KYIV, Ukraine — “Skunk” found himself pinned down in a trench, outnumbered and under relentless close-range fire. It was Christmas Eve 2024, and the 38-year-old U.S. Air Force veteran was serving with a unit in Eastern Ukraine as that country goes into its fourth year of repelling Russia’s full-scale invasion. He didn’t speak Ukrainian or Russian, and it had been 15 years since he’d served in the U.S. military, but he felt compelled to try to help defend an ally.
He’d arrived in Ukraine only two months before, shortly after submitting his 2024 election ballot. It was the first time he had voted in his life and, recalling a sense of better times during President Donald Trump’s first term, he cast his ballot to return him to office. He cheered when he found out he’d picked the winner.
But when he turned his head in that trench in the hours before Christmas, a round tore through his thermal vision goggles and ripped into his face.
“It blew up in my eye,” Skunk said, pointing to the scars over his right eyelid. He spoke to Military.com via a video interview earlier this month from Izium — a formerly occupied area in the Kharkiv region that was liberated in 2023 but that remains on the front line under constant attack. Like other troops fighting in this war, Skunk asked to be referred to by his nom de guerre, a wartime nickname, for fear of his family being targeted by Russia.
The bullet shattered his collarbone and clavicle. Two others in his unit were killed on the same mission: One dismembered by a shell, another captured by the Russians and executed a day later, he was told.
It was while he was recovering from his wounds last month that what he considered to be his worthy sacrifice was being called into question by the president he had voted for.
Seeing Trump label Zelenskyy — a wartime leader Skunk was risking his life for — as a dictator felt like a gut punch. Hearing him dismiss Ukraine’s will to continue defending itself felt even worse.
“Fear went through me,” he said.
It made him reconsider the American flag patches he’s worn proudly on his uniform while fighting in Ukraine.
“Maybe it’s time to take off this f—ing flag, sitting next to the Ukrainian one,” he said. “I have a northern Illinois accent — I’d rather people think I am Canadian.”
Hundreds of Americans have fought in Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion began. At least 50 have been killed, 40 of whom were former U.S. service members. Military.com talked to half a dozen American veterans who have fought for Ukraine and are currently in the country about how their perspectives have changed since Trump took office.
For some foreign fighters, the battlefield in Ukraine is only one front in a larger war for justice and freedom. But watching Washington’s political infighting from the trenches has led their faith in America’s righteousness — once unquestioned — to begin slipping away.
For Skunk, this realization has stung, but it has also sharpened his resolve to support Ukraine. Whatever was happening in the U.S., he knew what he had sworn an oath to almost 20 years before. And he wasn’t done fighting for it, even if it’s changed his relationship with American democracy.
“I am never going to vote again.”
‘They hope I come home as ashes in a box’
While the sudden diplomatic crisis between the Ukrainian and U.S. governments was unfolding in Washington, foreign fighters have been feeling the fallout, along with their Ukrainian brothers in arms. “Tiger,” a 39-year-old former Marine from Michigan fighting and training troops in Ukraine since early 2022, said earlier this month that he was also appalled by the dispute between the U.S. president and Zelenskyy. He supported Trump in the last election, too.
“Honestly, it made me sick to see officials in the U.S. government act that way,” he told Military.com by video while with his unit on the eastern front. Tiger has received awards from the Armed Forces of Ukraine for his service and is wanted by the Kremlin for the “crime” of fighting against Russian forces. He has lost dozens of friends over the last three years — including several American veterans — as he helped hold the line in Bakhmut, Zaporizhzhia and, most recently, Pokrovske.
He was preparing for a risky mission to retrieve the body of a fallen brother — another American veteran and volunteer fighter who was killed on a mission weeks before. Russian forces had overrun the area, Tiger explained, dooming previous retrieval efforts. Now, his cheeks flushed in anger as he watched what he described as the White House’s lack of respect toward the sacrifices already made by his friend and countless others killed in Ukraine.
“If you were behind closed doors, not in the public eye, and wanted to behave that way, that’s different,” he said. “But to do that in front of millions of people, and berate [Zelenskyy], a man who’s only trying to save his country, it was not only foolish, it was f—ing disgusting.”
In the weeks following the White House spat, Trump temporarily froze military aid and intelligence-sharing with Ukraine — leaving troops like Skunk and Tiger even more exposed on the front lines. Russia launched hundreds of drones and missiles across the border during that period, with one attack in Dobropillia, near where Tiger was stationed in the Donetsk region, resulting in 14 deaths and dozens of injuries, according to The Guardian.
America’s stepping back from its support of Ukraine means that Tiger now has to defend himself both on and off the front, he said. He has seen an increase in hate mail and death threats from Russians and self-described MAGA Republicans in the U.S. since he began publicly criticizing Trump’s approach to ending the war in Ukraine.
“I get harassed all the time,” he said. “Guys that say I’m a traitor, and if I ever come back to the States, they’ll kill me. Telling me they hope I die here. … They hope I come home as ashes in a box.”
For some veterans, America’s alliance with Russia is inherently nonsensical.
“The thing I find most distressing is that you have some voices within the U.S. and in positions of power that can’t seem to come to the realization that Russia — no matter what it says — is diametrically opposed to the American way of life,” said “Mexico,” a former Marine from Washington, D.C., and veteran of the war in Afghanistan currently living in Kyiv.
The 34-year-old first fought with the International Legion for about six months in 2022 before he transitioned to trying to build partnerships between Ukrainian and American companies.
He linked the dangers presented by the current situation in Ukraine to the consequences of the failed 2021 withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. Several of the veterans who spoke with Military.com for this article referenced the botched retreat as a nightmare scenario that they feared could repeat itself in Ukraine if Trump were to permanently sever support for the country.
“On a personal level, I will not suffer the humiliation of Afghanistan again. I lost friends there,” Mexico said, briefly recalling the first time he “had seen a man ripped to pieces” in front of him. “I will not abandon another country, not one more time.”
Resolved to Keep Fighting
But the higher risk and diplomatic acrobatics have only reinforced Tiger’s, and other American veterans’, determination to fight for Ukraine’s future. And they say Ukrainians aren’t going to quit either, especially those who have family members trapped behind Russian lines.
“I wouldn’t just hand over my family and call it a day because some f—ing rat bastard politicians told me to,” Tiger said. “I’m going to continue to fight until I can get my aunt and uncle back, or my f—ing sister. They’re not going to stop.”
Tiger had fought in Iraq and with the Peshmerga in Kurdistan before arriving in Ukraine, but said that this war is unlike any he has ever experienced — both in terms of brutality and ideological clarity.
“A huge thing I’ve seen here, personally on the front line, is the heart that [Ukrainians] have,” he said. It could be difficult to work with undisciplined and uncommitted soldiers in the Middle East, but things were different here. “Every time I’ve instructed, 99% of the students were ears open, eyeballs watching. … They want to learn.”
Skunk, who had never seen combat before coming to Ukraine, had a simpler way of putting it. “This is pretty much World War I on steroids,” he said, only partially kidding. Humor has been a secret weapon for Ukrainians, wielded by exhausted soldiers who crack jokes at even the darkest moments to keep from breaking. Now, the punch line is the U.S.
“Hey, American — what the f—?” Skunk said he’s often asked these days, usually with a smirk or a shrug, like they’re half-joking. Mostly. “They know I do not represent [the U.S. government] as a sh– show. I represent [the U.S.] as a free country.”
Tiger said the calculus of whether the U.S. should continue wholeheartedly supporting Ukraine should be even clearer, for civilians and politicians alike. “I didn’t like [Biden]. I don’t like f—ing Trump. I don’t like Harris. I don’t like any of the f—ing presidents I’ve had in my lifetime,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean if they do something that’s right, I have to oppose it, right? I understand what’s right.”
For the hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians still enduring in bunkers and trenches across the front lines of Ukraine, the high politics of Kyiv, Washington and Moscow can seem like a world away with little impact on their day-to-day lives.
After all, the bombs have yet to stop falling.
“They’re like, f— it. … We will do this on our own if we have to,” Skunk recalled his Ukrainian buddies telling him after Zelenskyy’s last trip to the U.S. “And every single one of them will f—ing die fighting if they have to. That’s the way the mentality of it is.”
— Katie Livingstone is a freelance correspondent currently reporting from Ukraine and Eastern Europe. A graduate of Medill and Wellesley, her work has appeared in Foreign Policy Magazine, Rolling Stone Magazine, USA Today, UPI and more. Katie speaks five languages and lives in Washington, D.C.