukraine could be separated in different phases.
23:22My first phase was the pre-war phase, which
23:26was in February of 2022, when just a few weeks before the war
23:31started.
23:31The next phase was my time coming back
23:34to Ukraine as a humanitarian, training people
23:37in battlefield medicine.
23:39That was in March to about June time in 2022.
23:47The process of becoming an international volunteer
23:49is actually remarkably easy, particularly
23:52in relation to Ukraine.
23:53Before the war, you could fly directly
23:55to Lviv on Ryanair.
23:57With the outbreak of the war, with the fact
23:58that the Russians were threatening
24:01to shoot down any aircrafts in Ukrainian airspace,
24:04the only way to get in was via the land border.
24:06And I drove across the border.
24:08And it was incredibly surreal to see the queues of people,
24:11fast queues, so long, in fact, that some people were
24:14abandoning their cars in the queue
24:16and just simply walking to the border.
24:18And the road into Kiev and into Ukraine was completely empty.
24:22And that's the tried and tested route
24:24for most international volunteers who
24:26went to Ukraine.
24:27Most of them would go on to sign up in a place called Lviv.
24:31They'd join the army.
24:32And they'd be sent off to camps.
24:34Very soon after my arrival, while I was on the ground
24:37in places like Kiev, Lviv, Odessa,
24:39I was hearing reports of the terrible war crimes
24:42in places like Bucha and Erpin of civilians
24:46being shot in the streets.
24:47And there I was on the ground looking Ukrainians in the eye,
24:50meeting them, getting to know them as people.
24:53And then when I heard about the war crimes,
24:55I realised that the battlefield aid, the charitable work,
25:00was only tinkering on the edges.
25:02I knew and I felt the same sort of passion
25:06and the determination to stand alongside the Ukrainians
25:09that I felt when I went out to join the Kurds
25:12against the Islamic State.
25:13If I wanted to make a stand against Russia,
25:16if I wanted to really stand alongside the Ukrainians,
25:19I had to join the army.
25:20So that's exactly what I did.
25:22Looking in, in those early days,
25:25the international volunteers may have looked
25:27like a drag on the system
25:28because it was all hands to the pump in Ukraine.
25:30Everyone was trying to survive.
25:32Hundreds of thousands of people were turning up
25:34at recruitment centres.
25:35There was no capability for the Ukrainians
25:38to actually train their own people,
25:39let alone thousands of foreigners.
25:41But I don't see it that way.
25:43I see it that this was a burst of energy, human energy,
25:49goodwill, passion from the international community,
25:52including individual citizens,
25:55going out to support Ukraine.
25:56As far as I'm concerned,
25:57you're not a hero just for turning up.
25:59You're a hero for what you do.
26:01And many people went and left,
26:04but a few stayed, learned the language,
26:07learned the culture,
26:08ingratiated themselves with the Ukrainians
26:10and delivered capabilities to the Ukrainians early on
26:14that were actually really useful.
26:16I'm talking about things like battlefield medicine,
26:18things, the utilisation of some of the weapons
26:21that were coming in from the West at the time.
26:24They were already familiar.
26:25Many of the former service people that joined
26:27were already familiar with these weapon systems.
26:29So I see them as a band of brothers
26:31who went out to support Ukraine in its hour of need
26:35with a few crazy ones mixed in.
26:38There are many ways to categorise
26:40the international volunteers
26:42and they came to do different things.
26:43Some joined the army, some came as simple volunteers.
26:46You also saw people with no military experience
26:49coming out to join the army.
26:51These are the sort of passionate ones,
26:53the ones that sort of heard Zelensky's call early doors
26:57and they were sort of politically
26:58and ideologically motivated.
27:00I can't criticise these people
27:01because I'm one of those people.
27:03I didn't have any sort of conventional military experience
27:06when I went out to join the Kurds so many years ago.
27:09Many, quite frankly, shouldn't have been there at all.
27:12They might've been fleeing something in their home country,
27:16whether that's drink or drug abuse.
27:19They might see Ukraine as a place to prove themselves,
27:24I suppose, to gain some sort of respect
27:27from the people around them.
27:28There have been far worse people
27:30and there was the terrible case of Dan Burke
27:33and several actually other gentlemen
27:35that were murdered by other international volunteers.
27:39So frankly, some very dangerous people
27:41have turned up as well.
27:43But they are far and few between.
27:45They often don't have the capacity to stay in Ukraine
27:48for the long term.
27:49But either way, all kinds of people did turn up
27:52in those early days and it would take months and months
27:55for the Ukrainians to sort through them,
27:57find the gems and deploy them effectively on the front line.
28:01The training that was given to the volunteers
28:04in those early days was very poor
28:06and the organisation was very poor too.
28:09And there were some very early mistakes.
28:11One of the most noticeable and well-known
28:13was a terrible attack on a base very close to Lviv
28:18that was housing international volunteers.
28:20Dozens of people were killed and injured in that attack
28:23because foreigners were tweeting,
28:25were using their mobile phones in a war zone,
28:29perhaps obviously naively,
28:30and the Russians were able to find the location of this base
28:36and strike it with long range cruise missiles.
28:40That things would later change
28:41whereby the international volunteers
28:44then became more organised.
28:45So after learning about the creation
28:47of the international volunteers,
28:48the international brigades in Ukraine,
28:50and knowing that it was gonna have some teething problems,
28:53I deliberately kept away.
28:55So I joined directly with the Ukrainian army
28:58and signed my contract with the Ministry of Defence
29:01and not with the International Legion,
29:03primarily just because I wanted to stay away from foreigners
29:06and work directly with the Ukrainians.
29:09I had a medical test and a fitness test
29:12that I had to go through.
29:13Once I had been cleared for service by the MOD in Ukraine,
29:19I was then liable to be taken by any Ukrainian unit
29:23that wished to have me.
29:24Now, the international volunteers that I was with
29:28were determined to get to the 131st.
29:31And the 131st, as I said, was an elite unit
29:34that was in charge of all the operations
29:36and the 131st, as I said, was an elite regiment,
29:39a great regiment to get into.
29:41I was actually, of my little group,
29:44I had the least experience
29:46in terms of conventional military experience.
29:48But what appealed to me about the reconnaissance group
29:53that was fighting in the south, the 131st,
29:55was because it was light infantry.
29:57A lot of the work that they were doing
29:59was very similar to the work that I did
30:01with the YPG and SDF in Syria.
30:04Now, the SDF operated in things called tabors,
30:07which were about 40-man teams.
30:09And a tabor would ride around in soft-skinned vehicles
30:13with no heavy weapons,
30:14just AK-47s with body armor, grenades.
30:18They would clear buildings,
30:19they would push through villages,
30:21through mountain ranges, you name it,
30:23we had to clear it all.
30:24And a lot of those experiences in Syria,
30:28fighting in Raqqa, in places like Manbij and Tabriz,
30:34till Hamas, it all lent itself to the work
30:37that I would later do for the Ukrainian military.
30:40We were a very aggressive unit.
30:42If we were told to do something, we were gonna do it.
30:46No matter the casualties, no matter how difficult it was,
30:49the risks involved,
30:51you just put your head down and just do it.
30:54As long as our radio guy could speak Ukrainian,
30:57and our point man can speak Ukrainian,
31:00then we could actually operate very effectively.
31:05We had to be adaptable.
31:06We had to be able to protect ourselves.
31:10And the weapons that we chose to bring with us,
31:12from grenade launchers, to anti-tank missiles,
31:15to the heavy machine guns, the PKMs that we brought with us,
31:18all helped us become very self-reliant.
31:21There's a common misconception
31:23that international volunteers in Ukraine are mercenaries.
31:26Now, as far as I'm concerned, that's simply not true.
31:29A mercenary, by definition, is a soldier,
31:32that sells his service for money.
31:34Now, international volunteers from Britain, America,
31:38France, et cetera, have all gone out to Ukraine
31:41to stand in solidarity with the local people.
31:44They get paid not a single penny more
31:46than any other Ukrainian does.
31:48We get the same benefits if we're injured,
31:50the same veteran benefits once we retire
31:53than any other soldier in Ukraine.
31:55The classic definition of a mercenary is the Wagner Group,
32:00which is the Russian mercenary group
32:03that fights in foreign countries,
32:06often destabilizing them and butchering and murdering
32:09and torturing local people,
32:12but also the thousands of people
32:14that have gone over to join the Russian army.
32:17Now, the Russian army is employing the most terrible tactics
32:20to encourage people, often from the third world,
32:24from developing countries where there is terrible poverty,
32:29to join them, and sometimes they're doing it through lies,
32:33saying that they've got a job in Moscow in a factory,
32:36but then they turn up,
32:37they're threatened with arrest or deportation,
32:40and suddenly they find themselves fighting in the Donbass.
32:43So as far as I'm concerned,
32:45we're just simply Ukrainian soldiers
32:47fighting alongside them.
32:48So there is a base salary,
32:50and that base salary is 500 US dollars a month.
32:53There is also a combat bonus,
32:55which brings your salary, your base salary,
32:58up to $2,000, or around $2,000 a month.
33:02Only a fool, as far as I'm concerned,
33:04would go to Ukraine looking for money.
33:11This is a good point, actually, to point out my two patches.
33:14This was the Vidmark Group, or Vidmark,
33:17which is a local name.
33:18It means witcher, in fact, in Ukrainian.
33:20On the other side is my battalion insignia,
33:24and it's the traditional cross of Ukraine.
33:28The colours are red and black,
33:30and the logo, the motto, I should say,
33:33in Ukrainian, which is always forward.
33:36A lot of international volunteers collect patches.
33:39Just starting from the top,
33:40you've got the unit patch here, the 131st, here and here.
33:45These are my unit patches,
33:46the international volunteer units of the 131st.
33:49And below that are things that I was given.
33:52Poroshenko, the former president of Ukraine,
33:56gifted me this patch.
33:57He also gave me this one.
33:59These are also unit patches from Ukrainian battalions
34:04that gifted them to me.
34:07And then next to that are sort of Syrian patches,
34:11I suppose you could say.
34:13This one of the YPG in Syria that fought against ISIS.
34:16Below that is Wagner Group,
34:18which is a patch taken from a dead Russian soldier.
34:21This one here and here are unit patches
34:25of the Russian military.
34:27I took these ones down in Kherson.
34:30So a lot of international volunteers
34:33will collect thousands of patches.
34:34Me, I only keep the ones that I earned
34:37or was given or I took from the enemy.
34:45My real name is Harry, but I go by Mesa Gifford.
34:48Mesa Gifford is a nom de guerre that I chose
34:52when I first went out to Syria way back in 2015.
34:54I did it because I went to fight against the Islamic State
34:58alongside the Kurdish people in that area, in the region.
35:01And obviously the Islamic State
35:05were putting bounties on people's heads.
35:08I was gonna put a big bounty on my own head,
35:11particularly for the length of time that I fought there
35:13and the amount of political work I did out there.
35:16So it was very sensible to choose a name
35:18that was memorable, was something that people,
35:23the local people could pronounce
35:24and something that was familiar to me.
35:26I like the name, so I chose it.
35:28My journey from ordinary city worker,
35:32working in London with a girlfriend,
35:34with a partner and a flat in London
35:37to suddenly fighting first in Syria
35:39and then obviously later in Ukraine and doing other things,
35:43it all began with the rise of the Islamic State, I suppose.
35:46Very early, way back in 2008,
35:48I went out to Zimbabwe to work for the MDC,
35:51the Movement for Democratic Change against Robert Mugabe.
35:54And after a few years of work in the city
35:57and then seeing the rise of what was going on
36:00in the Middle East with the region being torn apart,
36:02I suppose I started to remember
36:04what drove me when I was younger.
36:05First, the one abiding memory that I can remember
36:09writing about for my book about Syria
36:11was this moment on a train when I picked up a newspaper
36:15and there was the title like Brave,
36:18I think it was Brave in the Face of Pure Evil or something.
36:21And it was just, it was a picture of a aid worker
36:24just about to have his head cut off.
36:26And I could have just joined a charity.
36:28I could have, again, fiddled around the edges
36:31of the problem in Syria,
36:33just like the rest of the world was doing.
36:35But instead, what angered me was the images
36:38of the Yazidi girls being burnt alive in cages
36:40or being sold in slave markets.
36:43And I realised that if you believe in internationalism,
36:47if you believe in humanism,
36:49if you want to actually deal with something
36:51that is dreadful happening on the other side of the world,
36:54you are not just a hopeless spectator.
36:58You have agency.
36:59You have the ability to say, no, I'm gonna go out.
37:03I'm gonna do something here.
37:04I'm gonna draw attention to this issue
37:05and I'm gonna do the very least I can do,
37:07which as far as I'm concerned, and this is the least I do,
37:10picking up a weapon, any fool can do.
37:13I have skirted, it is very controversial,
37:16even from a legal perspective,
37:18but I've always abided by the law, the British law.
37:21And it's, but it's something that I know
37:24is worthwhile and good.
37:26One of my biggest strengths has always been
37:28to use my privilege as a British person
37:32to articulate the cause that I'm supporting.
37:34The war zones that we go to
37:37and the causes we get involved with,
37:39they are toxic environments that play havoc
37:43on mental and emotional health.
37:46One of the ways that I've kept myself safe
37:48is the fact that I've, I always have a plan.
37:50And that is I compartmentalize my time
37:52in the countries that I support.
37:54I'm going for a reason.
37:56There's always something that I'm doing.
37:58I am going to do something that I'm committed to.
38:03I am going to set up a medical program.
38:05I'm going to be doing certain advocacy work,
38:07whether it's writing articles
38:08or whether it's speaking in parliaments
38:10or meeting whoever, major players
38:14and decision makers in certain quarters.
38:17If I can do all of that, and it's quantifiable,
38:20it could be written down and articulated,
38:22then again, it gives me purpose, it gives me focus.
38:26But if you don't have that mentality
38:28and you're just saying, waiting to see what happens
38:30or the grass is always greener
38:31or you're running from something from home,
38:34your problems will catch up with you eventually.
38:36And in a war zone and with the stresses
38:38that you're under as well,
38:40you're not going to find salvation.
38:41It's a very dark and difficult place.
38:44I've lost so many people that I've known
38:46over these more than a decade of fighting
38:50and working in various conflict zones.
38:52There was one incident in Raqqa
38:54when myself and two other guys crossed a road
38:58and there was a machine gun at the end of the road,
39:00an ISIS machine gun, and they shot left to right.
39:03I was the third guy on the end.
39:05They shot and killed the first two guys.
39:07They actually shot me as well.
39:08They hit my body armor and I was flung to the ground
39:11and I crawled off the road, but I survived.
39:15And as I said, it's pure chance
39:18whether or not you live or die sometimes.
39:20That's not always the case.
39:21There's a famous saying that I've never forgotten,
39:24which is, oh, how do you get so lucky?
39:28The more I train, the luckier I get.
39:31It's kind of like that too.
39:33The more you experience of war,
39:35the more you experience of the terrible things
39:37that can happen to you, it helps you to survive.
39:40Oftentimes, I've seen a lot of guys die
39:43because they underestimated the enemy.
39:45They didn't know exactly what it was like to fight.
39:50And a lot of guys I met in Ukraine,
39:53a lot of them are former service people too,
39:55a lot of them hadn't fought
39:57in particularly difficult environments in the past.
40:01And they sort of came to the conflict zone
40:03thinking it was gonna be much of the same.
40:06And then they would die
40:07because they didn't take cover that time
40:08because they thought, oh, the Russians never do this.
40:11The Russians never do that.
40:13And then the one time the Russians do what you have always
40:18said that they weren't gonna do is the day that you die.
40:26My time in Ukraine ended in the,
40:29just before Christmas in 2023.
40:33My father was very unwell,
40:34and sadly within a month of me returning home, passed away.
40:38And it gave me a new perspective
40:40on what I was doing in Ukraine.
40:43And largely I'd completed much of what I wanted to achieve.
40:47I was still able to raise $100,000
40:49for the Ukrainian military in that time.
40:51But I also started to remember
40:53that there were other causes as well
40:56that I wanted to support.
40:57In the news recently has been things like
40:59the conflict in Syria is back is hot topic.
41:04The Donald Trump presidency,
41:06there's a lot going on in the world
41:08and I'm not going to rush anywhere.
41:10I'm going to focus on myself, my family,
41:13come up with a clear plan, a clear goal,
41:16and I'm gonna choose my next mission.
41:20So one of the things that's kept me sane
41:22since I've left Ukraine has been my writing.
41:26It helped me so much when I left Syria all those years ago,
41:29I wrote a book called Fighting Evil,
41:31which came out in 2020.
41:34I did start writing a book,
41:36an account of my time in Ukraine.
41:38But actually one thing I've always enjoyed
41:41and always been intrigued about is writing fiction.
41:43So one of the things I've been doing
41:44over the last few months is writing a fiction book
41:49about Ukraine and about the war against Russia.
41:53At the same time, I was able to come back
41:56with a huge amount of footage.
41:59Just by the nature of this conflict,
42:01it being the most filmed war probably of all time.
42:05I think putting that together
42:06into a really compelling documentary,
42:09into something that will tell the story
42:11of the international volunteers,
42:12that will tell the story of Ukraine
42:14through the eyes of people who've gone out to support them
42:17would be a really good thing.
42:19If I am to build a life after this
42:21and whatever life that might be,
42:24it would be good to go back to my old name,
42:27which is just simply Harry, Harry from England.