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The officers being trained at the secret base in Ukraine had helped shift the country away from its infamous Berkut riot police, who killed 48 people in the Maidan uprising a decade ago. In fact, one of the 29 men learning from the American instructors told me he had not been a fan of law enforcement before the revolution, which turned Ukraine decisively toward the West. Pavlo had never even considered working with the police. But after 2014, when Berkut disbanded and Russia illegally seized Crimea, he chose to join a volunteer police battalion.
Roksolana was the only woman in the group. She had already been to the front, and told me that the battle in Chasiv Yar was the hardest — harder than Bakhmut. The fighting was constant, she said. Still, she wanted to go back and was looking for a commander to accept her.
Someone had decided that the training was just for men. But somehow Roksolana had gotten in, as had I as a reporter. And if “inadvertent infiltration” is a phenomenon, it was arguably relevant for me then. Because when I disclosed my name, profession, and platform to senior officers on the base, they were surprised. But instead of kicking me out, I was just told to “blend in” as part of the base’s security protocols. That evening, the instructors and interpreters threw military fatigues and camo hats at me in a military shop.
“Alex,” the lead instructor and retired senior military official who had invited me to the training, had taught the police officers camouflage techniques and land navigation. When a day at the shooting range came, Alex told them that women were often easier to train than men. They were more open-minded when learning new skills. They were better listeners.
The other instructor was a former U.S. Marine who had fought Russia’s Wagner Group in Syria. “Shaman” cursed a lot and had a colorful sense of humor, epitomized by a wifi network he had named “Free Blow Jobs at the Kremlin” (until this story published). He was telling the officers that their heartbeats would throw off their accuracy when they fired an AK-47. Now he was breaking down different stances. When he reached the prone position, he asked them, “Who has been told to spread your legs?”
“I have,” Roksolana said. All 29 men broke out in laughter, the grimness of the war and their inevitable call to join it momentarily forgotten.
That was the day I started interviewing officers. They had questions for me too. They wanted to know where I was from and if I could get them weapons. A few told me they wanted American bulletproof vests. Their Ukrainian ones were heavy, they said, handing me one stone-like vest that sank to the ground. U.S. vests might make their job easier and perhaps bring a little psychological comfort, a literal reminder that America has their backs.
My interpreter was assisting in the shooting instruction, so I used Google Translate to ask a battalion commander if he thought this group of police were ready for the front. (In full disclosure, the week after using Google Translate at the base, I started an unpaid training program for journalist entrepreneurs with the Google News Initiative.) The commander shook his head. No. They still needed a lot of knowledge on combat training, he said.
I asked him if he was optimistic that Ukraine would win the war. “I do not know what to say,” he typed. “It certainly does not depend on Ukraine. We do our best.” He went on to say, “If aid stops, Ukraine will lose. Europe will fall to its knees. The USA will also lose a lot of its positions.”
The commander told me he feared for his children’s future, and started talking about the past. “Our parents always said that as long as Russia exists, we will not have peace. And we, young people, laughed, thought that it was impossible.” There is often nothing to say when a person is mourning their dreams or land.
It was at the base that I learned how Ukrainian police officers once fought this war without the insight of intelligence. A senior police officer told me that now commanders can tap into a 24/7 intelligence stream, a “giant mechanism” to use in situations that can change in minutes.
Ukraine is not only outmatched by the sheer number of Russian forces, who tend to fight “from dawn to dusk,” but by their drones, he said. “Ten to two.” Russia is mainly using Chinese drones, he added. (Indeed, China has become “a decisive enabler of Russia's war against Ukraine,” NATO announced during the summit in Washington.) Ironically, China also supplies Ukraine with spare parts, he said, because it is cheaper than anywhere else. But “for the same parts, Russia comes first.” China also sold software to Russians that allows them to see if Ukraine is launching Mavic drones, the man claimed.
Most Ukrainians have been killed by artillery, then drones, then direct fire, he said. And a Ukrainian police officer at the base described the time of day that seemed safest to move in order to minimize the threat of Russian drones. But Russia has also gotten smarter — using wider frequencies to fly their drones. Ukraine needs new technology to jam them.
That led me to call Jonas Ohman, a former conscript in the Swedish Army's paratrooper school. He trained in sabotage, reconnaissance, and demolition during the Cold War but then became a filmmaker. And now he is the co-founder of Blue/Yellow, a nearly 10-year-old organization in Lithuania that provides small-scale military equipment to Ukraine.
His fast and agile deliveries began in an unusual way, he told me. “I went to doctors and to journalists and I asked them, who among these [units, commanders, and soldiers] do you think is worth working with?” He provided thermal vision in a 2014 battle for Ukraine’s Donetsk Airport, and heavy support in the 2016 battle of Avdiivka. For his work, Ukrainian and Lithuanian presidents have given him numerous awards.
These days, he gets the most requests for tactical anti-drone equipment, which feature a broad frequency and are manufactured in Lithuania. “There’s a frequency war going on right now,” Jonas told. “Both Russia and Ukraine are trying to figure out how to apply frequency for controlling and blocking drones.”
He says Blue/Yellow has provided anti-drone systems across Ukraine, especially to areas seeing heavy fighting — including New York (in Donetsk), Chasiv Yar, Kharkiv, and Zaporizhzhia. Recipients have included the police’s Luit assault brigade, the 73rd Maritime Special Operations (Ukraine’s Navy Seals), the GUR (military intelligence), and the Foreign Legion. Deliveries can take a few days or a month, relying on a network of troops, volunteers, and even the postal service. He estimates that “full coverage” for Ukraine would mean having some 50,000 anti-drone systems, which the U.S. and some European governments have started to buy for Ukraine. (He would not share specifics, saying it is sensitive.)
Jonas has also met with a few members of Congress who apparently told him he is requesting “too little.” A senior Congressional defense staffer told me Jonas provides “firepower for freedom for pennies on the dollar. He should be much better resourced.”
Small things can make a decisive impact, Jonas says. It’s not just about F-16s and Patriot missile systems. “In the West, especially the U.S., I call it the old Boeing approach to defense. But this war is in many ways a startup war.”
He says Western training of Ukrainian forces has also at times been misguided. “Recently a brigade — I'm not going to give you the name here — they were trained in Germany and they brought their own drones, obviously from Ukraine. And they were, for a long time, not allowed to use them because they were not a part of the NATO doctrine,” he said. Eventually, an agreement was reached. But “the lack of understanding from Western partners was stunning.” He ended our phone call with the words from a soldier he had spoken with: “This war in Ukraine is a mix between World War One and World War Three.”
Back at the base, I could hear the soft thunder of artillery fire beyond us. Alex and Shaman were teaching officers how to patrol — hand gestures, diamond wedges. Shaman asked, “What’s the quickest way to die?” and they all knew it was bleeding. Shaman described the sweet scent of cerebral spinal fluid that soldiers might smell after a blast.
The longer I spent with the Ukrainian police, the more they warmed up to me. They said they missed their loved ones and vegetarian food. They tried out their hesitant English. They laughed at the few Ukrainian words I struggled to pronounce. Some gave me the patches on their shirts. There was something alarmingly sweet about many of them. And I hated looking at them and not knowing if they would come back safe, alive, and whole.
By then, I had seen too many men missing limbs in the streets of Lviv. I had walked through a park lined with posters of soldiers who had gone missing. Near the city’s old Jewish quarters, Alex, Shaman, and I knelt down on a sidewalk while a procession for a fallen soldier drove by — as is custom in Ukraine. These moments came in between air raids and the loud hum and odd, fecal matter-like smell of generators to bridge the rolling blackouts. And yet, life is easier than in the embattled East. And there is some amount of resentment that Eastern Ukraine has for the West, a belief that one side of the country is not doing its part. These are the fractures that Russia exploits through disinformation operations.
This course led by American volunteers was meant to “train the trainers.” Ideally, they could then go on to teach others. And one officer in the training occasionally caught my eye. His name was Vitaly. He was just 22, with porcelain skin and blue eyes. He had three years before he would be required to serve — unless Ukraine yet again lowers the conscription age to restore its troops. Would Vladimir Putin still be at it in three years? “To prepare for something like this, you need a lot of time,” Vitaly told me.
I asked him what he missed most from life before Putin attacked his whole country. “The calm,” Vitaly said. “It’s not war specifically, but all of the new worries. Everyone is worried about everything and the future.”
I asked him if he would want to learn insurgency tactics if Russia took more land and the U.S. no longer stood by Ukraine’s side, as Alex had offered a senior law enforcement officer at a cafe, our first day in Ukraine. “In my opinion it’s mandatory,” Vitaly told me. “Every person should have such skills nowadays.”
Here he was, living in close quarters with other men at the secret base. Pushing himself physically and mentally. Eating cafeteria food. “Being here with these men gives hope, seeing them coming back from the front,” he said. “Not everything is lost.”
I left the Ukrainian officers without a proper goodbye. It fit with a saying I learned in my time there. My ne proschchayemosya. It translates to, ‘Don’t say goodbye, because we will meet soon.’
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Ben Rhodes, a former National Security aide, had an excellent piece about the rise of the autocrats around the world. We have had it for some time in Russia and China, but countries like India and Turkey are on the list, along with others.
The playbook for the autocrats is below. Sound familiar?
A right-wing populist harnesses the backlash to globalization’s failures to win an election on a grievance-filled us-versus-them platform. Cronies, enriched via corruption, finance the leader’s political agenda. Courts are packed with judges who allow further power grabs. Parliamentary districts are redrawn to entrench the ruling party. Voting laws are altered to favor certain parts of the population. The media is turned into an extension of the ruling party’s interests, while independent journalists are threatened, deplatformed, or imprisoned. Social media is used to monitor, intimidate, and demoralize political opponents. Civil society is demonized, harassed, or restricted.