Ukraine 7
This is Part 7 in Sour Milk’s Ukraine series. You can read Part 1 here , Part 2 here, Part 3 here, Part 4 here, Part 5 here and Part 6 here.
As the war between Ukraine and Russia drags into its sixth month, I want to share a story written by my friend Nug who has been working as a defense contractor there since January. Today, many of the multinational security companies working in Ukraine contract Tier 1 military veterans to carry out their missions. Although Nug runs the risks and does the heavy lifting, typically he receives less than 10% of what the security company charges.
This story is adapted from text messages and phone conversations between Nug in Ukraine and Peter Maguire in North Carolina. It has been edited for spelling, grammar, and clarity.
Here’s Johnny!
by Nug
MOLDOVA, MARCH 1, 2022
Evacuated a girl for a Tier 1 guy in the states from Odessa to Moldova. Took less than 20 minutes to arrange and less than two hours to perform. Cost – Zero. Yet there are vultures out there asking for $2000 a day to profit off this misery. Getting pretty gnarly. My buddy Sven is making his way south to me. Kiev is surrounded. The Russians tried to hit the main TV mast yesterday, and damaged Babi Yar, the Jewish memorial/burial site where the Einsatzgruppen massacre happened [33,000 Jews were killed in two days].
KHARKIV, MARCH 3, 2022
Kharkiv is getting absolutely annihilated by the Russians. Russia is mainly just bombing the crap out of everything now which is causing mass fear and panic. Fear is a seed, and once planted, it grows. In this case, it has also brought people together. Thousands have also come to join the foreign legion.
I was there with [name of international press agency] last week. I’d called them out on their methods previously. When we arrived at the Ukrainian position, I asked the commander if we could film. We were given specific rules: do not go live, only film in a specific angle/arc, and nowhere else. Unbeknownst to me, they’d set their camera to live, but said, “It wasn’t turned on.” The correspondent crossed the road, moved away, and started speaking remotely over the live broadcast.
Minutes later, the senior commander came over to us and said, “Switch it off now!” I calmed the situation and asked what the problem was. The colonel said, “They are broadcasting around the globe live! Now my senior area commander, a general, is on the way here!” They were filming elements of Ukrainian SF and other Intel in the area that compromised a hell of a lot. Worse, the Russians were watching. When I told the news crew to turn it off, they laughed like it was some kind of fucking joke. So I screamed, “Turn it off! Get the fuck in the car! This is the last time I work with you! You’re on your own!” They protested again and I said, “Get in the car and shut the fuck up!” We left and 25 minutes later the area got bombarded by missiles. People died and it was [name of international press agency] that pulled that trigger! I told the boss, “I’m done with these fools,” and left for Dnipro first thing to conduct a civilian evacuation.
DNIPRO, MARCH 4, 2022
0642
I thought my client would be a rich businessman, but instead I picked up a woman and her two- or three-year-old daughter. I started to pick my way through the madness and got an hour outside of town when the mother said, “I can’t do it. I’ve got to go back for my mother.” Grandma was still in Dnipro, so we turned around, and went back for her.
I’m going to get them across the Polish border tomorrow after dark. I’m in a place I really can’t talk at the moment. There’s some very shady mixed alliances here. Everyone here thinks I’m a local. If I open my mouth, I’ll be doomed.
I just changed my route. To evade the Russians, I’m going to have to go north/northeast now, then west, then south. I will conduct the drop off and handover at the Romanian border, then go north to Lviv, and hit the hotel bar around 21:00. Will update on the move tomorrow.
KRYVYI RIH, MARCH 5, 2022
So we got the girls fed and watered, then set off northwest from Kryvyi Rih this morning, with the aim of reaching the northern border of Romania. I have to amend my route west and go north/northwest, then west, then south (and keep a close ear and eye on movements). My driver asked a guy trying to make his way to the border if there were any updates. “Russians have been seen crossing the border of Transnistria,” he said. That could be panic-induced reporting. However, I have a plan for that. If they crossed, they’d only do that in conjunction with an amphibious landing in Odessa in order to cover their rear, and the crossing of Belorussian and Russian troops from the north. I may be wrong, but I don’t think I am. Will update on the move.
Around 1100 we reached the outskirts of the city of Uman. People were leaving in panic, many [cars] were driving at crazy speeds, head-on into traffic. The ground was covered in a light dusting of snow that was blowing sideways, severely reducing visibility. We passed a car wrapped around a tree and one on its side. One car looked completely flat after it smashed into a truck and then spun around a tree. All five on board were dead, including three children. Body parts covered the road side and the hedge.
Next, traffic stopped and we didn’t move an inch. Something more than a checkpoint in the distance was stopping us.
I noticed more and more cars coming in the opposite direction. Then I got a call from my Ukrainian friend Anton, “Brother I’m here at Lviv where are you?” We’d worked on the same team in Baghdad 10 years previously. He’d saved the life of a former Navy Seal after he got caught taking photographs of Iraqi secret police. I explained the situation to Anton. He asked me what kind of car I was driving and told me to sit tight, he’d call back. We were still not moving and in a traffic jam that stretched for 60 miles. A few minutes later, he called and said, “The city you are about to enter is being shelled, don’t move.”
Suddenly, a man knocked on my window and held up a phone. He motioned for me to wind it [the window] down. “Who the fuck are you and where did you come from?” I thought to myself. When he said, “Anton! Anton!” I took the phone. Anton on the other end and said, “Brother, go with these people, they will help you.” Their car was parked beside us. It turned around and began to drive in the opposite direction of this huge snake of vehicles. We followed it.
The car turned left and led us up a country lane, through fields, and slowly through a forest. In front of us was a makeshift checkpoint made of logs with men standing on either side, next to a burning log fire. They looked like a cross between 18th century farmers and French Resistance fighters. We then followed another car into the forest where we met the partisan leader who took me into a cabin and showed me around.
He’d been a captain in the Ukrainian Spetsnaz in the 70s and now ran this band of merry men. The ladies from the village came out and took the girls inside. They ran around collecting blankets, baking, and cooking huge pots of local soup— think oaky wood smoke, mixed with gone-off milk, a cow shit aroma, and a distant hint of cats’ piss.
That’s where I am now, sipping local beer with the boss and the girls are fast asleep. That’s my day! Fucking clown show! Thank fuck for Anton! I’m in an absolutely insane world. I still can’t get my mind to catch up with it all — I’m in the woods with a fucking group of partisans drinking vodka, feeding cows.
Anton, who I haven’t seen for ten years, arrives from Baghdad just in time to save my ass. A Spetsnaz guy in his 60s is showing me his homemade bong while I’m pointing out the constellations and showing him how to find North by bisecting an equidistant line between Cassiopeia and Ursa Major. One flew over the Cuckoos Nest! I’m just waiting for “Johnny” to poke his head round the door. That would finish this evening nicely.
The messages I’m getting make me want to puke! I know that these people are only about 💰, yet thousands sit in fear:
“Hi - I got your contacts from XXXX XXXXX. I work for XXXX Security, I’m in Lviv with a colleague. We’re coordinating extractions for clients. We have difficult, but urgent job in Kharkiv. Extract 2 and bring them to Lviv. The job pays $10.000. We might be able to relocate slightly for easier pickup. Is this something you can do?
Best,
XXXXX”
Vermin.
SELYSHCHE, MARCH 6, 2022
We are currently in the utterly fake humanitarian corridor, a fancy name for a 600km traffic jam so they can massage their vile egos. The only people leaving the country drive cars I could never afford. All males from 16-60 aren’t allowed to leave Ukraine, but if you drive a Range Rover, Porsche, or Merc, it’s ok! Only the poor men stay now and only the poor are fighting. It’s hard to keep up with myself, everything’s moving so fast. I haven’t slept in a bed for weeks.
We just broke down mate, in a very bad place to wait it out—next to an airstrip. Now incoming. Grandma is a beast, she got out of the car, and when the first missile landed, she looked over at me and winked. Yeah, as per, the good old locals helped us 👌, broken fuel pump!😂. Now we are in a mile-long queue for fuel, only 10 liters per vehicle. It’s getting dark, we’ve got to get to the next town, and find somewhere to stay. I haven’t eaten anything of substance or slept in days.
HLYBOTS’KYI, MARCH 7, 2022
We are about 25 minutes from the Romanian border for the handover, long queues.
Job done ✔️
I’m now making my way to the hotel in Lviv. Anton is waiting there👌. We will be teammates again. He flew out from the Middle East to help me.
LVIV, MARCH 8, 2022
I’ve had a mad few days sipping whiskey with Anton 🥃 👌, unpacking, cleaning kit, repacking, and eating. I hadn’t eaten properly in days. Lviv is like Prague on a normal day, trams running up and down the cobbled streets, people sitting in outdoor cafés sipping espressos, reading newspapers, and not-so-far-away civilians are being massacred. I’m back out first thing to the Carpathian Mountains.
I’ve been talking to friends serving in the Ukrainian military. They’re straight talkers who don’t fuck about. They said the Russians aren’t actively engaging in conventional, force-on-force fighting. The Russians are relying on large scale destruction using area weapons (Joint Fires) then moving in, in armor, and getting smashed by small teams of Ukrainians now working in fast-moving “bash and dash” teams. That is the only way the Ukrainians can win. “Win” in a war-fighting sense, but there are many sides to this.
The Russians are hitting towns and cities hard and then trying to encircle in order to starve them of resources. That never works. It’s easy to punch in and punch out, but it’s hard to stand and fight an enemy that likes to fight you from 20-200 miles away with tech that you can’t defeat. It’s clear to me that NATO’s politicians plan to let Ukraine burn, but they won’t give up. The Ukrainians are pretty die hard. They stand and fight, I’ll give them that.
In order to safely evacuate the three women from Ukraine to Romania, Nug and his driver covered 1486 kilometers in four days. For his efforts, he was paid $2000. Although he does not know how much the company that contracted him was paid, he estimates that it was between $30,000 to $60,000, as the going rate for evacuations at that time was between $10,000 to $20,000 per person.