Iraq, Afghanistan, ISIS, & Ukraine: One Fighter’s Journey Through Modern War | Ryan O'Leary | Ep. 409

Combat veteran Ryan O'Leary joins us to discuss his journey from the Army National Guard to fighting alongside Kurdish forces against ISIS in Iraq, working with Iranian Kurdish insurgent groups, and later experiencing the war in Ukraine firsthand. Ryan breaks down the realities of insurgency warfare, Kurdish resistance movements, and why modern conflicts are being transformed by drones, surveillance, and battlefield transparency. This episode also dives into the future of warfare, the limits of regime change, corruption inside war zones, and what Western militaries still fail to understand about modern combat. Today's Sponsors: GhostBed ⬇️ https://www.ghostbed.com/house FOR 10% off! Blue Chew ⬇️ https://bluechew.com/ Get 1 month free when you buy 2 of BlueChew Gold with code "HOUSECALL" Good Ranchers ⬇️ https://www.goodranchers.com/ Get $25 off your first order with the code "HOUSE" For ad free video and audio and access to live streams and Eyes On Geopolitics... 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S. airstrikes outside Erbil as ISIS closed in 13:20 — Joining the Peshmerga with almost no process or paperwork 15:00 — Fighting across Iraq with Kurdish and Iranian Kurdish units 16:20 — The Kurdish-Iraqi civil war around Kirkuk explained 18:40 — Taking tank fire from Iraqi Abrams tanks during the fighting 21:10 — Mortar teams, ATGMs, and chaos on the Kirkuk front 24:00 — Kurdish independence, Kirkuk oil, and Iran’s role in the conflict 27:00 — U. S. weapons ending up with Iranian-backed militias and PMUs 29:00 — Meeting Iranian Kurdish fighters and deciding to work with them 32:10 — Living in the Qandil Mountains with Kurdish insurgents 34:20 — Kurdish separatism, Mahabad, and dreams of independence 39:10 — Life with Iranian Kurds: morale, culture, and surviving in the mountains 41:45 — Learning insurgency warfare from the inside 43:20 — Why insurgencies are nearly impossible to defeat 47:55 — Could Iranian Kurds actually help overthrow Tehran? 53:20 — Why regime change in Iran was always unrealistic 01:02:00 — Early Ukraine war experiences and how drones changed everything 01:14:30 — FPV drones, trench warfare, and why modern combat is now transparent 01:28:00 — What Western militaries still don’t understand about drone warfare 01:40:30 — Surviving artillery, drone drops, and constant surveillance in Ukraine 01:55:00 — Why infantry movement is becoming nearly impossible on the modern battlefield 02:07:00 — Foreign fighters in Ukraine: motivations, strengths, and problems 02:18:00 — Corruption, logistics, and the reality behind the Ukrainian war effort 02:31:00 — Lessons from Iraq, Kurdistan, and Ukraine for future U. S. wars 02:42:30 — China, Taiwan, and how drones could reshape the Pacific battlefield 02:54:00 — Why small units and adaptability matter more than ever 03:05:00 — The psychological toll of nonstop drone surveillance and attrition warfare 03:15:30 — Final thoughts on the future of warfare and where conflict is heading Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:57Jack Murphy?

  Hey folks, welcome to episode 409 of The Team House. I'm Jack Murphy, here with today's guest, Ryan O'Leary. Ryan is an American military veteran, served in the National Guard, deploying to Afghanistan and Iraq, and then has lived the life of, maybe we can call you a professional adventurer, Ryan, serving with the Peshmerga, the Pak, some of the Kurdish groups over in northern Iraq or Kurdistan, and then spent another curious journey, took him to Ukraine, where he's been ever since. So Ryan has lived the life, I think. It's pretty incredible, and we really appreciate you joining us and hearing about these varied experiences that you've had.

• 1:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, hey, I'm glad to be here, honestly. I don't think, like, the war in Ukraine, because it's on like its fourth year, it doesn't always get like the notice it should, and I don't think people really understand like the new drone warfare that's going on here.

• 1:55Jack Murphy?

  Yep.

• 1:55Speaker 03

  I think some, some countries like Israel are experiencing it now with Hezbollah, and then, you know, you're seeing it pop up in Africa and also popped up in Syria. So I think there's a lot of misunderstandings with what drone warfare entails.

• 2:10Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, I know, I'm looking forward to getting into that with you a bit. But I want to start off sort of at the beginning. If you'd tell us a little bit about yourself, about where you came from, and why you joined the military.

• 2:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, so I'm originally from Iowa, like small town in Iowa. Um, joined the Iowa Army National Guard at seventeen. Uh, went to basic training A I T, all that good stuff for infantry. Uh, the reason I joined is I had like my grandfathers were in the military. I have some uncles in the military and like it's it's not really that way anymore. But like growing up when I I'm thirty nine years old. So like growing up, we still have this like, you know, somewhat of a patriotic duty. A lot of my classmates from uh, high school joined. Um, I don't think you see that much anymore, uh, sadly. But I joined because like, you know, um, like you should, you should defend your country.

• 3:06Speaker 03

  If you're going to vote, if you're gonna, you know, participate, you know, you you should participate with what's going on around you, whether it's uh, politically or, you know, defending the nation. So I I think everyone should do it, to be honest.

• 3:19Jack Murphy?

  And so you went into the Army National Guard?

• 3:23Speaker 03

  Yep. So originally I was gonna go to college and then I didn't really go to college. Um, I I did like two years of college and never really, you know, finished a bachelor's or anything. But like the guard at the time was like, hey, uh, you know, we didn't have a sign on bonus, but they had the G I bill. And like back then college was expensive, but it wasn't as expensive now. So I was like, oh, I'll go, you know, do the one weekend a month. And then when I graduate high school, I'll go to college. Uh, I graduated high school, didn't go to college, but.

• 3:55Jack Murphy?

  And what what year was that that you signed up initially?

• 3:58Speaker 03

  So I signed up, uh, so I completed basic training in A I T November of two thousand four.

• 4:04Jack Murphy?

  Wow, okay. And where was the first place that they deployed you with the National Guard?

• 4:12Speaker 03

  So the first place for the National Guard, so actually when we were basic training, there were some other guys from Iowa. They got pulled directly after A I T and deployed to Iraq. Uh, it was the one thirty third. Uh, I did not go with the first group. I deployed in two thousand seven. Uh, we were based out of Camp Victory Slayer area. Uh, didn't do anything, anything like remotely, you know, exciting. Um, it was mainly FOB security, uh, you know, and like making sure the Iraqi army and police don't shoot at each other type deal. You know, you're typical deploying for most people.

• 4:48Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 4:49Speaker 03

  It was boring. It was.

• 4:53Speaker 03

  Like, I don't know, like, I think it was disheartening for me, honestly, so.

• 4:57Jack Murphy?

  It wasn't what you're looking for.

• 5:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, basically.

• 5:03Jack Murphy?

  Um, and you did a couple more pumps with the National Guard, though, right?

• 5:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, so two thousand ten to eleven, we deployed to Afghanistan. Uh, we were in RCE's Pakhtia, uh, which there it was more of your infantry style fighting, uh, you know, your foot patrols, presence patrols. Uh, we did some good operations, um, and like, it was just more, more of like your action oriented, it was less like, there was still like the hearts and mind bullshit that you had. But because the Taliban were more willing to like toe up against you, there was still quite a bit of fighting. At least at that timeframe, like two thousand nine, ten and eleven, uh, you know, there was still some pretty good fighting going on. Um, so we actually got to do like an infantry job versus like, you know, state, like, basically like, police, you know, just say you're there type deal.

• 5:54Jack Murphy?

  So now you're kind of experiencing what you had hoped for. Uh, I, I take it.

• 5:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, like, I mean, cause like, you know, again, we have like actual direct firefights. Um, actually, our first day in country, we got in a fucking firefight. So we landed at Fob Gardaz and, uh, we did the right seat, left seat with the unit. I think it was a unit out of the, I think we were placed, a guard unit out of New York, I believe, actually. Um, but literally we went from Gardaz up to, um, another, like to an AF cop called Don Paton. And in the middle of that, there's, uh, was it Audi Kel, something Kel? Uh, it's like a village and like, we just got lit the fuck up.

• 6:38Speaker 03

  It was, it was a good first experience for people, put it that way. We had one vehicle get hit with RPGs. Uh, we had one guy injure his hand. Um, luckily, nobody was killed or sued, like severely injured, but like from that point on, it was like, you know, this is real, let's go, so.

• 6:56Jack Murphy?

  So were you guys doing raids or were you kind of like going out there like kind of movement to contact like let's find the enemy and mix it up?

• 7:04Speaker 03

  So, so actually I was assigned to a PSD group that was supposed to be bringing our brigade commander around but on that like he was with us on that first you know main operation so after that like he used you know the air to move around more than he did on the ground uh we still did some other operations with him to bring him to some like more closer areas to Fob Gardas but it was pretty much like hey we don't need PSD anymore what do you guys want to do and so we ended up just doing like EOD escort presence patrol like we would drive down routes and be like routes clear um and like we just basically were like the the hey we need somebody to go clear out

• 7:45Speaker 03

  before engineers go down it type deal and like you know just like go out and go out and see what happens type deal it was like I enjoyed it I think some of our guys enjoyed it less than me because like if we we got put in some high risk situations uh we drove down a black round a few times that some of the guys weren't very kosher with uh one of them I planned but like that was just young dumb me um but like it was just more infantry oriented so like it was just you know we had decent morale the whole time um we our unit itself didn't take casualties some of our sister companies did we had one guy get shot in the nuts um otherwise a majority of uh we were able to like

• 8:27Speaker 03

  escape unharmed for most of our you know contacts

• 8:32Jack Murphy?

  there any uh operations from that timeframe that kind of stand out in your mind?

• 8:37Speaker 03

  I mean not not like if you would have asked me that before my adventures after Afghanistan probably but like honestly like looking back like the only thing that really stands out is we went up to uh so uh Alpha Company was in Don Patan which was in the Northeast near the Afghan Pac border like they were sandwiched right on the border um and we got for some reason we had to bring some Air Force guys up there anyway we let them lead the convoy because they wanted to do it for some reason they ended up running over a donkey in a village and like absolutely pissed off like the whole area um that was like

• 9:19Speaker 03

  That was like the only like thing that like like I like it was like the funniest thing that I can remember from like Afghanistan as far as that goes but like combat wise like looking back at the combat now everything there was like you know you're getting shot at for the first time and like it's like oh this is you know intense and then I come to Ukraine and then I worked with oh I you know after that I went with the Kurds and we did operations in like Masheka Kerkuk and I'm like man Afghanistan was nothing and then even Ukraine now it's like Ukraine like everything previous to Ukraine I'm just like it it was nothing you know it was like little league compared to what you see here.

• 9:57Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, and I mean you and I are fairly close to same age. I'm like three years older than you. I mean so and you've been in it, you know, pretty pretty consistently and you have gotten to see warfare change and evolve in some pretty dramatic ways. I feel like from when you and I were 18 to today.

• 10:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean like so when I was in Iraq so so after Afghanistan, uh I did three more years in the guard. Uh in 2014, I actually went AWOL from the National Guard and just got a plane ticket. I got honorable discharge and all that, but uh I basically bought a one-way plane ticket to Erbil, landed in Erbil, met up with some of the Kurdish guys who were uh part of like the security detail in 0708 that I knew. And basically they were like, what the fuck are you doing? I was like, let's go like this is right as ISIS was crossing over into Iraq. Um I think they had just gotten to uh the Yazidis where the Yazidis were trapped. I think I I got to Iraq. I got to the Kurdistan region, I think like

• 11:01Speaker 03

  right as they were approaching the Makmore Guer frontline. Um and like the guys were like, I think they honestly didn't think I was gonna actually come when I said, hey, I'm coming in, landing. Uh I got to the airport, I had to borrow a local cellphone to get a hold of them. And they're like, what in the fuck are you doing? And I was like, let's go like, you know, ready to rock. Like, let's see what happens.

• 11:21Jack Murphy?

  And at that time, Ryan, like you were you would have been one of the kind of like few foreigners, you know, trying to join up at that time. It exploded down the line, but kind of like early 2014, I think we're talking about here. Um you must have been one of the first guys.

• 11:37Speaker 03

  I think it was like. March or April I got, might have been, might have been mid-April or I got there, but yeah, like I was one of the first ones. I didn't do the Syria thing. I think there was some guys that crossed over from Turkey into Syria uh before I had gotten to that region and were like, you know, doing some operation. I think Jordan Mattson might have beat me there and then a couple other guys. Uh but as far as like Iraq goes, I don't think there was too many people, uh at least veterans that were wanting to, you know, back up whatever the Iraqi government or even get back involved in that. Um that type of conflict, so. And I think honestly, a lot of Americans didn't think, you know, ISIS was gonna be a problem for the Iraqis.

• 12:22Speaker 03

  Uh but they literally melted away, you know, from everywhere.

• 12:26Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, I remember when they were closing in on Urbil, that's when we started doing airstrikes. Um, you know, fear that we're gonna lose, you know, that city would have been disastrous.

• 12:38Speaker 03

  So I was in, you, I'm assuming you've been to Urbil?

• 12:41Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 12:42Speaker 03

  So I was in Inkawa, uh so like the Christian neighborhood.

• 12:46Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 12:47Speaker 03

  From our, from our like three-story building, we could literally see the airstrikes. Like they were, people don't understand how close they got to the Kurdish lines. Because before, before ISIS, you know, the Iraqis controlled a lot of that area. And then like the Kurdish, the Kurdish part was actually much smaller than it is today. And like during, it got really large during the uh, you know, occupation of ISIS.

• 13:10Jack Murphy?

  Yes.

• 13:11Speaker 03

  Of parts of Iraq. But like, yeah, we could literally see the strikes happening outside of Urbil. Like they got within, I, I think like within ten kilometers, if not closer at one point. Um but like, when I got there, it was like, like every civilian has an AK and you, any, probably any rock, like especially in Kurdistan, like every, every household for the most part has either an AK or something in their house. Um and like those first early days, you just have people drive up to the frontline and like, fight for an hour or two, then go home. And nobody like, who was that? And everyone's like, oh, it's, you know, so-and-so from whatever district. They'll be back tomorrow. And it's like, okay, like they just come when they're off work.

• 13:55Jack Murphy?

  It's awesome.

• 13:56Speaker 03

  Like, man, like, the Kurds, the Kurds are just like, I love the Kurds, man. Like, they're just amazing.

• 14:02Jack Murphy?

  Was, what was it like for you as, you know, you're still a pretty young guy, coming from Iowa, some, some military experience in the Guard? But what was sort of the process of like you joining a foreign military or a foreign militia and signing up at the Pesh?

• 14:20Speaker 03

  So, man, like, there really wasn't like a, like a process. It was basically like, hey, I'm here to fight. I got in the vehicle with the English speaking Kurds. They drove me to their commander over at like the Guer front. And he was like, what the fuck? And he's like, oh, he wants to fight. They explained it in Kurdish. And like, at this point, I knew like zero Kurdish. It took me a while to pick it up. But like, it was basically like, okay, here, you're with these guys. Follow them around and shoot whoever drives at you type deal. Because at that point, like ISIS was still trying to push. So they had Vebas, but they were still trying to push more so as like, you know, straight infantry. They weren't trying to like suicide bomb everything like what happened later on.

• 15:04Speaker 03

  They were literally still trying to do like maneuver, not, not really maneuver warfare, but like

• 15:07Jack Murphy?

  Probing.

• 15:08Speaker 03

  Very basic. Yeah, yeah. They were probing frontline areas. In some cases, they'd get through and then they'd get pushed back a little bit. Honestly, I think without the air support, it could have been a lot worse. I think it would have been, they would have got into the city, but like, I think it could have turned into a really nasty city fight. Because Urbil's a pretty big city and I don't think people realize that. It's not like, it's not like 100,000 people, you know, it's quite large, it's compact. It's very, very dense.

• 15:38Jack Murphy?

  After you signed up, so to speak, or they just gave you the salute, welcome to the team, where did they, where did they send you?

• 15:47Speaker 03

  So I bounced around from front lines, honestly. I wasn't stuck in one unit. Um, I worked over at the Guer麦克more front. And then when we started pushing ISIS back, I ended up over in Bashika. So a lot of people don't realize this, when ISIS got close to Erbil, you had Iranian Kurdish groups like Parti Azadi Kurdistan PAC, uh, PDKI, both sides, because at that point they were split in two. Uh, Kamala, Zesmane Khabat, and a bunch of these other Iranian groups, moved their troops and to help defend the Iraqi part. Um, so like I bounced around between like Iraqi Peshmerga, Iranian Peshmerga, basically wherever the guys were going that day is where I went.

• 16:32Speaker 03

  Uh, it was pretty fluid for like the first three or four months. Uh, once the actual Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga, like their actual army, uh, was able to like solidify front lines and build those berms up, then it was more of like, okay, here's your sector, you're going to stay here. Um, and like we predominantly fought around Bashika, which is like near the Yazidi area, uh, out west. And then I also spent about nine months in Kirkuk. Um, Kirkuk was like 2016, 2017. Uh, I participated in like the four day civil war near Purdy Kirkuk area, uh, with Hoshid and, uh, you know, the Iraqi Kurds.

• 17:13Jack Murphy?

  Tell us about that. How did that happen?

• 17:16Speaker 03

  Um, so we woke up one morning with our, our general. It was, uh, when I was with Parti Azadi Kurdistan, the commander was Hussein Yazdan Hana. Uh, he was basically like, get ready, the Iraqis are coming. And I was like, what in the fuck? Like, you know, like you wake up, it was like seven in the morning, like, hey, the, like the Iraqis are driving at us. Like, we're gonna fall back from this position and get to a more, you know, stable area. Um, because at that point, and so we were southwest of Kirkuk at that point. Um, and Kirkuk, the lines had already fallen, like the PUK abandoned positions, supposedly first, but like, I think it was just total confusion. There was fighting in the city.

• 18:00Speaker 03

  So we actually got in our vehicles, pulled back to, um, a village called Purdy, which sat on like a little bit of a higher elevation. And basically, Sorry, basically dug in there and just waited. Um, and it was like, it was chaos, to be honest. Like, there wasn't really good command and control. Uh, the Kurds had their artillery in like, really dumb positions. So they were like, trying to move their artillery around. Um, and then, I think, they, once they took control of Kirkuk, we went from Purdy over to a town called Divis, which is like a kilometer away from, uh, Purdy. And, uh, we basically, they had built burns for us. We put armor behind them.

• 18:44Speaker 03

  And, uh, basically, it was like, we just got told to hold the line, don't move. Like, this is like, like, this is our last position. There's nothing behind it. Don't, don't give in. Um, and like, the first day was pretty quiet. The Hašin group tried to drive a Humvee down the road, actually. And we ended up hitting it with a Chinese Cornet. Um, what the hell's the name of it? A C-8 or CH-8 or whatever it is. It looks just like a Cornet, like ATGM missile. Blew the fuck out of it in the middle of the road. And that was like the end of combat for the day. Uh, in the morning, when we were drinking tea, you know, every morning in Iraq, you have to have tea before you go to war. Uh, tea, cigarette, whatever, chai. Um, so we're sitting there behind the berm at like,

• 19:29Speaker 03

  six or seven AM, drinking tea, and all of a sudden you see a, well, boom. So, what we didn't realize is overnight, uh, the Iraq army had brought up armor. So they're M1 Abrams and, um, basically whatever they had, 272s or whatever. So they started smashing the fuck out of us with, uh, tanks. And that was, that was like my first experience getting shot at by a tank, to be quite honest. Um, and like, that's like the only thing in a movie that's pretty accurate when it comes to explosions. Like, you hear the initial boom from the gun going off, but you don't hear it whistling through the air. It's just boom and then boom. Like, it's really quick. Um, and like, it hit a dude in the arm.

• 20:12Speaker 03

  Uh, so like, I was like, trying to bandage, like, we didn't have tourniquets. We had like, we had like our ball of clavas. So I got, take my ball of clavas off, I wrap this guy's arm up, try to tighten it so it doesn't bleed everywhere. Um, throw in a vehicle, and like, we had pulled back a little bit and you, the Peshmerga armor came forward. And so there was like a,

• 20:33Speaker 03

  there was like a temporary tank battle where nobody hit anyone. Um.

• 20:39Speaker 03

  It was pretty shitty, uh, like Ukrainians would fire, or not Ukrainians, but the Peshmerga would fire, then the Iraqis would fire. And like, they would hit stuff around it, but nobody would hit the armor really. Um, it was a shit show, but at one point, one of the Peshmerga units, I think it was from the Black Tigers, one of Barzani's more elite groups, came up with, uh, another ATGM and actually managed to hit one of the Abrams tanks. And at that point, they pulled the tanks back, cause like, the Iraqis, when it comes to tank war for the Iraqis, just park the fucking tanks. And like, they don't move, they just sit there and just keep lobbing rounds. So, once we hit one, they were like, oh fuck, they can, you know, hit our tanks, so they pulled them back. Um, the one that got hit with the ATGM basically burnt up out there, and I think there's photos online of it.

• 21:25Jack Murphy?

  That's wild.

• 21:26Speaker 03

  Uh, but that, after that, we went back to the actual frontline berm. I ran into an, uh, another American there, actually, there was a journalist that showed up, uh, Nolan Peterson. It was like, what in the, like, why, why are you at the frontline, we're getting like smashed with everything. He was like, I'm here to record, I was like, okay, man, have fun. Uh, later on, I found out he's like a veteran, uh, former army, I think, if I remember correctly.

• 21:51Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, name sounds vaguely familiar.

• 21:55Speaker 03

  Um, but yeah, like, we held that for like, there was like, it was probably like five or six days of fighting. Um, the Kurds would push forward into like, some few, some fields that had crops. And we would, they would set up ambushes on like, the Hoshad members or whatever, trying to drive down the road, like, the Iraqis didn't try to flank, they literally just kept trying to drive down the cement road over and over again, like a bunch of fucking idiots. So, you know, the Kurds would move RPG teams out into these like, cornfields or whatever it was. And they'd just sit there and wait for them to drive the vehicle past. Um, I ran a 120, uh, mortar system for a while. And we were close enough that like, I was on like a little hilltop, it was just direct way. Like, we didn't, we didn't have a fucking sight on the side or anything, it was literally like,

• 22:39Speaker 03

  they gave out a distance and then we would guess how many, you know, uh, cheese rounds or whatever they call it, put on it. Drop it in and be like, oh shit, we just went like, six kilometers too far, you know, come back. But like, we ended up hitting a few of them. Um, yeah, like, the, the civil war thing was. Fucking hectic, but like that was like the first, you know, dealing with armor like we had the hot like the ISIS, you know, suicide vehicles, but like that was the first time I've ever been shot at by a tank, um, which was interesting outside.

• 23:13Jack Murphy?

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• 23:54Jack Murphy?

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• 28:31Jack Murphy?

  Do you want to talk a little bit about like why this civil war is happening? Because if I recall correctly, Kirkuk has kind of a complicated history that it used to be a Kurdish city. Saddam Hussein moved the Kurds out and moved Arabs in to try to do a demographic replacement there. And then ISIS comes and takes over Kirkuk. The Kurds come and take it back. And now there's this conflict between the Kurds and the Iraqis about who owns the city.

• 28:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, so a lot of people don't realize Kirkuk is a mix. So I'm gonna piss off some people, but like Kirkuk historically in modern times was Kurdish. You know, there's like Turkmen roots in that too. That's a long time ago. That's like pre-Bathist era, like a long, long time ago. But there's like Turkmen there, there's Khaldia, and there's Kurdish, there's Arab. And when Saddam took over Iraq and to, you know, when the Kurds started uprising and stuff, they took back Kirkuk from the Kurdish. And basically like that's the oil hub area. So whoever controls it controls a lot of the oil and like a lot of the main routes. So there's this contentious history here where the Kurds are like it's

• 29:44Speaker 03

  ours, the Iraqi government's like it's theirs. And when ISIS came in, the Iraq army just disappeared overnight. Like it just vanished. The Iraqi police vanished, everyone vanished for security. So like when the Kurds took back Kirkuk, you know, for them, it was like, hey, you guys abandoned this area. This is our territory now.

• 30:05Speaker 03

  And um, so in in 2017, what led up to the civil war is the Kurds were like, you know what? We've dealt with the Iraq government long enough. Um, it's not working. Let's declare independence. They held a referendum and it got like eighty-five percent or eighty eighty to ninety percent, I think, was like, yes, let's leave Iraq. Um, the US didn't, uh, the US was, I think, mainly against it publicly, but like, I don't think they were really trying behind the scenes to pressure the Kurds to like not do it type deal. Uh, I think Turkey was like, absolutely not, you're not gonna be able to do this type deal. Uh, predominantly because of their security situation with the PKK and all of that.

• 30:49Speaker 03

  So after the referendum, the Kurds were like, okay, we're gonna set a timeline of like twelve months or two years. And then we're getting full independence, like we're not dealing with Iraq anymore. Our own trade will do everything. Um, and obviously that pissed off the Iraq government and they went after Kirkuk. Um, they say it was to like, bring about like equality or whatever, but it was it's it was about who controlled the oil of Kirkuk. Cause you have large, large, large, uh, oil fields and refineries and everything around Kirkuk. And like, it was a matter of if the Kurds were able to solidify hold over this, you know, there's their economy, they'll they'll have money. If they have money, they can build up their defense forces properly. Um, and then obviously Iran doesn't want to see a stronger Kurdish group either.

• 31:35Speaker 03

  So Iran actually was probably like one of the main facilitators in making sure that didn't happen. I think Turkey, Turkey was upset with it, but like, I don't think they were physically, you know, getting involved, like Iranians were like helping out during the assault on Kirkuk. Like they were, there's literally photos of the IRGC in Kirkuk. Uh, so it was like directly there.

• 31:58Jack Murphy?

  Did, uh, you ever run across a couple, uh, guys with a pesh named Kurt and Joey? Both Americans.

• 32:06Speaker 03

  I'm terrible with names like I ran across a few foreigners but like by my second year I was able to I knew enough Kurdish. Um, that I could get around fairly easily. So I didn't really, I didn't really deal with foreigners like now in Ukraine. I've let foreigners for a while, but like. At that point in time, I just was sticking around with the Kurds. Uh, didn't like foreigners always bring drama.

• 32:28Jack Murphy?

  I know you're right. I, I, I just bring it up. I, I like those two guys. I, I met them over there in 2015, I believe. And the fighting around outside of Kirkuk, um, when they're pushing ISIS further out and, uh, I was out there as a journalist at the time. And, uh, I remember one of those dudes telling me about being down in Kirkuk somewhere and he got out of his Humvee to go take a piss. And he, he looks over at one of the Kurds, uh, and he's actually this guy with a beard and has this like green headband. And he's like, Hey man, it's like the front line over this way and that way. And the guy just looks at him with like crazy eyes like.

• 33:06Jack Murphy?

  And there's that.

• 33:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, like.

• 33:09Speaker 03

  Man, the, the, we, we did a lot of dumb shit during the ISIS fighting. Um, we. Like we, we did good that we helped defeat ISIS, but we also helped bolster Hoshabi.

• 33:23Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 33:23Speaker 03

  And, uh, the other PMUs because like we were handing man, like I was at the Besheka frontline and this was with Iranian Kurdish groups. Um, and this happened in Kirkuk too. This happened to Guerilla Macmore, but you'd have softy to show up. They'd hand out the weaponry. They wouldn't ask who was, you know, who you are. Like we got handed stuff by some European countries. And I was like, you know, you're giving that to like Iranian Kurdish, like. For lack of a better word militant groups. Like we're like, we're going to take this when we're done fighting here and we're going to go fuck up the Iranians.

• 33:57Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 33:58Speaker 03

  And like, they're like, they're like, not our problem is for the Iraqi Kurds. I was like. Whatever. Like they couldn't differentiate what group was what? It was like, if you're Kurdish, you're Kurdish.

• 34:07Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 34:08Speaker 03

  And, um. In Kirkuk, they did the same thing. The, the, if you look at some of the Kirkuk videos after the Kurds lost it, you have Hashishavi, you know, inside of the Abrams tanks, you have them inside of, you know, Western tech. And like, the agreement was like, hey, Hashishavi is not going to run this stuff. They're not supposed to use the US stuff or whatever. And in reality, you know, the PMU was like, one of the main donors of US fucking aid, to be quite honest. Like, it was extremely mismanaged. Like, it was so, like, we would, when we were, so I was over near Mosul for a little bit. And like, you had PMU guys running decked out M4s. And like, if you ask them, like, where'd you get it? Like, oh, the Americans brought it. And it's like, what the fuck, guys?

• 34:53Speaker 03

  Like, so bad. Like, I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't a group of Iranian engineers at one point, you know, hammering, hammering away to Abrams tank to figure out what made it tick. You know, and taking photos of whatever else we sent it.

• 35:07Jack Murphy?

  Um, let's talk a little bit about, uh, how you became associated with the Iranian Kurds. Cause this is a really interesting thing. Again, not, not many Americans had the experience that you had working with them.

• 35:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, like, honestly, it was, it was initially by accident. I was on a frontline and like, these guys showed up with different uniforms. Cause like, a lot of the Iranian Kurdish groups wear the traditional uniform. Uh, like the Kurdish one with the fancy wrap and everything. And then they wear like a chest rig. They don't wear body armor. They have, uh, you know, all their Kurdish clothes on. Their sweet ass ball club on their head, sometimes wrapped around their face. I was like, who the fuck are these guys? And, uh, they're like, oh, we're, we're PDKI. And I was like, who the fuck is PDKI? I've never heard of you. And they're like, we're from Iran. And I was like, what the fuck? They're like, oh, we're from the good, they're, we're like, we're from the good part of Iran. And I was like, okay. And they're like, yeah, we're, we're fighting the ISIS and then we're going to bring everything back and fight Iran. I was like, okay, this is cool.

• 36:07Speaker 03

  Uh, and all this was happening, I met those guys, like, end of 2014, I think. And I think I actually met the leadership of the PDKI in December or November 2014. But, um, like, that was when Obama's nuclear deal was going on too. And like, you could see it on the frontline. When like Guerilla Map, at one point you had, you know, Iraqi forces there with Kurds. Uh, there was like a huge animosity. Because like there's Iranians intermixed with Iraqis and like there was just a huge threat level. And they're like, hey, do you want to come fight Iran? And I was like. Let's, you know, let's go like. I was like, I'm already here. So like I can train, I can help train you guys to fight the Iranians and I'll. You know, help fight ISIS when I can.

• 36:53Speaker 03

  Uh, so because they were on the front lines fighting ISIS, like we just had a training ground right there. So, you know, teaching them small unit tactics and stuff. Um, it was just. The next step, I guess, and into uh, into the adventure. Um, and like honestly, like. The Iranians that I met, so like Iranian Kurdish groups also recruit non Kurds. And I don't think people understand that, like we had guys from Tehran, like actual Persian Persians. Uh, we had Al-Wazir Arabs. Um, they don't care, like it's largely Kurdish. But they don't care what your ethnicity is, as long as you can either speak Farisi or Kurdish. And you know, you're. You, you politically align with whatever their ideology, whether it is, uh.

• 37:38Speaker 03

  Uh, you know, like. Liberalism or, uh, like there's some communist parties, but like, you know, like they're like center left, um. I don't know if I'd call them social, like they call themselves socialist, but like. Because their culture is still conservative, it's more of like, they're more of like. Barely democratic, honestly, outside of their economic policy. But like, yeah, I, I worked with them. They were nice people. I was like, okay, let's continue this. Uh, they were extremely well armed at the time, uh, especially party of Saudi Kurdistan. Um, so I fought with them for a long time. In twenty eight, uh, twenty sixteen, actually.

• 38:20Speaker 03

  I ended up spending a year in the Candle Mountains, uh, with K D P I. Um, and like that was. Pretty brutal. It was cold, like through the winter in a mountain range. Uh, you know, like they have caves and stuff that they use, but like it's not fun. Um, but I think after that I sort of got some respect with them. And like more doors opened up with what they were doing inside of Iran. Um, I got to see more of a larger picture on like. What they were actually trying to achieve. Um, so like, yeah, I I worked with them on and off for the whole time, honestly.

• 38:54Jack Murphy?

  Wha- what was that that they were trying to achieve?

• 38:58Speaker 03

  So, a lot of people say they're trying to separate from Iran, but they're not. Um, when I got there, so previously in the early two thousand teens, so like nineteen eighty, actually, from the end of World War Two up to like the nineteen nineties and early two thousands, they wanted a separate Iran, like independent or a separate Kurdistan, independent Kurdistan, uh, all four, you know, Iraqi Kurdistan, Iranian Kurdistan, Turkey, Syria, they believed in like this unified Kurdish state. Um, and they thought that they had to start by getting the largest part from Iran. Um, so like they they were traditionally a separatist group. Um, a lot of them were traditionally Marxist Leninist and all that.

• 39:40Speaker 03

  Because during World War Two, the Soviets actually provided them a lot of weaponry, uh, before they fucked them over after the Republic of Mahabad fell. Uh, because they did declare independence in nineteen, nineteen forty-eight, I think, and it was called the Republic of Mahabad. I might be off, it might be forty-six. But they had, they had like a temporary independence, and then the Soviet Union basically left them out to hang. And, uh, you know, it didn't, it didn't work out well for them. Qazi Mohammed was hanged, um, and above a bunch of their other like, not like spiritual leaders in regards to religion, but like their spiritual ideology as far as like independence was ruined.

• 40:21Speaker 03

  Uh, or at least pushed back into the shadows. But in the early two thousands, after we invaded Iraq, they moved into like a more of like a, you know, we're not socialist, but we're, we want limited capitalism. Um, you know, we want freedom of all ethnicities. Like they, they went from, they went to like a federalist society type ideology where like, the Kurdish area has their own sovereignty, but we still answer to the federal government. You know, the Arab minority in the south below us has their own sovereignty. And you still have a federal government, like almost, I don't want to say similar to the US because it's not quite that way, but it was like, each minority gets their own, you know, governance, but then they have a federal government that they answer to. Like what, what was supposed to be in Iraq?

• 41:09Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, I mean, they kind of like, I think part of that ideological change was kind of abandoning the idea of an independent Kurdistan or as a state and more of this idea that there were these going to be these different cantons that were kind of loosely associated with one another, running from Iran, northern Iraq and into Syria and maybe Turkey. That was sort of like their idea of democratic confederalism.

• 41:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, so like the Syrian Kurds, Rojava and the Rojolatis, they have a lot of similarities. Like, they don't do the apoism stuff on the Iranian side outside of PJAC, but like their ideology of like, hey, if you're a minority, you run your own area and then, you know, there's like your council's local, that answer to like a regional or federal level, you know, it's very similar, it's just how everything's worded. Even in Iraqi Kurdistan, they have, they're really like some of the Iraqi Kurds are going to get pissed at me for saying this, but like even Iraqi Kurdistan, some of their very basic stuff that they've tried to do as a foundation is very similar to confederalism. Iraqi Kurdistan is more tribal based versus,

• 42:21Speaker 03

  you know, like, hey, this city area does their own thing, this city area does their own thing. But like, they're all very similar in ideology, it's just they'll never agree on it together as one, which is one reason why like I think a majority of the Kurds understand like we'll never have like, you know, one, all four parts is one greater Kurdistan.

• 42:43Speaker 03

  It might have been feasible in the early 1900s if they would have got their stuff together, but like, like post Ottoman Empire was probably possible. But nowadays with how everything's so interlocked, I don't think it would work. And being a landlocked country is not a benefit. It weakens you substantially to your neighbors. If your neighbors don't like you, you're pretty fucked. And I like the Iranian Kurds also knew for them to take on the Iranian regime, you know, they need to, you know, fight for more of a greater Iran and greater rights within Iran because like... You know, there's eleven or thirteen million Iranian Kurds, depending on how you classify

• 43:23Speaker 03

  all the various minorities, because you have like, you have like feyli Kurds, which are traditionally Shia Kurds that are down like east of Baghdad across the border. You have the Korazanis, which are in the northeast of Iran, that were like separated a long time ago. Like, there's a bunch of minor groups that sometimes say they're Kurdish, other times don't. But like, when you only have eleven or thirteen million people that are somewhat disenfranchised with each other's ethnicity and how you're other classed, like you can't really overthrow, you know, the the country of Iran. It's just not feasible. But like, I would say since like

• 44:04Speaker 03

  two thousand fourteen, they've predominantly advocated for a centralized government with, you know, minority rights and minority leadership within those areas. Because traditionally, the Kurdish areas haven't had full recognition as far as like their political level, has always been people from Tehran or everywhere else to help, you know, keep down the insurgency and, you know, keep down Kurdish support. Same goes with the Alevaz area, which is the Arabs which are south of the Kurdish region. Same with your Baluch. Like, they don't typically get a lot of representation within their own government. And same with the military, what you'll find is when they do conscription, when the Kurds have to do their mandatory service, they'll actually throw them all the way on the other side

• 44:49Speaker 03

  of Iran, or put them in other areas so that they're not within their local area. Because obviously-

• 44:55Jack Murphy?

  Oh, I see, no.

• 44:57Speaker 03

  A lot, yeah, like, like, a lot of the Iranian Kurds go through their conscription, and then they swap over to the Iranian Kurdish side. So like, keeping them out of Iranian Kurdish areas when they're in the military is, you know, beneficial to the regime.

• 45:11Jack Murphy?

  Tell us about, I I'd like to hear a little bit more about your personal experiences working with the Iranian Kurds and what you experienced that you're more, that you were up there in the mountains with them.

• 45:24Speaker 03

  So, just like the Iraqi Kurds, what they lack in tactics and equipment they make up for with, you know, willpower, high morale, like you'll never, they don't lose, like Kurds, Kurds rarely ever lose morale. Like you can have, you can suffer defeat and the next morning they're dancing, drinking chai, and you know, like they're, they're, they still keep a really high level of happiness when it comes to that. Um, but like, working with them, like I think honestly, if we were to invade Iran, it makes sense to work with the Kurds, but like, we gotta make sure it's done in an appropriate manner. Um, because obviously Turkey doesn't want to see a Kurdish threat and, you know, like having PJAC pushed up to the Turkish border would be bad, but like,

• 46:08Speaker 03

  I think there's a way to work with the Kurds and I think it can be effective, like what we did in Syria.

• 46:14Speaker 03

  I hope we just don't abandon them like we did in Syria. If we do it in Iran, like the Kurds love the West. Uh, they're probably one of the most open cultures when it comes to people, especially the Iranian Kurds. Iranians are less tribal than your Iraqi Kurds. So like, when you're in, when you're in herbal, everyone's like, yeah, you know, women wear whatever the hell they want for the most part in your main cities. Um, the same goes for the Iranian Kurdish side, and then when you get out to the rural areas, it's more conservative as well. But like, they, they, the Iranian Kurds are just more open to foreigners. Uh, whether it's like, like Zesmani Kaba is more of your Islamist type group. And even then, like, I went and worked with them,

• 46:57Speaker 03

  like, they're not ISIS, but like, they're like, we like Islam, Islam has to be, you know, a main part of our focus, which is whatever. Uh, they've, they've actually since changed that a little bit since I've been gone. Um, but like, even them, they, they're like, you want to go talk to our female fighters, you want to do whatever you want, you know, like they, like, they're just open. And like, they're, it's, it's, I think it's derogatory to say, but they're westernized, if that makes sense. Like, they're, they're, their, their beliefs and their values are similar to ours. That's probably the easiest way to explain it. Uh, whether that's their family life, um, like, yeah, most of them are Muslim, but like, at the end of the day, it's like, they keep their religion at home and like, they keep their family close. Um, so like, they're, they're very similar to how-

• 47:43Speaker 03

  You know, we are in the US, especially from the Midwest where it's like, hey, we don't give a shit about the federal government. You know, like, like they're very independent minded people.

• 47:53Jack Murphy?

  And what were you learning about insurgency and counter insurgency? What during this?

• 47:58Speaker 03

  I mean, I learned to, I learned to build my first bomb with them, which was interesting and like. I, I mean, I learned a little bit from some other Arab groups in Iraq too, but like, just, just like, um. Understanding how. Local insurgent groups or local militias or localized resistance groups, you know, how they operate among. The local populace was interesting because like coming from Iraq and Afghanistan where we're doing counter insurgency. You don't ever get to see like the inside picture on like, you know, like obviously Afghanistan was largely because the Taliban would threaten everyone. But like, you don't get to see the other side of it where it's like, okay, they're not threatening people.

• 48:42Speaker 03

  Uh, you know, they're, they're helping out the community, doing whatever. It's like. Building a school or delivering supplies through the mountains or, you know, like you don't get us. When you, when you're fighting an insurgency and you've never been on the other side of it, you don't see exactly like. When you'd always ask, why are these people working for them?

• 48:59Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 48:59Speaker 03

  And then like, when you're on the opposite side of it, you, you get a better understanding of like. Just how hard it is to defeat an insurgency, um, especially one that has a lot of grassroots movement, has a lot of local support like. I don't think we ever would have defeated the Taliban or even a lot of like. Or pacified some of these areas in Iraq, just because of how rooted it is in like. Family, tribe, and like. You're one of us versus like an outsider. Um, when it comes to like. How insurgencies. Gather local support in a nonviolent way, like it's really hard to counter that. As a foreign force, like honestly, and if you don't have a strong local government.

• 49:43Speaker 03

  That isn't gonna act like assholes to the local population when, you know, flare ups happen. You'll never, you're never gonna defeat insurgency. Like, I honestly don't think Israel's ever gonna defeat um the Palestinian stuff or the Lebanese stuff with what they're doing. It's just not possible.

• 49:59Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 49:59Speaker 03

  Um, it takes a lot of internal change within whatever government, like for, for it to work out in Lebanon, like the Lebanese government really has to push. For change and breaking that like cultural tie to resistance. And like, that's something that like, the Kurds have been doing it since the forties, like, and they still weren't broken and, you know, even today, so. Almost eighty-five, ninety years later, they still have a low-level insurgency, like, they do attacks. Once every couple of weeks, it costs the Iranians a lot of money, um. But like, trying to break that, that like era of resistance. Or like, how the, the network's been built up over decades is hard, especially if you keep killing like.

• 50:43Speaker 03

  Religious leaders, or in like the Iranians' case, they hung like Qazi Mohammed, who literally was like, okay, we'll lay down our arms and surrender. And then, you know, they, they hung him in the city square, so they turned him into a martyr. Um, you know, and like that, that's still even today, like. Most of your Kurds know who he is, even like your Iraqi Kurds, Syrian Kurds, everyone knows who Qazi Mohammed is. Um, so like that, that oral history and the history that keeps getting sent down after generations is hard to break that. So, like, insurgencies, I think, are like.

• 51:18Speaker 03

  Like, almost impossible. In most cases, like, obviously you have your outliers, like, Timel Tigers basically were defeated, but that also took sixty-plus years and, you know. Tens of thousands of lives, like insurgencies are just one of those things that are really hard to defeat. You know, especially it's even more harder as a foreign force like, man, we would go into Iranian villages, which like a day earlier had IRGC guards there that do their fucking little patrols around. And like, we would stay in like a local's house, they'd give us food, water, and we didn't threaten them, we didn't do anything, we just knocked on the door, they're like, yeah, come in. Uh, you know, here's our pamphlet for like our political ideology for the Kurds.

• 52:01Speaker 03

  Uh, you know, what is your main issues around? And like, even if they're like, oh, well, we don't believe in your political system, they wouldn't kick you out of the village. Like, most of them were like, yeah, tomorrow, please leave, we don't want issues. And then we'd say, okay, hey, that's fine. Uh, here's a number, if anyone in the village wants to join, they can call. And usually, you know, you'd get one or two people calling a week saying, hey, uh, you know, the IRGC or the local SEPA just roughed up my relative. You know, I'm, I'm over it, let's go. Um, so like, again, like, man, insurgencies, I like, you can write about them, like, I don't think it's gonna be like, they're just like an outlier when it comes to warfare, it's hard to defeat. And like, being able to see how an insurgency functions from the inside

• 52:44Speaker 03

  was interesting and like, it gave me a better understanding of just what we are up against in Iraq. And even more so in Afghanistan, because in Afghanistan, you have the tribal ties, you have the religious ties, and then you also have, you know, the threat of violence. So like, you have three things working against you, four if you include an ineffective government. And like, we spent twenty fucking years there, and it's like, no wonder. Like, I guess just, it was just a good experience. Like, it showed me, like, I don't think, I don't think our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were for nothing. Saddam was bad. Most of the Iraqis you talked to that weren't former Sunni Ba'athists are like, yeah, thank you for getting rid of Saddam. Uh, also, we fucking hate you for screwing our country up after Saddam was gone.

• 53:30Speaker 03

  Um, most of your Afghans are pretty much in the same boat. They were like, thank you for getting rid of the Taliban initially. But like, you completely fucked us for the next fifteen years on, you know, how, how, how this, yeah, you know, it was like, they're gone, give us our- Our whole government back, we'll deal with it or attempt to deal with it. Um, and like, yeah, we just, we, we fucked up the, the hearts and minds after, like, what do you do after you get rid of the leadership?

• 54:00Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 54:00Speaker 03

  You know?

• 54:00Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 54:01Speaker 03

  So.

• 54:03Jack Murphy?

  I, I guess I, I really need to ask you before we move on, um, because of our current war with Iran, America's war with Iran. And there was very predictably, I think, a, a week or two of news media coverage focusing on the Iranian Kurds. And thinking that the Iranian Kurds were going to be like our savior in this conflict and they would dispose of the Iranian regime and all this sort of stuff. I just want to ask your opinion, your unique perspective that you have on this. What role could the Iranian Kurds play in, uh, helping America like that? And would they? Are they even, is that even in their interest?

• 54:42Speaker 03

  So, so I, I think the West, the West, so the Iranian Kurds, if we wouldn't have fucked over the Syrian Kurds and if we wouldn't have fucked over the Iraqi Kurds. You know, eight years prior, I think the Iranian Kurds would have been fully on board to say, you know, if you're bombing them here, we'll, we'll send ground troops in. Um, and you know, the, the Iranian Kurds did mobilize, they did, I'm, I won't go into full specifics, but like, they're, they're fully mobilized right now. They called their members back from Europe and other places. Um, just in case it gets to a point where they can push in. But the West misjudged them in thinking that they were just going to start an offensive without full support. Um, and I don't, I don't blame them.

• 55:26Speaker 03

  Like, if you look at, if, from an Iranian Kurdish standpoint, it's like, okay, yeah, they're, they're bombing the Iranian regime. But like, are they going to continue to back us or am I just going to send all my men to slaughter?

• 55:37Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 55:38Speaker 03

  Because like, at the end of the day, there might be, you could, they could probably get.

• 55:45Speaker 03

  Between twelve and twenty thousand soldiers, but we don't, they don't have armor, like they don't have tanks to drive across the border. They don't have heavy artillery, you know, they have light weapons, they have mortars. Uh, they have pickup trucks, they have guys inside of these villages and supporters all over. But if the Iranians are like, aren't occupied enough elsewhere. They're just gonna send the full force of their military on the Kurdish parts. And not only will the Kurdish groups lose a lot of people. But more than likely, the Iranians will just destroy whole villages. Um, especially in the rural areas where there's not a lot of communications that'll get out. Uh, you know, like if you, if they, if they tried to like, if they got into like Sun and Dash, for instance. They probably wouldn't destroy that whole city.

• 56:30Speaker 03

  But if, if they were able to fight the Kurds in some of these smaller, you know. Less populated villages, they'd just full on slaughter the whole village and, you know, level it. Um, so like the Iranian Kurds saying, hey, hold up a minute. Like, we're not just gonna jump into this without, you know, some actual backing. Like, I don't know how anyone expected that not to happen. Like, I, like you saw on CNN and Fox, I was like, oh, the Iranian Kurds are behind us. It's like, well, it's should, it should be the opposite way around. Are we behind the Iranian Kurds? And, you know, have we approached them properly? Um, and facilitated what they need to cross the border?

• 57:09Speaker 03

  Because like, on the Iranian border, every two to five kilometers is an Iranian, is in like an Iranian outpost. There's like a border guard. Uh, they have artillery, so like literally sandwiched on the border and sometimes even inside Iraqi territory. There's an Iranian outpost. And then usually five kilometers behind that on a high hilltop is, you know, artillery grad or whatever else. So like, if we were truly going to utilize the Kurds and build a partnership here, we need to hit these board. Like, every one of those border posts should be getting bombed. Um, and like, after that, there's some areas inside of the Iranian Kurdish, as well as like your other minority areas where they have like.

• 57:52Speaker 03

  QRF bases, those are pretty easy to hit too, but like, we didn't do any of that. So I don't know how we expected the Iranian Kurds just to drive across the border, you know? Like, it's, it's one of those things where it's like. Is wishful thinking and I don't think anyone in the admin really, really thought about it well when they started voicing that and like when the leaks started coming out.

• 58:13Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, they they must have some conception that, you know, if America was serious, they would be embedding ODAs with us and sending us probing across the border and so that like we're in it with them, right?

• 58:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, like there was, like as far as I understand, there was none of that. Obviously, there was some talks like so I spoke with the Iranian Kurdish groups as well as some of the other minorities like the Baluch and the Arab. Um, and like there was some behind the scene talks that did happen, but it never really progressed into like, here is the support we're going to give you, whether it's like, you know, an ODA team with a JTAC or like, hey, we'll cover this area with airstrikes. So like if they do try to push armor towards you, like if the Iranians just try to do, you know, light infantry against the Kurds, if the Kurds are able to get into the cities in these other areas, like it's not going to work out for them. But the biggest issue with the Iranian side is

• 59:05Speaker 03

  uh, number one drones and then number two armor. Like we, the Kurds don't have weapons against armor. Yeah, you have RPGs, but like, RPGs pass like 150 meters. If you're trying to hit a moving vehicle, it's not that easy.

• 59:18Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 59:19Speaker 03

  Done it. Try to, I think I've hit maybe like two vehicles in my life with an RPG and I've fired a lot of RPGs. Um, so like, yeah, like if we were serious about like regime change and if admin was serious about regime change, you know, they would have approached the situation differently. I don't think we were ever actually, I think what we thought was going to happen is we bombed the fuck out of them, kill the Ayatollah, the whole Defense Council and the regime just collapses.

• 59:47Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 59:48Speaker 03

  But that was a huge, that that was about as dumb as the Russians invading Ukraine and thinking the Ukrainians were going to collapse.

• 59:55Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 59:55Speaker 03

  Um, the IR, because like you have the Ayatollah, obviously he was a figurehead, but the Ayatollah is like the religious side of it. What really holds the regime together is IRGC and like even and like what we just saw, like you can kill a bunch of the IRGC upper leadership, but at the end of the day, the IRGC are more of your hardliners. Like obviously some will always flip sides, but a majority of them are not gonna, they're not gonna move away from that foundation of like, you know, Islamic Republic of Iran, uh, we're the true resistance of the region type deal. So like, I think we severely misjudged it almost on the level of. Like Russia trying to land all their VDV and Hostomel type shit.

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• 1:04:12Jack Murphy?

  So, the next phase of your life, you did something that not too many Kurds can do is come down out of the mountains. And where did you go next?

• 1:04:25Speaker 03

  So, I messed around in Africa for a little bit. Boring, just advising stuff. And then in like 2019, I was back in the US. I started up like an agricultural business, doing like livestock repairs. So like Iowa's huge with hog. Like, we have beef too, but not as large as some other states. But like with our hog industry in Iowa, there's a lot of opportunities for like maintenance repair of the hog barns, as well as like cleaning them out. Because like after each rotation of animals, you have to like disinfect it so they don't get, you know, diseases from previous ones. You have to clean everything.

• 1:05:06Speaker 03

  And like mass, what do they call it? Not mass farming, but like those big hog refineries, like. Well, there's definitely disadvantages to them, you know. Um, it's, it's, it's like a necessity now if you want cheap meat, basically. Um, so like I opened a company up, started doing that. I worked for a local friend's, uh, construction company as well while I was doing it. And then in two thousand twenty one, I was going to run for Congress for Iowa. Um, started getting everything organized for that and started doing, like traveling in January, December twenty one and then January two thousand twenty two.

• 1:05:48Speaker 03

  And then basically that's when Russia started putting troops on the border. So I was like, well, I'm going to Ukraine. So I quit the congressional thing. Like the congressional thing was like, so,

• 1:06:02Speaker 03

  I get really,

• 1:06:05Speaker 03

  I get really frustrated, uh, every time I go. So I've lived out of the US, a majority of my adult life since two thousand fourteen. But every time I go back to Iowa, um, I go back to my hometown. And, you know, I go, I'm a rural community person. My hometown's like nine thousand people, ten thousand people. Every time I go back to rural Iowa, I see businesses closed. I see, uh, family farmers struggling, uh, you know, people who bought their family farm from their father, like people I went to school with. Um, you know, running a farm that their families owned for generations.

• 1:06:48Speaker 03

  And, you know, they're struggling in debt. They're barely making ends meet. And so like in two thousand twenty one, I was like, fuck it, you know, we need, I wanted to actually try to bring a voice to like rural communities because I don't think, I don't think the Republicans or Democrats really speak for a lot of Americans, especially today. Like honestly, like our two party system sucks. But without getting overly into politics and getting angry about it. Um, I decided to run. Uh, I wasn't like, I was a super red district. I would never have gotten the support from the Republicans. So I ran as, uh, like a conservative Democrat. Uh, so I would go to the, uh, I would go to and like,

• 1:07:32Speaker 03

  Democrats in Iowa outside of Des Moines are pretty much like, they're not like the DC Democrat bullshit. They're more. They're more like center purple, but like I would go to the um like the local Democratic committee meetings and stuff. And I'd be like, okay, like, here's my view on abortion, like, some of it should be outlawed, some shouldn't, like, you know, more women's rights thing. And then they'd always be like, what's your opinion on on firearms? And I'd always be like, everyone deserves a gun, like, you know, like, I'm pro two A. Like, I'm from rural Iowa, like, I grew up around firearms. My dad brought me hunting at a young age, taught me firearm safety.

• 1:08:12Speaker 03

  Taught me like to respect it because it's a weapon. And I believe the right to self-defense is like something that's inherent to everyone. So like saying I'm against weapons, like, that's never gonna happen. I don't think it should. I think we need less laws on firearms, to be honest. And we just need more fucking education. Um, like, I'm not a fan of the ATF at all. I think they've overstretched their boundaries for years. But uh, so I was running, I was running as a like, probably. I I I know I pissed off a lot of Democrats when I initially put my hat in the ring just because of like, I'm basic, I voted Republican.

• 1:08:50Speaker 03

  I voted for Trump in twenty sixteen. Um, I've historically voted for Republican mayors, uh, governors, everything. Um, up until that point, the only Democrat I voted for was J D Vance. And like J D Vance was like.

• 1:09:07Speaker 03

  Basically, almost like me, he believed in Second Amendment, he believed in all that. He was a little bit more liberal on the political, on the economic side. As far as like free healthcare and stuff, but um, he was like the first person that actually, I actually ended up helping campaign for him and doing some other stuff, but like. He was the first one where I was like, okay, not all Democrats are dumbasses. Um, like, there are some, like, not everything has to be about like D C Democrat policy. Uh, nothing has to be about like Republican D C policy. Like, we need to get back to like. Like, local issues dealing with it and then pushing the local issues at like the national front. Um, but anyway. In January of two thousand twenty-two, when Russia's really started pushing on the border.

• 1:09:51Speaker 03

  Um, and the U S was warning it consistently saying, hey, this is coming. Uh, I made the choice basically like, hey, I'm going to Ukraine. Um, it's just a matter of time. Uh, and then I ended up in Ukraine. End of February and then I was fighting in March, like it was like. Land and like, so I crossed over from Romania. We actually drove across from like a nondescript. Checkpoint. On like the very northeastern side, like a dirt road fucking border crossing. There was like no one there. Ukraine was like, what the fuck are you coming here for? And I was like, they're like, what's the reason for your visit? I was like, I'm coming to fight the Russians and they're like.

• 1:10:35Speaker 03

  Ha ha, there's no, there's no war. I was like, okay. Anyway, I ended up in Kiev. And um. At the start of the war, I didn't like, I ended up with a bunch of Ukrainians. So at the start of the war, what happened is once the bombing started and everything. Uh, the local city governments and I think it was at the orders of like the federal like Zelensky's group. But basically it was like, if you want to defend Ukraine, show up to certain locations, bring your um. Like your Ukrainian ID or your veteran's card or whatever ID you have and they would issue you a weapon. You get broken down into groups, like civil defense, basically. Um, and. At the start, it was just.

• 1:11:20Speaker 03

  It was, it was chaos because nobody. There, there was, there was some semblance of order. But it was more of a semblance of order because of Ukrainian society, not because of like policing or. Like there was nobody like saying, go here, go here, don't do that, don't do this. It was more of, okay. You know, we're a group of Ukrainians and uh, you know, my friend said the Russians are over on the. Western side, we're gonna go over, we'll meet up with this person and then we'll. Form an idea on what to do. Um, you know, you didn't have chaos where people were breaking into shot, at least in most areas. You didn't have people like looting stores, you know, committing.

• 1:12:05Speaker 03

  Heinous crimes, like it was a fairly. United defense and like, okay, fuck the Russians, like. I'm gonna go fight, they're coming to my city type deal. And this happened in like a majority of the areas where Ukraine could get weapons out in time. To the local, local, like the local people. Um. And then Zelensky said, like on the twenty eighth or March first or whatever it was, twenty seventh or something. He declared like they're doing a foreign legion. So I got put on a bus and we went south out of Kiev. And then back up and over all the way to Lviv. And I didn't know at the time, but I got brought to Yavary. So Yavary is that military base in the far west of Lviv.

• 1:12:49Speaker 03

  Uh, it was like the main training ground for all of like NATO had troops there.

• 1:12:53Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah, it was the one where it got blasted by ballistic missiles, didn't it?

• 1:12:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, like, like three days after I, so I think that got hit on like the fifth or sixth. And by that time we were already back in the war. So I showed up at Yavary. We get off the bus, I got brought, like some Ukrainians were with me. We go into the base, uh, there's like this fucking tent there with a guy. Speaking broken English, he's like, you're here to fight. I was like, yeah, I've been in Kiev. Like, fuck, I was fighting. He's like, okay, come here, sign this paper. He's like, you're going to be enlisting in the. You know, Ukrainian Armed Forces, here's your contract terms. It was in fucking Ukrainian, couldn't read it. He's like, get out your phone, Google Translate. It's like, okay. Didn't even care. I was like, whatever, just sign it. Didn't even read it, like, no fucks given. Um, cause like I honestly thought.

• 1:13:42Speaker 03

  Even, even with the, the stiff resistance at the start, I honestly thought we were fucked. Uh, so like, I didn't give a shit if my contract said you're in the military for the next twenty years. Like, I was like, man, we're gonna have one hell of a good fight for a month or two. And then we're fucked. But like, at that point. I was just in it, so signed my name on it, took a picture of it on my phone. And then he's like, okay, go over to this brick building. We went over there. I met a bunch of, at that point, there was like twelve other Americans. Uh, there was like a former Ranger there who had also been fighting in Kiev at the start. But he was here. Like six months before, I think he was going to university or something in Kiev.

• 1:14:24Speaker 03

  Um, and then there was uh George in there Viking, he's all over uh he's pretty well known. Um, and then there was some guys from, I think there was like five guys from like the seventy fifth, so like Rangers. There was some soft guys there, uh Dan Swift, the former Navy SEAL that was killed in Bakku was there. And like, we all introduced each other, it was like, you know, what's your background? I was like, dude, I was, I was Army National Guard, uh did Iraq, Afghanistan, like both these guys are like, I was ten years in, you know, third bat of seventy fifth, and I'm like, fuck me, like, they're up here, I'm like, I'm like down here when it comes to like, like training and skill level, cause like.

• 1:15:06Jack Murphy?

  You, you have some insurgency experience though.

• 1:15:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, so like, like, like I had more of the real world experience, but like, to be honest, so like, even, even now, like I've got twelve years in war, like I, I've been actively fighting in war zones for actually over twelve years now. But like, what, when somebody from like an upper tier unit,

• 1:15:29Speaker 03

  like, the, the, the way that upper tier units, like your seventy fifth, uh your soft guys, like Green Berets and like your SEALs, and even some like your JTAC type people, when they, when you, when you watch how they do their maneuvers and how they, like how they were trained, it's,

• 1:15:51Speaker 03

  like I might, I might have the, the experience when it comes to like fighting and understanding a battlefield environment, but they have like the fluidity and like the technical skills to where it's like,

• 1:16:04Speaker 03

  like robot, like, not robotic in a bad way, but like, you know what I mean, like they, like, you could blindfold, you could blindfold them and they'll hit a fucking target a hundred meters because like, their weapon marksmanship's on point, how they operate, how they move, how they communicate, like it's just on another tier level, and that's nothing against like Marines, like your standard Marines or your standard Army, it's just like, you can, you can usually tell in combat when somebody has that more advanced training, even guys.

• 1:16:33Speaker 03

  Even like, obviously some will always break, but even like guys who never had combat, but they went through like Rangers. And they spent time at the regiment, like you can just tell like a switch flips immediately. Um, for the ones that don't get scared, like some people just freeze up, but like for a vast majority of your upper tier units, there's just like a flip that switches. And it's just automatic, like there's no like, hey, come here, I need to move you over here. Like if they've spent time in any of the upper tier units. Just how they move and they do stuff, it's on a whole nother level, even like with my experience, like. I'm now, I'm nowhere near like the technical level and I'll probably never be at that, like I'm sloppy compared to what they are.

• 1:17:14Speaker 03

  And like even with like an AK, I'm sloppy with it. But like, so we, I got in this group and like. I think there might've been like two civilians that were there and we're like, okay, you're just like all the soft guys, like they're gonna be our fucking ammo bitches and just carry ammo over for us. And everyone's like, okay, raise your hand if you want them in. Everyone's like, yeah, fuck it. We need ammo guys. Um, so we're telling each other about our backgrounds and I was like, oh yeah, I spent four years. As part of like a semi insurgency fighting, fighting the Iranians and partly the Iraqis. And uh, I was like, I can build bombs, shoot RPGs and like Soviet weapons, easy. So they're like. Okay, that's interesting. And then um, I ended up getting a PKM.

• 1:17:55Speaker 03

  And then I went to, so originally they sent one of the Ukrainians to the warehouse to grab weapons. He brought back like the most basic shit and there was like a huge argument, like where's your rockets, where's all this? He's like, fine, you wanna go get stuff, go do it. So I hop in the back of this troop transport truck. With uh, the English speaking Ukrainian, uh, whose call sign's Lu and then I think. It was another American, we go to this warehouse and there's just like fucking rockets stacked everywhere. And like, he's like, what do you want? I was like, well, what do they have? And they're like, well, we have mortars over here. I was like, fuck the mortars. We're not gonna have time to deploy them. Like, let's like, avoid the mortars. Uh, let's, you know, stay heavily mobile and quick.

• 1:18:39Speaker 03

  So they're like, we have RPGs. I was like, cool. They had M seventy two ones, like the new A three model or A two. I was like, sweet, we need, and they're, they're, I think in a box, it's either six or ten come in a box, or six or twelve. I was like, sweet, we want twenty fucking boxes. I was like, give us like two hundred fucking laws, put them on the truck. They're like, okay. I was like, cool, give us RPG sevens. They're like, okay, how many do you want? I was like, give us a hundred anti-tank. Like, we, we basically pilfered this fucking warehouse of rockets. I was like, give us stingers. So we got these boxes of stingers. Holy shit. Um, we've, we found out later that when the US or whatever country sent these over immediately, they shipped the fucking handguards separate.

• 1:19:20Speaker 03

  And when they got to the Ukrainian warehouses, the handguards were not put back in the boxes. They ended up at another warehouse. So we ended up having like fucking forty goddamn stinger missiles with no fucking trigger assembly. So they were useless. But like, we found that out once we got to Kiev, because we're idiots and didn't check it. It was just, hey, the box isn't open. Throw the whole crate in the fucking truck. So we got on this, we ended up getting on like a Greyhound type bus that same day, or no, excuse me, that morning, the next morning, heading straight to Kiev. They're like, load everything into this Greyhound bus. So there's like eighteen of us on this bus and like we're, we packed so many fucking rockets and munitions and everything

• 1:20:03Speaker 03

  that we're literally sitting on munitions. Like, there's no room to sit. And like, nobody knew where we were going. None of that. We get to Kiev and you can hear explosions, you hear artillery going off. And like, okay, get in this building. It was actually a hotel right next to the Chinese embassy. Because they figured the Russians weren't gonna bomb it because they didn't wanna blow up the Chinese embassy. And they didn't. They never bombed the hotel. It wasn't, it, what was, it wasn't Hotel Ukraine. Oh, man, it was a nice, and I'd have to go look up what the name of his, but like, basically, we were like, within two hundred meters of this Chinese embassy and like, it was like, okay, we know for sure the Russians aren't bombing the Chinese, or they're not gonna risk blowing the Chinese up. Cause the Chinese were still in their embassy, they didn't leave.

• 1:20:48Speaker 03

  Um, so we get there, we offload all these rockets into this fucking hotel lobby. And, uh, at that point, most of us still didn't know each other's names, like, I mean, we knew each other's backgrounds and like, we're just usually like, hey, you come here, help offload this, help offload that. Um, we didn't even zero our weapons. Like, we just grabbed our rifle, got all this shit and went straight to Kiev, it was like, zeroed on the frontline type shit, like, there was no time, I think maybe, one of the snipers that was a former Ranger, he was given a little bit of time to zero his sniper rifle in Yagriev. But otherwise, nobody did anything, it was basically like, you know, figure it out when you get to Kiev type shit.

• 1:21:32Speaker 03

  Um, that day we got in Kiev, we slept, and then that morning, they were like trying to figure out what to do with us, and, uh, our soft guys, like Seal Dan, and, uh, some of the other Rangers were like consistently arguing with the Ukrainian leadership, saying, hey, you know, let's go fight, let's go fight, we're ready, we're ready, like, basically being like, typical pushy fucking Americans, um, and eventually the Ukrainian commander was like, alright, fuck it, you wanna fight? He got on, his name, his call sign name is Vadim, got on the radio, screamed a bunch of Ukrainian, and then he's like, get your shit ready, you're going to the front, uh, we're gonna go patrol a forest. So, we grab all our kit, throw it in the back of these like LM, like,

• 1:22:17Speaker 03

  like basically deuce and a halves, like Kamas trucks, old school shit. They drove us, we didn't know to the time, but we actually got driven to the frontline in Mosheun. They dropped us off at the time, probably like three kilometers from active fighting. And when we, when we initially got there, there was no- No one started shooting at us originally with artillery or anything. So we, he's like, okay, drop your kit. You're not gonna need anything. Just get your weapons, bring ammo, bring rockets. Like, leave the rest of your kit. You don't need your cold weather kit or nothing. Um, we're just gonna patrol the forest. So, we start walking through this forest and like ten minutes in, he's like, okay.

• 1:22:56Speaker 03

  We're going to the, we're gonna go to the trenches and fight. And we're like, man, you just told us to leave all our fucking kit behind because we're just doing a patrol. So, we maybe get like eight hundred meters through this fucking forest and then we start getting smacked with artillery. And I remember it was funny as fuck, like, most of the people took off running. And like the artillery was going over top of us pretty far still. And I looked over to my right, there was a guy, um. We call him, uh, Doc Jesse, or he's Canadian, former military. And he's looking at me, he's like. Do you think we should run? And I was like, ah, I think we're good for a while. So like me and him are walking. While everyone else is like sprinting through these forests. I was like, fuck, I'm not running. Like, there's no point. Nothing's even blowing up around us.

• 1:23:40Speaker 03

  And, um, we're literally walking through the woods while everyone's in front of us, smoking and joking. And all of a sudden here, boom. They started dropping, uh, airburst rounds into the forest. And like, I look. I li- I looked over at Jesse and I was like, we should probably fucking run now. So like, we sprinted off, caught up with our guys. But, but, but like, it was just like. One of those things at the start of the war is like, I wouldn't do that now. Like, I'd be like, okay, like, if they're shooting over top of us, they're probably actually trying to hit us. We're just like, oh, they're just lobbing rounds randomly. It's like, no, they probably knew where we were. They were just trying to, you know, grit us in properly. Um, like, that's just one of those dumb things where it's like.

• 1:24:22Speaker 03

  A really stupid decision that luckily didn't cost anyone their lives. Um, so we get to the edge of this town. The town's name is Mushun. There's like, there's like a really shitty trench dug like waist deep. So everyone hops in it. And, uh, the, the Ukraine's like, yeah, we're trying to figure out where everyone is. And we're getting shot at from the Russians in this town. And like, everyone's like, what the fuck are we doing? So I was like, you know what? Fuck it. Let's just push into the town. So I just like take off running into the village. Like a retard with a PKM. And I get maybe like a hundred me- like a hundred meters in front of the trench. And I look behind me and the Ukraine's like, come back, come back. So I run back through gunfire, hop in this fucking trench.

• 1:25:07Speaker 03

  And the Ukrainians, the Ukrainian Vadim was like, okay, now we go. I'm like, are you fucking kidding me? So we, I ran back through the fire, got a machine gun position down, and then the rest of the guys pushed up. We got into this house and there was like four Ukrainians already there. Um, the our Ukrainian commander Vadim was like, told the Ukrainians to leave, this is now our house. Uh, it was Ukrainian military. So basically, he's like, don't shoot. We're gonna stay in this house and when the Russians come, then we'll shoot. Like, the Ukrainians were still. At that point, we're still pretty pessimistic and like, I don't think they fully trusted us on like, what our capabilities were. Like, they're like, okay, yeah, you're special forces. But like, this is a real war, you don't know what you're doing.

• 1:25:52Speaker 03

  So we sat in that house for probably. A day and a half, getting like artillery is going off around us. Uh, every time we would shoot a weapon, our, our Ukrainian probably like, okay. Like, go up to the second floor. There's Russians down the road, you know, bring your sniper rifle, shoot them, then come back down. So like, we would do that, you know, every other hour or whatever, and like, the Russians, the Russians were fucking retarded, like. So our, our second story building looks straight down this road, like, we could see. Eight hundred to a thousand meters down this road. And the Russians were at the edge of the village coming into it. And they had took over two houses at the edge of the, edge of the village. And like, they wouldn't stand, they wouldn't stand in the windows of the, of the houses. But they would come outside and smoke cigarettes.

• 1:26:38Speaker 03

  Literally in the middle of the road. So like, our ranger dude was just fucking smacking the shit out of these Russians, like, and it wasn't one or two. Like, it was like, consistent, like, they would come out, smoke a cigarette, and I was like, alright, fucking shoot him. Um, and he shot this one guy, uh, hit him lower mid. Just dropping like pelvis shot him. Uh, not on purpose, it was accidents, aimed low. But, uh. We had saw that there was like a group of like three, like the guy was alive screaming, whatever. And there was like four Russians at this edge of a, edge of like, we could barely see them. Behind a wall, I'm like, okay, they're gonna get their buddy. We'll, we'll let them, you know, we'll let them grab their guy so he fucks off and we don't have to listen to him scream.

• 1:27:20Speaker 03

  So this Russian runs out in the middle of the road and instead of grabbing his buddy, literally takes his weapon, takes his shoes and fucks off again. And like, we're like, what in the fuck? Just left, like, left this introduced out there. So

• 1:27:34Speaker 03

  we just left him screaming and, you know, he bled out eventually, probably a few hours later, hour later. Um, by day two and a half, our commander at that point was like, we're out of food and water. I'm gonna go get food and water. Don't do anything. He's like, don't shoot, just stay in this room. Don't do anything. Literally like,

• 1:27:54Speaker 03

  within ten minutes of him being gone, the soft guys and the rangers are like, let's fuck shit up because like, he's gone, like, we're like, he's, but basically it was like, we're in charge now. Um, and basically it was just, like, they're like, go up, uh, go up on the second story. And like, you know, we know the Russians are in this building. Go let off like a hundred round burst through your PKM and see what they do. So I go, I go up on the second, on the second floor where this bedroom is, there's a baby crib up there. Um, and I like move the baby crib like further back in front of the window so I can put the PKM on it. And I literally just unload a full, like, single hundred round burst through this fucking PKM.

• 1:28:35Speaker 03

  And fucking just spray this building down and like, nobody shot back at me directly. And then I run back downstairs. I was like, yeah, I did it. And they're like, okay, let's see what happens. They didn't do fucking anything. So then it was like, okay, let's, let's get the rockets out. And they're like, okay, we have to go outside the building to shoot these. I was like, guys, you can shoot fucking, just, it'll be loud, but you can shoot them inside. They're like, oh, back, they're like back pressure. I'm like, fuck the back pressure, doesn't matter. You know, over pressure, be damn back blast, just don't stand, like, stay downstairs, run upstairs, shoot the rocket.

• 1:29:10Speaker 03

  And like, they're like, no, we're not doing that. I'm like, fine, I'll do it. So I grabbed these, I grabbed like a pack of the M72 laws and I go, I go up into the second, the, the bedroom again, one of the bedrooms. And I just let off two rockets into these houses down the road, smoked the shit out of them. Uh, caught them on fire, hit the roof and hit, hitting one of the windows. And, uh, at that point, the Russians finally reacted. Um, it was extremely loud. I couldn't hear. There's definitely overpressure even with laws and buildings. Um, but like after that, probably like three or four hours, when things started calming down again. The Ukrainian drove back up in a fucking van, loaded full of ammo, food, water.

• 1:29:53Speaker 03

  Um, and basically like loaded everything into the house. And he's like, he looked down the road. He's like, why is there, why are their buildings on fire? And we're like, well, we got in a fight. So, and like, he got up and Otters was looking and then he came back downstairs. He was like, "Good job, good job. Go ahead." Like basically do whatever the fuck you want. Kill the Russians. And from that point on, it was basically like, we would send out, so the Rangers and like the, the Navy SEAL guy. They'd be like, okay, we're gonna go out and do fucking raids at night. Nobody had night vision. Like they're basically like, in pitch black, they're like, we're gonna go fucking, like, we know the Russians are in this house because we can see the muzzle flashes. And like, they aren't pushing, so we're gonna push them.

• 1:30:36Speaker 03

  So they'd be like, okay, Ryan, like, go look through the window, see the chicken coop. You know, go get in that chicken coop and like, we'll radio you or yell if we need you to, you know, lay down support by fire. And then, you know, typical lift fire, shift fire stuff. And I kid you not, like, the Rangers and this SEAL just went through that town. Just fucking creating hell. It was fucking insane. And this is again, no night vision, nothing. Like, they were good. Um. And so we did that for like seven days and at one point the Russians did try to push armor down the road. We had a Ukrainian shoot an MLaw at like a BMP. And the BMP was so close that the MLaw literally just tinged off of it.

• 1:31:20Speaker 03

  Uh, because the safe, the safe arming distance is like twenty, twenty meters or whatever. And like they was literally below like our house is here. You could literally look out the window. It was directly below us. They had, they didn't have infantry with it. It was just they set a lone BMP up. It was like, okay, fucking let it get close and then we'll blow it up from above. Stupid mistake. Luckily, the BMP drove backwards, tried to go down a side route and then cut back up. Because they weren't sure what shot at them. And so our commander called in a Ukrainian tank. A Ukrainian tank just comes flying out of this tree line. And now you have a BMP facing off against the tank. The tank fired literally one shot and I kid you not, that fucking BMP just went everywhere like.

• 1:32:03Speaker 03

  In pieces everywhere, like the turret, like the top of it where the thirty mil is. Just went fucking flying. First time I've ever seen armor blown up like that, like that close. You could feel the fucking pressure off of it. So that got, that got blown up and then the Russians were like, the tank drives back into the woods. They shoot artillery at it. Don't hit it. The Russians were dumb enough to like, okay, like let's try two BMPs. And this time we'll put infantry on both sides of the vehicle. So like they didn't even do like the typical Soviet behind it. They had them on the side of the vehicle. So we let them get like fucking fifty meters from us. And just fucking machine gun the absolute fuck out of these Russians. And like, I kid you not.

• 1:32:43Speaker 03

  They, their, their reaction was just like a deer in the headlights. The BMPs tried to like turn around on the road. And like we were hitting them, which like it was just a clusterfuck. They didn't know, they didn't have a clue what the fuck to do. Not once did our building get targeted in nine days by anything direct. We had a sniper. That took some shots at us when we were being pretty stupid and like. Full on silhouetting ourselves and like, like standing directly in the building like I am right now, like. Torso on up, just being retards. But otherwise, not once did we get hit with a, a tank shell, not once with artillery. Uh, we had a Ukrainian tank shoot at us on, on accident. Um.

• 1:33:23Speaker 03

  And actually, at one point, we didn't realize this, but the Russians had gotten where we initially got dropped off. The Russians actually took that spot and then they took a part north of us from the Georgian legion. And so like at one point, at one point, the Ukrainians in the tree line behind us, like five, six hundred years away, literally thought we were dead. And we had left some guys in a trench behind us as well. And some of the non-Sov guys, we didn't know this at the time, but a lot of them had abandoned their position when they thought we were overran. Um, and there were some Americans, I'm not gonna name names because like both, both the Americans that fled at that initial battle ended up coming back to Ukraine later.

• 1:34:07Speaker 03

  And they redeemed themselves in combat, but like there was some other foreigners that, uh, you know, just left us without trying to support us. Uh, Canada, Britain, like, like, you know, just guys that were like, not ready for, you know, not ready to die type deal. Uh, and like, once we, we found that out after the fact, once we had gotten out of Moshe and back to the hotel. And, uh, you know, the Ukrainians like, we're gonna bring them back and they'll continue to fight. And it was basically like, if you bring the guys that deserted us in combat back here, we'll proba- we'll probably shoot them ourselves. Cause like, you know, they, they were our, they were basically our flank. They, they were supposed to like, prevent us from getting, you know, attacked from behind.

• 1:34:52Speaker 03

  And for like, apparently a whole day, there was just nobody behind us. Like, it was just, there was nothing, other than the tanks in the tree lines, you know, two kilometers back that they'd call up for support, there was just nobody there. Um, luckily Ukrainians had backfilled where the foreigners fucked off out of. And some of the foreigners, believe it or not, the two civilians that we took in, never left the position. They were the only ones that really stuck it out there. Uh, so that was interesting. Um, and I think one of them's still fighting here, so. But yeah, we did, we fought Moshe and like, none of us got killed. Nobody got severely injured. Everyone got fucking frostbite. Um.

• 1:35:38Speaker 03

  Like I remember when we, when we were pulling out, we pulled back to the trench line. And it, it got to the point where it was so cold. All I had was a sweatshirt like this on. And like, I found a big ass like wood Soviet era ammo box and I literally crawled inside of it and shut the fucking lid. And when, when we, when we were getting ready to pull out in the morning, one of the guys was doing a head count and they're like, where the fuck is Ryan? Where the fuck is Ryan? And I like opened this ammo crate and they're like, dude, what the fuck's wrong with you? I was like, man, I was freezing. Like, it's whatever. Um, so then we actually had to run through artillery fire to get back out. And at that point, none of the, none of the, none of the, the guys that stuck around and actually fought,

• 1:36:24Speaker 03

  none of them were like, okay, fuck this, we're leaving. You know, they were, they were like, it was still good. Like we still had, you know, like we did some good work. We killed a lot of fucking Russians. Um, so we get back to the hotel and at that point they had brought a bunch more foreigners in. Um, the foreigners that came after us were, I would say less professional minded and disciplined than what should have been there. Uh, some of them had broken into a bar and were drinking already. One of them like ended their rifle in a fucking hotel. Like there was literally issues from the get go.

• 1:37:05Speaker 03

  Um, so like our more senior leadership for the like, senior leadership being like guys who had the most time in service. Cause it was basically like, okay, you know, you were National Guard. So like, you're not gonna be the one in charge. Um, I was a former Navy SEAL. I'll do like the mission planning. And then you were like a former master sergeant. So you're gonna take the actual control. So like we, we differentiated like the rules out predominantly, it was almost fluid. Like nobody really said, hey, I want to be in charge or I want to be in charge. It just like fell naturally on certain people. Um, the guys that were like the, the commanders of it, basically went to the, went to the Ukrainians were like, hey,

• 1:37:49Speaker 03

  we don't want to be with these fuckers. Like put us back out on an operation. So the next day we went to Irpin. Um, and Irpin was probably.

• 1:38:00Speaker 03

  More of a force on force fight as far as like, you know, go into this town and we're going to, you know, like full on assault Russian positions.

• 1:38:12Jack Murphy?

  That's the area where the Russians committed like all kinds of heinous war crimes, right?

• 1:38:18Speaker 03

  So that was, they, they tried, they did some in Erpin, but like Bucha and, um, another village like more west of that is where they did a lot of that. Erpin was where the Russians got bogged down in like one of the larger cities. So Erpin's here, then you have Bucha that's like up here. They managed to get inside of Bucha and some of these outlying areas and they were pushing into Erpin. Um, I think when we got to Erpin, the Russians had taken, maybe like a third of it, or it might've been like half of it. Um, and basically at that point, the Ukrainians were like, we're not sure what block the Russians are on. We know they're in this direction.

• 1:38:59Speaker 03

  Here's what we're gonna do. You guys are gonna take your squad. You're gonna go down these roads. And you know, you're gonna find the Russians and you're gonna engage the Russians. Um, so we walk in, initially we walk through this fucking field and then there's that blown up bridge that you see at the start. Going to Erpin, we walk across like a little wood plank they put down it. All the vehicles are still like on the road. Um, some of them are blown up, most of them aren't. So we get to this little lodge area. It was like a, like a little resort right outside of Erpin. They're like, okay, um, you're gonna follow us in. Like, we didn't have a map. Nobody had a map. Nobody had, like, we had some guys with ATAC, but like,

• 1:39:40Speaker 03

  the Ukrainians didn't do routes on ATAC. It was just basically like, look, we're gonna go down this road. We'll take our first left and then our first right and then we'll, you know, decide what happens from that, or we'll get shot at, you know, figure it out. And then it was like, we'll also maybe, find out where the other Ukrainian units are because like there's Ukrainians like all over Erpin that were fighting. But it was like a decentralized fight because again, a lot of, the initial fighting in Ukraine was done by civilians. Either veterans of the, you know, the Donbass War, the ATO from 2014 and they had gotten out. Or it was literally just civilians that wanted to fight the Russians. And there was like a really,

• 1:40:23Speaker 03

  Lack of coordination and command at like the, the, the tactical level and movement of troops. So our first, our first day in Arpin, we ended up linking up with a bunch of other Ukrainians. This was like actual guys in uniform. And they were like, hey, uh, up in front of us is one of the main parks of Arpin. In that park, the Russians have dug, uh, BMPs somewhere on the backside of it. There's like a headquarters there, uh, you know, be careful if you go into the area. Uh, for us, that was more of a, hey, let's see if we can, uh, basically assault a battalion sized element with 12 people.

• 1:41:08Speaker 03

  And like try to get the jump on them because like from our fighting in Mushun, we understood that like close quarters combat, like they were, the Russians were just not even on a, on a, on any close level. Uh, so if we could get the initiative and keep the initiative going, like we would be, we'd be fine attacking a much larger, larger force. Um, the problem with our thought process was we thought they were on the other side of the park. So we thought we could maneuver through, you know, the trees and the, the park and like get in close to them. Um, what we didn't realize is the Russians were in the middle of the park.

• 1:41:49Speaker 03

  So we went up there and we sat down myself. I took, uh, two guys with me because I had the PKM. One guy had like a thousand rounds in his backpack. The other guy was carrying rockets and a rifle. And we get near this little hot dog stand hut. And basically I'm like, okay, I'm set. You guys can move in. I can cover you. You know, if something happens, I'll lay down fire. Don't run back to the right. Like they were coming in, I'm like right here. And they came in through the front gate on the right side. I was like, look, if you guys make contact after you cross past me, don't come back to the right. I'm just going to unload and hopefully, you know, hopefully they shift fire towards me versus you guys. So you can run and you guys should go to the left side. Um, and basically these, our guys got.

• 1:42:35Speaker 03

  Like halfway into the park and just got fucking like next thing you know is like just hell on earth unleashed like there's Uh thirty mils from BMPs you know going off you have machine guns you have dish go like heavy machine guns And like I'm like holy fuck those guys are all fucking dead um so I'm looking to see if I can see where they went because they got into like the trees And you can't really see anything because they're thick trees I'm like fuck fuck fuck luckily My aid gunner is looking left um down the road because there was no Ukrainians down there so he's like our left left flank And I was like look if you see anyone come out let me know do not shoot them right away it could be friendly

• 1:43:18Speaker 03

  Luckily the four guys that entered this park were able to not somehow didn't get hit at all um the sniper Had to drop his bag and leave it so like we lost a rifle but like none of the guys got hit um so Where we were at you have the park you have the road that runs along the park and then you had a a parking area that dropped down And then you had where the apartments were so I look at my two guys I'm like hey we're gonna fall back to this overhang so we have like full body coverage So I let loose a burst those guys run back once they get set I then run back as well at that point

• 1:43:59Speaker 03

  The guys that got ambushed in the park are coming around and they they're like three hundred meters to the left of me They jumped out on the same like park embankment and as they're running up I'm like hey you know Stop let me you know do some cover and this is all on video like I have this whole video it's fucking nuts um I'll I'll try to send it to you like it's fucking ridiculous Uh you can see me fucking around for like three minutes trying to prepare a rocket because I couldn't figure out um

• 1:44:29Speaker 03

  Like, didn't do very good, you know, PCI's, PCE's, I couldn't figure out how to take the safety off of a certain rocket like a fucking retard. And at the time, I was too dumb to read the fucking pictures on this like, it's like the M72 law, like if you actually turn it over, it says, hey, you know, there's in here, pull it like, there's a little stick figure guy pulling a pin out. And I spent like four minutes trying to fuck with this rocket as these guys are getting shot at. Before we had fallen back, cause I was just gonna lob it into the park. And like, I couldn't figure it out. So I was like, oh, fuck this Soviet shit. Just just checked it on the ground and gave up, but like, um, always check your safeties. But so anyway, the guys get to me and like for them to get back outside of the kill zone.

• 1:45:13Speaker 03

  They have to run through maybe like a 20 meter road to then get behind this other apartment complex. And at this point, there's BMPs cracking rounds over our head, uh, machine gun fire, some grenades are getting thrown. And I look at the guys, I was like, look, I'll provide you cover fire. But when you get back to that position, somebody needs to shoot down the road. So then I can come back. And what ended up happening is I laid down cover fire and then for some reason, the Ukrainian command had thought I like, there was an explosion that went off in front where I was.

• 1:45:51Speaker 03

  And the Ukrainian command thought I was dead. So they were like, and there's a video of this as well, where like one of the guys like Ryan's still back there, Ryan's still back there. And the Ukrainian commander's like, he's dead, let him be. And I was like, so I got left. I got left behind in combat. It was me and a fucking Ukrainian and this Ukrainian had like the oldest bolt action rifle I've ever seen. And so like,

• 1:46:17Speaker 03

  you know, we're just trading some rounds with the Russians. I'm like, well, fuck, they left me, we're screwed. So at one point I just like sit down behind this wall and start smoking cigarettes as the BMP is shooting over top of me. And like they're throwing grenades and shit. And I look at the Ukraine and I was like, oh, what do we do? Do we go through the building? Cause like there's an apartment complex like 10 meters in front of us. And he was like, no, the door is probably locked. I'm like, oh, fuck. So like, like, we're basically stuck here. What ended up happening is we decided to basically shoot a bunch of rounds and then we would crawl our way along this embankment to get to the next block. And then hopefully there wasn't Russians there to where we could run behind

• 1:46:58Speaker 03

  it. So we, we got to the, to the end of this, this parking thing. And I'm like, man, we're gonna get fucking smoked on this run. And mind you, I don't, I don't really run. Uh, if you ask any of my other guys, I'm like, I fucking, I, I despise running. Like, I.

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• 1:47:31Speaker 05

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• 1:49:10Speaker 03

  I hate it to the point where I typically won't do it. Like if it's a small sprint, I'll do it, but I'm not quick on it. Obviously, I'm fat now too, because I do more of the drone stuff. But at the time, I was smoking like a pack and a half of cigarettes. So like a 25, 50 meter sprint for me is like, like, like, you know, the thing when there's a, if there's a bear chasing you, don't be the slowest guy. I was the slowest fucking, I was definitely gonna be the slowest guy on this. So I'm thinking like-

• 1:49:39Jack Murphy?

  Very dangerous over short distances.

• 1:49:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, like I'm thinking like when this Ukrainian, this Ukrainian's like 145 pounds soaking wet. Like you can tell he's like, I'm like, I'm gonna get, like, he's gonna take off. We're gonna both take off running.

• 1:49:55Speaker 03

  And I'm gonna be the one that's in the middle of the road as he makes it to this apartment. I'm like, I'm so fucked. Luckily, we both sprint and we get like just around the corner. And there's some Ukrainians there. We scared them, they scared us. And once they realized that we were Ukrainians, like, we were, we thought we were somewhat safe. We stopped and we're smoking at the edge of these, you know, like, like if this is the corner, we're like 10 meters set back from it. So like, we can't get hit directly and the Ukrainians are on the other side of the street. And what ended up happening is we're sitting there talking and a BMP somehow managed to shoot down the edge of this road. They hit the edge of this building with like the, the wall with a 30mm and just smashed

• 1:50:39Speaker 03

  this dude's face off, like just obliterated it. And I was like, fuck. So we all ended up leaving the Ukrainians. We drug this, you know, dead Ukrainian on the backside of the building. And then they were like, we'll come back and get him. Let's go regroup. So now it's myself and a bunch, a bunch of Ukrainians that don't speak English. I'm wandering around Urpene for like an hour and a half, wondering what the fuck we're doing. And at one point, we go through this backyard and all of a sudden, over the wall hops one of my guys. I'm like, what the fuck? And they're like, dude, you're alive. And then another guy hops over and I'm like, where the fuck have you guys been? They had gotten stuck on the other part of the town, like four blocks away. They weren't able to come back.

• 1:51:24Speaker 03

  Um, another foreign team had got bogged down in an apartment complex. But yeah, they're like, dude, we thought you died. And I was like, no, you, you basically left me. But, um, and like, it's what it is. I also got left on position in Mosheun. So that was like the second time I got left behind, but not on purpose. It happens. Um, so we fought there for a few more days. And at that point, one of the Ukrainians that I had hooked up with at the start of the invasion, uh, his name's Ivan. He was killed in, uh, Severodonetsk. Um, he was with a group called Arrow Rizvidka. And he was messaging me on Signal saying, hey, leave the Legion and like, join us. We're, we're doing operations in the woods near Ivan Kiv.

• 1:52:09Speaker 03

  Ivan Kiv at that point was under Russian control. It's that highway of death where they got stuck at. But what the Ukrainians had done is they went through the old logging forest and got behind them. And we're using drones to like hit the, hit the Russians on the road. So I was like, fuck, that sounds sweet. I don't have to deal with dumb foreigners back at the hotel. Like my guys were, the guys I were with were, were good. But like some of these other foreigners that were coming in were just like, not the type you wanted to go to combat with. So I ended up leaving. I told my commander, I'm like, hey, I'm, you know, I'm, I'm gonna go with these guys. And he was like, no, you're not. I was like, yeah, I'm gonna go with them. And like, so they showed up and I just like, I left my weapon at the hotel.

• 1:52:50Speaker 03

  And then I just like literally hopped in this vehicle and we ended up over in like northwestern Ukraine, up in a place called, uh, Bazar. And basically we're going through the forest up towards like the exclusion zone. You know, bombing Russians with drones. Um, it was, the first month in Ukraine was interesting to say the least.

• 1:53:15Jack Murphy?

  Yeah. Um, and how, how did, that, that's still kind of like, I guess, the early days of how this all evolved. Um, what, what were those operations like? And how were they using drones at that time?

• 1:53:30Speaker 03

  So, so when I was in Iraq, we had, so people need to understand drones were used in the fight against ISIS. You know ISIS wasn't doing like dropper, like bomber drones, they weren't doing a lot of kamikaze, but they would throw up these like cheap Chinese things uh at the front lines, especially near like Mosul, Telskov, Telfar. And basically, they would use them for ISR and then they'd try to lob mortars at the forces. Um, so like drones weren't new to me, but how the Ukrainians were doing it was definitely new. Um, you know, I had never seen how they put the little grenade on the DJI.

• 1:54:09Speaker 03

  Um, and like, at that point, I started learning, like, okay, cool, like, and like, this is, this is all, this is all like pre-integrated system. So like, what you would have is you'd have your Ukrainian with like the DJI controller, and they would be piloting it, and you'd have a guy on the radio overlooking the shoulder, you know, saying, hey, you know, radioing to the other Ukrainian units, saying, hey, this is where they're at. You know, nobody had your flip-down phone, you know, where you can view your drone streams. It was all over a radio comms, and you had to be pretty confident that the Ukrainian guy on the other line was like on the, with the drone,

• 1:54:52Speaker 03

  was giving the right directions, because otherwise, you know, he's gonna lead you directly into a Russian ambush, and you're fucked. Um, it was pretty, it wa- it wa- it was, it was pretty basic compared to now, but for me, seeing it for the first time, I was just like, holy fuck, like, you can, you can drop a grenade on somebody from eight kilometers away. I was like, what in the fuck is this? And it was accurate, like, the, the ArrozVitka guys had started doing drone, like DJI drone stuff, I think in 2016, I think is when they were initially formed, maybe 2015. And they had been like early adopters of utilizing drones as much as possible.

• 1:55:36Speaker 03

  It never really took on in the Ukrainian side initially, because they were like, oh, this is like... It's not a military thing. It's uh, you know, you're using a commercial drone. Cool. You can see stuff. But like, we don't need that. We have forward observers or you know, like, it wasn't. It it wasn't fully recognized by the Ukrainians on why this needed, why it was needed. They were like drones are like these big Q nine Reaper systems. It's not like. Everyone at the squad level should have an ISR drone. Um, and then they also had, so that was the first, so we had gotten some forty millimeter rounds. And I met one of the engineers and they're like, hey, like, do you know how to take this apart?

• 1:56:19Speaker 03

  And I was like, like, we don't take apart munitions in the US military. It's like not allowed. So I I kid you not, I I watched these guys get on. Uh, Google and they found a forty millimeter. Uh, like patent that showed like the whole system as it was like assemble. And then they also Googled like a forty millimeter, like your M three twenty. They also Googled, or it was the Mark nineteen round, or no, it was the M three twenties. But they also, no, excuse me, it was Mark nineteen at that time. They also Googled. Like a photo cutaway of it. So like. These engineers were basically like, okay, so we can cut into the bottom of this.

• 1:57:04Speaker 03

  Explosive and it shouldn't blow up on us. And then, once we cut into it, we can then, you know, pipe wrench it apart and try to figure out how the safety works. So I I kid you not, the first people that started dropping forty mil frag grenades. Were this Erasvitka group. And they did it. They learned how to do it by looking at like a Google image where the munitions cut in half. And like a fucking patent from nineteen sixty two or something. And like, that's how they learned. And they did it in a room with like seven or eight other people. Like, it wasn't like. There was no safety on it. There was no like any of this. And like, once they figured it out, they're like, okay, cool. So they showed me how to do it and then I started doing it for them.

• 1:57:47Speaker 03

  But like, then they they brought up, um, it's called a R eighteen, which was like the very first. It's basically an agricultural drone that they had modified to drop mortars. Or large explosives from, so like. I went from like seeing DJIs being used and now it's like, hey, look at this, we're gonna drop a mortar, like an eighty-one mortar on these guys from like eight kilometers away. They're not gonna fucking expect it. We can like do whatever the hell we want repeatedly. And like my mind at that point was like, holy fuck, drones are sweet. Um sadly, so I did that probably till

• 1:58:31Speaker 03

  probably till April timeframe. And then I went and rejoined a group of the Legion guys, my old group. Um because like at the time I thought drones were cool, but I was also like, I'm here to shoot people in the face. Like I don't wanna stare at a screen. I wanna go, I wanna go do direct action, you know, I wanna, I wanna go do assaults, recon by fire. So I went back and joined my unit and we did some more operations around the Kiev area. Um and then we ended up down in Mykolaiv. Um and in Mykolaiv, the Russians were near Ochikiv. They hadn't gotten pushed back out of like the Kursan region yet.

• 1:59:13Speaker 03

  So a lot of our operations down there was like, hey, here's a javelin. We're gonna drop you off in this village. You guys will move two or three kilometers forward, find the Russian armor, and then smoke the shit out of it with javelins. Um we did that quite effectively, quite often. Um and then at some point, it went from, okay, you're, you're doing, you know, destroying armor, like what do you guys think about boat operations? And obviously, the Navy SEAL guy with us was like, this is what I trained my whole, my whole life to do. This is what I do.

• 1:59:54Speaker 03

  And like we had a South Korean Marine or former soft guy too. And so everyone was like, yeah, we could do boat operations. So the goal was basically. Um, to get on these rapid inflated like a rib. And basically we would drive the boat. Or pilot the boat from. Our area. Uh, southwest of Mikoliv on the coast. We were gonna take a boat all the way over into Kursan. And then like further south of Kursan and basically do like sabotage operations. Um.

• 2:00:34Speaker 03

  I. The operations, once we got to land was amazing. Um.

• 2:00:42Speaker 03

  The boat side of things, I will never do a boat operation again in my life. Uh, absolutely fucking terrible. Like you like.

• 2:00:53Speaker 03

  I was never naval anything. So like I always, you know, you like, you see the movies and you're like, you see the guys driving up quick in the boats and they hop off and blah, blah, blah, shoot people. And like, it looks cool. And like, even in like the recruitment videos, it looks cool. But. Driving a rib or being on a rib going through a fucking. Dude, yeah, yeah, like it's. Up and down like it was fucking terrible. It's cold. You you get wet, like you can't stay dry. So like by the time we got to the fucking shoreline and it's like a six hour fucking boat ride across the Black Sea, you know? Like number one, like I was like, oh, well, it'll be like an hour boat ride because the boats are quick and. You know, it'll be, it'll be nothing. It'll be fine.

• 2:01:39Speaker 03

  It was. The worst experience of my life to be called. Like, I don't know why anyone wants to be a Navy SEAL. Quite honestly, like. Like any, any, dealing anything with combat water and driving a fucking inflated boat across. An ocean, let alone a sea or something like. I I honestly do not understand.

• 2:02:00Speaker 03

  Understand why anyone would volunteer for that.

• 2:02:02Jack Murphy?

  What were those, what were those ops like through like infiltrations? It's like behind enemy lines type stuff.

• 2:02:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, so like Ukraine had, I don't, I don't know what you want to call them, like they had like stay behinders, like people who literally.

• 2:02:16Jack Murphy?

  Partisans.

• 2:02:17Speaker 03

  Either got, got, yeah, so like, and like initially, I don't think it was like, hey, we're partisans, we volunteer to stay behind. I honestly. Like the Ukrainians make it sound that way, but like in the early days of the war, it was more of. We were unable to get the fuck out of the area before the Russians took over. We're now hiding and we're working with like our local families while we hide. Like they'll go out at night or when they think it's clear and then they'll say, hey, you know, Russians are moving into this area. There's artillery over here. But it wasn't, I, I, I, there might've been some like partisan, stay behind soft guys at the very start. But I think a lot of it in Kursan, um.

• 2:03:00Speaker 03

  And some of these other areas, it was more of a, the Russians got in there so quick. Because the lines collapsed in certain parts so quick that. It was like just the guys were stuck there. They still wanted to fight. They knew that if they surrendered. They would get, you know, more than likely disappeared or they would never see their family again. So it was like, okay, they'll fight. Um, so we got a lot of good intelligence and like, there's still some of these areas that it happens in, um. It's, it's less, it's less likely to see it in areas now though, because like when the Russians, when the front lines move. Every village that was where that frontline was is pretty much destroyed.

• 2:03:43Speaker 03

  At the start of the war, Russians were able to get into some areas. Where like your infrastructure is still in place. So you still, if, if you didn't have running water. You had electricity still, you still had cell coverage usually, like it wasn't, it wasn't like a fucking wasteland, um, because there was no like. High intensity fighting. But like these operations was basically the Ukrainians, we partnered with um some Ukrainian soft guys. Uh from like the seventy third naval regiment. It was basically, hey, we're gonna take this bigger boat. And then we're gonna go over to this area. We need you guys to get on these inflated boats and we'll tow you out like. A col- like a half a kilometer, then from there you gotta drive yourself cuz.

• 2:04:28Speaker 03

  We're not gonna go that way. Um. And then basically they're like, you need to go, you'll land at this point, somebody said it was clear here, there's no mines. There's no Russians within. You know, two kilometers, but you need to be quiet, you need to be quick and you need to get into cover once you land. Um and like basically the Navy SEAL guys. So like the the Navy SEAL and then the Korean SEAL basically did the whole op order planning for it. Uh they briefed us on roughly how it would look. Um. Didn't really tell us how fucked the boat rides would be, but like I don't blame them for that cuz we probably have been like, get fucked, we're not doing that. Um but like, we we tried to plan it as much as possible internally.

• 2:05:11Speaker 03

  But like the Ukrainian side was basically like, here's your objective. Just go fucking do it, radio when you're done and we'll come pick you up, you know, or message on signal when you're done. Um. Initially, it was like a twenty kilometer movement that they wanted us to cover, I think. It was basically get dropped off on this western shore. And then you're gonna do a patrol all the way through this part of the area to this village, and then when you get to the village. You'll see, you know, estimate how many Russians are there. If there's. If you estimate that you can take it, take the village, you know, kill the Russians, take it over. And then either leave or we'll send more guys in. Um. We never got to that point.

• 2:05:56Speaker 03

  Uh this is. Uh so I think this was actually in May, maybe, maybe it might have been June when we started these actually. But um the Ukrainians didn't tell us, this peninsula. Is apparently like, so Kursa and especially near the Black Sea and then some other parts of. Crimea is basically like.

• 2:06:18Speaker 03

  The mosquito haven of Ukraine. So it's like, you know how everyone jokes in Minnesota, how the mosquitoes are like.

• 2:06:24Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:06:24Speaker 03

  The size of birds. So they dropped us on this, in this fucking area and I kid you not, there's like swamps around and like. It's just. Fucking miserable. If you dig, you you dig into water because again, it's like. It's it's like below the water table in certain areas. So like we're, you can't really dig in anywhere. There's mosquitoes everywhere. We actually had to. Literally, one of our medics had to keep giving guy like injections of Benadryl because he's swallowed up so much mosquitoes. I didn't find it that much of an issue. But like.

• 2:07:00Speaker 03

  I just have a high tolerance for. Living in the shit, I guess. Af- after being in Iraq for like four and a half years, it takes a lot to really be like. This is a shitty living situation. Like, I mean, we lived in a tent on top of a fucking mountain range, like. Nothing gets worse than that. And like. So like. I didn't really care about the mosquitoes too much. I cared more that that boat ride was horrendous and I was fucking wet. Like, I didn't pack an extra uniform. I didn't pack, I I packed like two pairs of socks and then a lot of guys loaded up with like M R Es. I had like.

• 2:07:36Speaker 03

  I packed meat and cheese, which I was happy about, but like. Nobody was like, hey, you should try to like wrap a. Wrap an extra set of uniform in like plastic bag or something because you're gonna get fucking soaked. So like. I'm all pissed off because I'm soaked in saltwater. Nothing's drying out because it's fucking summer and it's humid. So like, I was not in a very good mood. So like mosquitoes were the least of my problems. So we got there and then we started doing night movements and it quickly became. Apparent that some people.

• 2:08:14Speaker 03

  Like the non-soft guys that we had with us were just eating a bag of dicks. Um, some guys. Were like misestimated the amount of water they that they needed. Like I brought.

• 2:08:29Speaker 03

  I brought like three liters. That's usually my loadout any anytime I go, whether it's seven day operation or two days, like I just bring three, three liters of water. If I need more, I'll figure it out, dig a hole, drink that, whatever. Um, I wasn't having too much of an issue with it. I had more of an issue that, again, I was, I was fucking wet and miserable, but like, we had, we had some guys that were like running out of water really quick. So we got, our first night movement, I think we got like four or five kilometers in and like the SEAL guy and the soft guys were like, all right, we have got to get a resupply, otherwise like, otherwise we're fucked. So luckily the Ukrainians, they, they organized a resupply.

• 2:09:12Speaker 03

  And, uh, one of the Navy SEAL, the Navy SEAL guy Dan basically scouted, like, him and one other fucking guy went and scouted like three kilometers of shoreline. Found a good shoreline where like, the boat can basically, they can cut their engine and they can drift in, so they don't alert. Cause like if you, if you drive your boat all the way up, you can hear a boat engine for quite a ways on the shoreline. So, they had found like a little alcove to where the boat can get in, they can offload supplies and then he was able to like walk the boat back out to a far enough point to where then like, they could either row and get out past the waves, or they could start their engine. But like,

• 2:09:53Speaker 03

  if we wouldn't have had, if we wouldn't have had those guys, we probably would have been fucked. Like, I mean, it was just a shit show, but, um, so we got resupplied, we buried the extra food and water, which is probably still buried somewhere on that fucking beach. Um, and then we, we continue on. So, the second night, we had some more issues with guys and some physical fitness. Um, I was sucking ass because like, I was still wet and like getting rash, like, I mean, like you can't dry your boots. I was wearing like, at that point, I still had like your thick ass leather boot, like the ones that they don't dry out ever. And so like, my feet are fucked. Um, I was being a little whiny bitch.

• 2:10:39Speaker 03

  Some other guys are being whiny bitches. So we we found a wood line. And again, nobody has night vision and nobody's gonna turn a fucking light on. So we we camp out in this wood line just make, you know, a three sixty, everything. The sun starts coming up in the morning and um I think I actually sent you some of the photos of these. If not, I can send you some. But funny enough, we ended up camping out in a Russian position. Luckily, there were no Russians there, but like it's where they had. You could tell where they they they dug the positions to like hold down your BMPs. There was fighting positions for infantry.

• 2:11:19Speaker 03

  And like none of us in the night time stumbled into any of these positions. We just like literally camped out in the middle of this like. Brigade sized, like there was fucking hundreds of fighting positions in this area. And like we just camped out there. Nobody realized it. Luckily, there were no Russians there. Um. Otherwise, we probably died. So we ended up um. Going to one of these uh villages. We spotted some Russian infantry and some Russian military. So I had brought explosives with me. Um, as well as like a battery, electrical wire. So we basically made some IEDs. Uh, buried them out in this road and then we set up an ambush. Uh, we did, we waited there for.

• 2:12:05Speaker 03

  We waited in this spot for like ten hours. We're like, yeah, we're gonna fuck these guys up. And not a single Russian drove down that goddamn fucking road. Um, we didn't, we got, we got. There was, there was some Ukrainians that got engaged a little bit away from us. Uh, they took some captives, but like. Our team. Didn't get fired at. We didn't have a chance to shoot at anyone. And this is like a seven day operation. So we get back to these boats or to like the drop off point. Or the exfil point. And like, guys are pretty pissed off at this point because we did all this, didn't get to shoot anyone. Didn't even get engaged. Like we had artillery and like grab rockets.

• 2:12:51Speaker 03

  But like, it was nothing. It was nothing to write home about. Like when we started this, a majority of us had never done boat operations. Like fuck yeah, this is like, this is gonna be the best thing in the world. We're gonna finally get a experience amphibious landing. And like, it was, it was not what we expected. Um, and so like, we're getting, we're, we're getting ax-filled. Our morale is pretty fucked. We throw everything in these boats. And uh, we start leaving to go back to our shore. Um, and maybe like an hour after driving the boats into the Black Sea, we start running into problems. Um.

• 2:13:34Speaker 03

  The Ukrainians that came to pick us up in their

• 2:13:39Speaker 03

  lovely infinite wisdom or accidental fuckery. Uh, when we loaded back up everything, one of them had pulled the bilge plug out of one of the boats. So in the middle of the Black Sea, we have a boat filling with water. Nobody can figure out why. It's pitch black. There's no night vision. Um, and like, what I mean filling with water, like if you're sitting down in the river, it was like up to your knees, like it was sinking. Um, and I think at this point, we're like four kilometers from the Ukrainian shore and now we're drifting back towards the Russians. So we're like, okay, well, or well, we weren't drifting back yet. So we're like, okay, we'll be able to make it to shore.

• 2:14:21Speaker 03

  Because the boat shouldn't fully sink. It'll just be an extremely, you know, painful next hour and a half because we're gonna be really wet. Um, and then we ran into a problem with our other boat. The boat that wasn't sinking ran out of fuel. Uh, when the Ukrainians left, they didn't fill up the fuel in one of the boats. So they drove a boat that was like half full of fuel. So now we have one boat out of fuel, one boat half sinking.

• 2:14:52Speaker 03

  It's just a clusterfuck. So we, the, the SEAL guy gets, we, we like pull up to the other boat, the SEAL guy driving it. And then like they do their little knot thing. So the boats are like sandwiched together tight. And like, they're like, okay, let's try to radio for help or we'll, we'll try to get them on signal. Uh, they're looking, trying to figure out where we're at in the big ass sea. And then the Ukrainians on the shoreline are like, we can't come get you. Figure it out while we try to unfuck things to get a boat out to you. So at one point, and like at this point, the one rib that was filling with water, it was actually like.

• 2:15:34Speaker 03

  Probably it was it was started, we had so much shit in there and we had like ten people in it, like it was overloaded. So then we started throwing stuff out of the boat into the water to lighten the load. Uh, like, like the, um, uh, N laws we had with us and some of the other rockets. And then we had guys ditching their gear into the other boat just to try to get it back up higher. And at one point, like, one of the guys in the boat is like. So scared that he's gonna drown that he's like having panic attacks. Um, the Navy SEAL guy SEAL Dan was like, hey, man, if we stripped out our kit, we can swim to shore.

• 2:16:16Speaker 03

  And like, everyone's like, that's not a bad idea. But then somebody asked him, he's like, what they were like. What's your longest combat swim or like, what's your longest swim ever, whatever? And I don't remember what he said, it was like two kilometers or something, but it was like much shorter than where we're at. And like, I look over at one of the other guys, uh, is Dakota. I look at Dakota, I was like, man, I'm not gonna be able to swim a hundred meters, let alone. You know, four or whatever kilometers we were, I was like, look, I will just sit on this boat and if we sink, we sink. If we get to the Russian shoreline, cause I'm I'm thinking like, if everyone jumps off this boat and starts swimming. You know, the boat will come back up a little bit, cause there's no weight on it and ribs are not supposed to sink, right?

• 2:17:01Speaker 03

  So I was like, go ahead, you guys can jump off and fuck off to the shoreline. I'll drift my ass to the Russian shoreline and we'll figure it out from there. Um. I would say we were probably within minutes from guys doing that and like the Navy SEAL guy is like, oh, guys, this is no problem. Like, we could do this, like, just follow me. And I'm like, fuck, man, you're psychotic, like. I I I I absolutely hate boat operations. Like at that point in my life, I was just like, we are so fucked. Like, this guy's nuts. He'll be the only survivor. Everyone, everyone else of us is either gonna end up on the Russian shoreline fighting

• 2:17:41Speaker 03

  or drowning in seawater. And like, the SEAL guy, I'm not joking, like, when I say he was pumped to actually attempt this, he was like, full on, like, I can fucking do this, you guys can fucking do this. You know, he wasn't saying like, yeah, you're fat, you're gonna fail. Or like, you don't know how to swim, so you're gonna die. I was like, oh, we'll all make it, guys. And I'm like, man, like, we're not gonna make that. Like, sorry, like, you're positive because, like, again, you're psychotic, and you're like, you're good at this. But none of us, I don't think I've ever swam a kilometer in my life straight, honestly. Like, I've swam in, like, a pool, you know, which

• 2:18:16Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:18:18Speaker 03

  Twenty-five meters, or what's an Olympic pool, fifty meters? And like, this guy's like, you can swim four kilometers in like, a cold water environment at night. And it was like, after doing seven days of being a complete shitshow and being tired, I was like, I'm not gonna do that. But luckily, right as I think our SEAL guy was gonna talk us into this, um, the Ukrainian that was with us got word from the command that they were sending a boat out. And so now the whole argument was, how is the Ukrainians going to find us? And it was like, okay, when we hear an engine, we'll start yelling. Because nobody wanted to white light in the middle of the, in the Black Sea

• 2:19:03Speaker 03

  in case there's, you know, whatever drones that were close to a shoreline, so he was gonna shoot at us. Um, the boat got close to us, we're yelling, they can't figure out where we are. So at one point, uh, so on this operation, I brought out uh, twelve RPGs, uh, RPG tube and a pistol. I didn't bring a rifle, I was like, I didn't wanna carry a rifle, I was like, I'm just gonna shoot RPGs and shit, and if I need to, I have a pistol. So

• 2:19:35Speaker 03

  the boat that we're yelling at can't figure out where we are. So I was like, I got an idea. So I pull out my little Makarov, and I just like, started shooting it up in the air.

• 2:19:45Speaker 03

  And luckily, they ended up getting to us. Um, but like, we had to get, they, they also forgot fuel. So the one boat that had fuel, so they, they, the one boat that had fuel, we offloaded the fuel into the non-sinking boat. That was out of fuel. And then we got fucking towed all the way back in on like a half sunk boat. Like it was, it was the only time I will ever get on a boat for any type of operation ever again. I, it was, again, I don't know, I don't know what drives people to be Navy SEALs, but like, all the props in the world, never again, no.

• 2:20:27Jack Murphy?

  You were pretty much done with MAROPs after that.

• 2:20:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, like, I, like, my whole infatuation with like amphibious landings and sneaky boat operations pretty much died that night. Like I, never again. Actually, I haven't been on a boat since, to be quite honest. Like I, I don't, I don't even, I don't even go swimming anymore. Like my, my Ukrainian wife, like we'll go to like a spa or something on vacation when we get a chance. And she's like, get in the water. I'm like, no, I'll sit on the fucking, I'll sit on the fucking lawn chair and, you know, watch you swim. Like I have no, I, I just have no ambition to get in fucking water anymore.

• 2:21:09Speaker 03

  Like honestly, call it PTSD, whatever, but like, I'm just, I'm good. I, I don't want, I knew, I'm, I'm not going around water anymore. Like.

• 2:21:17Jack Murphy?

  So, uh, from there, it sounds like, uh, you ingratiated yourself with the local culture and, uh, also got more into the drone side of things. What was sort of like the next couple of years like?

• 2:21:30Speaker 03

  So I ended up leaving, so.

• 2:21:35Speaker 03

  So by August, so after the boat operations, I ended up leaving the Legion. Um, and my guys continued on into, like the unit I was with, continued on into uh Severodonezk. And then Bakhmut and some other stuff, whereas I transitioned over into uh back doing just like some drone stuff, to be quite honest. Um, at that point in the war, you could start to see that. It was going to, like, the Russians were still obviously pushing areas, but it was turning into more of a.

• 2:22:15Speaker 03

  A static line defense type stuff. Um, but I, I honestly, I left that unit because that boat op. I was just, they were gonna keep doing them and I was like, I am like, I'm over it. So I went back and started doing drone operations. I did drone operations. Probably till November of two thousand twenty-two, and then I ended up in Harke with some more foreigners. Um, so there was a few Swedish guys, some other Americans. And basically up there, we started uh helping out with the Harke counter offensive. Uh, we did some training with some Ukrainian units.

• 2:22:57Speaker 03

  Um, and then a, while we were up there, one of my Ukrainian friends was an officer. Uh, call signs left, was like, hey, we're starting up a assault unit, like Western maneuver warfare. You know, Humvees, uh infantry fighting vehicles, we'll do it by like the Western standard and not by the Ukrainian standard. Uh, cause at that point. In two thousand twenty-two, the Ukrainians still weren't doing, they weren't getting trained on like NATO standards. So it was like, okay, let's try it. So I ended up back in Yavri with a bunch of people. Since the first time in the war, the buildings are all blown up.

• 2:23:39Speaker 03

  So this is when um, like chosen basically, like chosen company, the unit I ran for the last.

• 2:23:47Speaker 03

  Three year, four years became a thing. Uh, we got to Yavere. There was another Swedish unit that was already there and they're like, hey, we're three, one, two. Company or team or squad. And I was like, hey, I'm Ryan. Um. And like, we basically decided like, build out. Like an infantry assault unit styled after like, you know. Um. Utilizing initiative and then like, basically pushing versus like the Ukrainian style. So at that point in time, when Ukrainians would take fire from the enemy. They would just stop and like all the, all your initiative, all your momentum. And all your advantages, they like, it, it would just dead end. And like, they wouldn't know how to like, you know.

• 2:24:33Speaker 03

  Okay, if we get shot at, your machine gun lays down fire and then you have your swooping maneuver, like your flanking maneuver. They didn't did that. They didn't, they didn't do that at that point in time. Most units. When they took contact, everyone would get on the ground. They might shoot a couple of rounds and then they would pull back or they would all try to move at once. Um, so we trained in Yavere.

• 2:24:55Speaker 03

  For a little while, some guys went and explored other areas of the frontline while some guys were in training. And then. And.

• 2:25:06Speaker 03

  I think it was March of two thousand twenty-three. Um, at that point in time, up in Chernihiv and Sumy in the north. They were having a lot of issue with Russian infiltration, like the DRG teams. So like your Russian SOF, but like. At that point in time, it was like your SOF units, your VDV and some of your, even your regular army. It wasn't all like. Spetsnaz. It was just basically there was holes. That they were able to cross into Ukrainian side. And they'd get like ten kilometers deep, they'd set up an ambush and they'd kill a bunch of Ukrainians. Um, so we got told to go up there to the north and basically see what we can do to either, you know. Prevent these or help solidify the Ukrainians to where like we can figure out why they keep getting through. Um.

• 2:25:53Speaker 03

  We linked up with, I think it was the first tank brigade or first tank battalion. Um, and like, we started helping them out. We quickly got bored of, you know, walking through forests, doing recon, like, cause at this point, we're not near the Russian border, so we're up in a place called Semenyevka. It's like twenty-five kilometers from the Russian border, ten, like twenty-minute drive. And so we're like, we're basically fucking around in these woods for no reason, cause ninety percent of the ti- ninety-eight percent of the time, no one's here. And like Ukrainians are moving around now, so. Um, like guys' attitudes are getting bad, we're trying to keep it in check, but.

• 2:26:35Speaker 03

  Uh, one day up there, a DRG team got into the Ukrainian side, ended up killing like twenty-five or thirty Ukrainians. Uh, they called in some missile strikes, killing even more, and then they ended up hitting the town of Semenyevka. Um, at that point.

• 2:26:55Speaker 03

  They, the Ukrainians, they were like, hey, can you come out and figure out, you know, like, within like an hour of this all happening? They called us and, hey, figure out where these guys are or where they went, because there's no way they crossed the border. So like, they, they had to walk in, so we went out there.

• 2:27:11Speaker 03

  Looked at all the blown-up Ukrainian vehicles, all the bodies and shit that are still laying everywhere. Uh, cause like, again, this happened like within an hour. And so like, we found the trail that they had broke through to get to like where they had set their ambush. Um, so we started looking around the area and almost stepped on a palm two landmine, because they had set some stuff out, so we couldn't follow them. Anyway, nobody got hurt there luckily, and what we ended up doing is tracking these guys all the way back to. Um, uh, the, the border, basically, like, we got within. Five hundred meters of the border before I was finally like, hey, we're stopping here. Uh, it's getting dark, number one, number two, were, like, like, in, in two thousand twenty-three.

• 2:27:59Speaker 03

  Nobody was patrolling the border on the Ukrainian side in certain areas. It was basically like they're not crossing, so we're not gonna. If you put guys within like two kilometers of the border, the Russians will just shell the shit out of it. So the Ukrainians, there was basically a giant gray area of like ten to fifteen kilometers. Once in a while Ukrainian units would go fuck around in there and then they'd come back, but nobody was really holding down like your frontal area. Um, so like we were really far out in front of the Ukrainians. So at that point, it was like, all right, we're calling it quits. Let's go back to base and then we'll pick up where we left off tomorrow. So we get back, shower, everything, build a game plan out for the next morning. Um, eight of us are gonna go on it and then we'll have a reserves team.

• 2:28:43Speaker 03

  So we ended up walking all the way to the border, uh, and I think I sent, I might not, but I'll send you a photo of it. Uh, we get to the border, there's like the Ukrainian border signs that say, hey, Russian territory. And like, it's all in Ukrainian and like, we're like, fuck, let's go get, let's go take a picture next to it like a bunch of retards.

• 2:29:03Speaker 03

  So like, instead of being like, we like, we lost all military bearing. Go up, take pictures next to these signs and then someone's like, hey, we're not getting shot at. So like, if ours, like, if no one's shooting at us, nobody's really here either on the Russian side. So at that point, um,

• 2:29:21Speaker 03

  like, the terrorism light bulb in my head sort of went off and I was like, well, let's cross the border. So, so we take all our photos and then we took some of the border signs and then like moved them into Russia a little bit. Like, haha, we, we moved the border. And then we took a couple of them back to Semenivka. Um, like, we stole some border signs, but, so then the next morning, I was like, hey, we approached our command saying, hey, we can cross the border here. Our command was like, absolutely not, you're not doing any of that. Um, the only thing we heard was, just don't tell us what you're doing. Type deal. So we formed a plan basically to cross about 10 kilometers into

• 2:30:05Speaker 03

  Briansk Oblast and set up an ambush on one of the main MSR roads. That like, because we could fly like a DJI on the border, we could see where they're moving traffic all the time. And the Russians weren't like going like north and then around. They were taking a road within 10 kilometers of the border. It's like we could, we could move through these wood lines and get to this border. Um, the Ukrainians had a map of where the Russian minefields were. So we had to clear through about a kilometer of mines on the Russian side of the border. And then, um, we would basically be scot-free in the woods to do whatever we wanted. So what we decided to do to make sure there weren't Russians is we ended up bringing, um,

• 2:30:50Speaker 03

  you know, jerrycans, like the, the ones on the vehicle.

• 2:30:53Jack Murphy?

  Gasoline, yeah.

• 2:30:54Speaker 03

  Well, we did it. Yep. So we packed in like three or four jerrycans repeatedly closer to the border, then we'd go back, sleep. And we did this for like seven days until we moved like 20 or 30 liters of diesel fuel, plus food, plus water, plus ammo, and had even dug positions at the border like, like bunkers. And what we ended up doing is basically going into the Russian territory. Um, and basically starting fires at the border. And then we would pull back and go hide in our little bunkers and wait out to see what would happen. Um, what ended up happening is the fires would, because there was no fire break

• 2:31:37Speaker 03

  and because the forests weren't managed on the border for so long, there was so much kindling and tinder. We basically lit half of like southeastern Briansk and parts of Ukraine. Like I'll send you, like we, we had a whole area that was like on fire for like a week straight. And it was like, we were walking through like the smoke and stuff. But the interesting thing was, and this wasn't something that we like planned for, but like. The minefields that the Russians had laid were new enough that when the fire went over the area, it would set off the anti-tank mines first off, but secondly, where the anti-personnel mines were, in a lot of areas it left a divot, like it sucked the earth down because it pulled the oxygen out.

• 2:32:21Speaker 03

  So it was like, aha, like we can actually like get through this minefield. So we went and grabbed, uh, I think it's a Valon minesweeper. And basically I was like, look, I'll take point. And I just basically was like walking point for like two days, marking these paths through this minefield. And what we did on the Ukrainian side, we had marked it with blue paint. And then on the Russian side, we tied ribbons. So, so like if you're facing Russia, you won't see the paint. If you're facing, if you're from Russia facing Ukraine, if you're not paying attention, you might just see some trash hanging from the trees. So we did like a left and right limits, anything in between that's clear. If you step off the path, you're probably going to blow yourself up. Um, so we cleared this minefield.

• 2:33:07Speaker 03

  Probably not like the whole minefield, but we cleared a path through probably within a day and a half. And then we went back and then we built out, we found like our little ambush spot next to the road, you know, ten kilometers deep into Russia. Um, we realized that there was literally no, no one was defending it. Like it was, it was, there was, there was, they weren't expecting anyone to cross the border and, you know, ambush a bunch of Russian infantry guys on the road or whatever. So we ended up going back to our little like base of operations area. We built out an op order. Basically what we were going to do is we would do like a,

• 2:33:48Speaker 03

  like a offensive action and then like defense retrogrades. We, we prepared multiple positions. We would prepare multiple positions. So we'd initiate the ambush, we'd fall back a hundred meters. When they would come and investigate, we would hit them again and then keep doing that all the way until we got back to the Ukrainian border. It was probably like every five hundred to a thousand meters, not like a hundred. So basically we had like seven or eight, like fallback positions where there was more ammo, more rockets. Uh, we brought a bunch of OZM mines with us, claymores. And basically the whole goal was like to see how far we could suck these idiots in repeatedly. Um, it didn't work out that way, so.

• 2:34:28Speaker 03

  We ended up, uh, the day of the, uh, the, uh, the like ambush, we brought pink spray paint with us. And once we would, after we would cross each blue mark on each tree line that we did, or each thing, on the Russian side, we would spray paint hot pink. So that way, when we're retreating back, instead of looking for ribbons in different areas, it's like eye level, you see two hot pink lines stay between it. Number one, number two, the other thing was every so often, we would have the OZM mines placed. So the last person that runs through a certain area, bend over, pull your pin out of the OZM so they aren't.

• 2:35:10Speaker 03

  Um, it was a great idea if it would have worked effectively. The problem is, so we, we ambushed the Russians and I, I got video of it. We hit a blacked out Lotaniva. But before that, we sat at like within five meters of the edge of this fucking road for three hours. And like you would have civilian traffic, there was even like a babushka that drove by on a bicycle. Luckily they didn't see us. And like at that point, it's like, fuck, how are we gonna, like, there was some police vehicles that drove past too, but it was like, we're not there to kill the police. It's like, we wanna get like army, like,

• 2:35:47Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:35:47Speaker 03

  People in fucking camouflage uniforms. So at, at a certain point, I was like, I have an idea. Like we had RPG sevens with us. I was like, I'll go put a fucking rocket out in the middle of the road. And I guarantee you, someone's gonna stop to pick this up. Uh, we had a Estonian guy with us, his, uh, just call him T. Um, he was like, that is the dumbest idea I've ever heard. It's not gonna work. They're just gonna drive past it. I kid you not, I got out there, put the RPG down and like slid it like a retard, slow crawling in the road. Slid it, ran back to position. I kid you not, within five minutes, there's a blacked out Lotaniva coming down this road. And like they slam on the brakes.

• 2:36:30Speaker 03

  And they sit there for like two or three minutes like looking at it like not getting out of the vehicle like it just sits there. I'm like, okay, like, we can't shoot yet because we can't see who's inside. It could be a bunch of civilians for all we know. And I was like, fuck, I hope it's not because I don't want to pick up the fucking RPG. Luckily, the passenger side guy opens the door and he goes to get out of the vehicle and you can just see a multicam uniform. And it was like, okay, game on. And like the what was to initiate the ambush is I was going to shoot the first rocket. So he goes to get out, turn straight towards me. And I'm

• 2:37:12Speaker 03

  like, fuck, he definitely sees me. So I just grab, I grab my AK and I just stand up and just full auto into this fucking truck from like 10 meters away at max. And at that point, the everyone else in the unit, everyone else on that ambush line was told basically, once contact's initiated, shoot one rocket at whatever we're shooting at. So you just have like eight fucking rockets come flying out of the trees and just obliterate this fucking car. Somehow, the driver managed to get out of the vehicle and he tried to run. He got around to the front.

• 2:37:47Speaker 04

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• 2:39:41Speaker 03

  End of the vehicle, and he was like injured already, but he tried to run, and one of my guys just fucking smoked him, just dropped him. And so like, we're just unloading on this vehicle for like five minutes, and at some point, I'm like, okay, ceasefire, let's fall back, thinking that, hey, we created a big enough disturbance that the Russians are gonna come in, and you're like, you know, QRF. So we fall back to this position where we had a machine gunner set up, and then we had a couple other guys set up. I can, we sat there for probably 30, 40 minutes, and like, we can still see a little bit of this road, and I'm like, where the fuck are the Russians? And like, at this point, the Russians are lobbing artillery into Ukraine, and like, they're hitting stuff super far

• 2:40:22Speaker 03

  behind us. And so we were probably there for like 45 minutes to an hour, and at that point, I was like, okay, they're not gonna follow us. So like, we fell back to the next position, waited for like 10 minutes, and like, at that point, everyone's losing military discipline, we're smoking cigarettes, laughing, and so.

• 2:40:42Speaker 03

  The second in command, T, the Estonian was like, okay, we're calling the op before we all get, you know, before we end up doing something stupid and getting caught by someone unexpectedly. So as we walked back through our little pink route, uh, we pulled the pins on the mines thinking, you know, maybe later on they'll, they'll come down it. Um, there was some G U R, like military intelligence guys that were also with us. Uh, cause when we did the ambush, these guys were actually launching, uh, fifty cal machine gun fire at a military checkpoint within the city. So we all link back up. Um, we go to cross the border and we got maybe like five hundred meters on the Ukrainian side.

• 2:41:26Speaker 03

  And then you start hearing the explosions in the woods behind us. So like, like three and a half hours after we just slotted a bunch of Russian military on this road, the Russians finally like did something about it and they were dumb enough to go down a very obviously marked path and fucking tripped a bunch of mines and stuff. Um, so we get back on the Ukrainian side and we're walking back towards our vehicles that are, um, in a little town near Lazova is what it was called. Um, and so we get in our vehicles. We go to drive out and someone starts shooting RPGs at us. The fucking Ukrainians

• 2:42:10Speaker 03

  that were guarding further away thought we were Russians. So that was a shit show. But we get back to base. Our command is like, where the fuck have you been? Like, what have you been doing? Cause like the Russians at this point are like full on smashing the fucking border with everything. They brought tanks out. Um, and they're like, where were you guys? And like, at that point it was like, hey, here's the video idiots. Like we just, we've been crossing the Russian border for the past like ten days and we just killed a bunch of Russians. And at first, like the command was upset about it, but then they're like, you have video of it. And I was like, yeah, we have video of it. And at that time, like two days later, the Russians had posted on their telegram. We ended up actually ambushing three Ministry of Defense officials. Holy shit.

• 2:42:55Speaker 03

  Um, that we killed. Yeah. So we, we thought we just killed some random retard military. It ended up being like two colonels and a major were in that Lotaneva heading to a meeting at like the town over and we. Luckily, like I'll send you, it's fucking hilarious. Like, they're like, oh, it was from a drone. And I was like, well, no, here's the video. Like, this is us. Like, we're the ones that actually killed your fucking officers. Like, we got very lucky that number one, because we didn't know that they had tanks like on the other side of that village. Like, we didn't even think about it. We got lucky, number one, they didn't bring armor in. Uh, number two, they took so long to get organized that we got all the way back on the Ukrainian side.

• 2:43:39Speaker 03

  Like, we got really lucky. It was a really risky thing, because again, there was like twelve of us at the time. It wasn't, we had no reserves. There was no supporting element coming in, because we didn't tell anyone where we were. Like, it was, it was a not-so-bright idea that turned out in a positive manner, I guess you could say. Um, our Ukrainian leadership initially was pissed off, until they got like the pat on the back saying, hey, good job for destroying. Like, they took all the credit, um, which is whatever. Like, we never, we didn't do it for credit. It was just like, we found an opening and we took, you know, we, we took the initiative to exploit what, what, what we saw.

• 2:44:21Speaker 03

  Um, so like, we didn't really care about the awards. And again, like, we just thought we killed a bunch of random Russian infantry driving to their fucking base, you know? Um, after that, they were basically like, hey, if you want to cross the border again, you can do it. I was like, well, it's not a smart idea, because like, we literally painted a pink line across the border on how to get through their minefield. If we cross that position again, we're gonna get hit. Um, so like, we did some other operations there. Uh, after that, we helped the tank battalion get better positioned closer to the border. Uh, so that they could actually defend against the DRG a little better. And like, the rest of the deployment, we were there for like another month, and it was mainly like, help out the Ukrainians at that point.

• 2:45:05Speaker 03

  We didn't cross the border anymore, because like, we thought. That because of what we did, the Russians should have like put more stuff like they were gonna be prepared next time. And like honestly, I didn't wanna be trying to probe through a minefield and get shot at, so we just said fuck it. Um, we didn't do any more cross border stuff. We did some mortar operations. But largely, we just like moved Ukrainians around into like new positions and then went dug positions for them. Um, so we, we ended up getting back to Yavry after that deployment. Um, probably like three weeks later, the tank battalion commander, uh, his call sign is Tankist.

• 2:45:46Speaker 03

  Odd like dumb nickname for a tank commander, but so Tankist messaged our, one of our Ukrainian speakers was like, hey, uh, thank you for the help. Here's some of the results of like what you guys helped us do. They ended up, uh, capturing two DRG guys and like killing like eight of them. Uh, because they had moved a position actually at the border and caught them crossing. So like it was overall, it was a decent operation. It was our like decent, decent deployment. It was pretty slow paced from what guys wanted. So we got back to Yavry. And at that point, half the unit was de- had, had deployed with us. The other half had been sitting in Yavry for like three months.

• 2:46:29Speaker 03

  And like Yavry is like,

• 2:46:34Speaker 03

  it's like where, where you'd go if you just want your soul to die because like it's boring. Um, like it's, and you know, like Ukrainian training isn't like go shoot ammo every day. It's like go yell bang bang every day. So doing that for like three months, when like the guys just wanted to fight and like they were, at that point, some of them had been there for like six months. So like they were like gearing to like fight. So we get back, we talk with command. And so at this point, I so because I was deployed with guys, they had put another person who I didn't know in charge of the rest of my unit or my guys back in Yavry. And the guy was a complete fucking retard. Uh, Canadian John, if you watch this, you can go fuck yourself.

• 2:47:19Speaker 03

  Same with you, British John. Uh, you're both faggots. Um, but so we got back to Yavry. And there was like a pretty big falling out with Ukrainian leadership because of who they put in charge, uh, because they didn't ask anyone. They're like, this is who we're putting in charge. One of them was a former artillery officer that had his head so far up his ass, the Canadian. And, um, the other one, while decent with infantry stuff, honestly had a very huge alcohol problem. And, um, you know, there were times where he had gotten drunk on the military base, which you're not supposed to do, and had threatened people, gotten in a fight with people.

• 2:48:01Speaker 03

  Um, like, so like, when I got back to Yavry, it was like full on, like, almost to the point of mutiny with, with the guys that were back there. So I ended up getting everyone in our big, like, company tent where everyone slept. I said, look, um, if you guys want to, we have an option to go to the fifty ninth brigade. The fifty ninth brigade is a fair, at that point was fairly well known. Uh, the brigade commander, uh, I think he's a Colonel now, Colonel Sukarevsky. He was one of the initial officers in two thousand fourteen that said, fuck the separatists. Like, they, they fired the first shots against the separatists. It was his unit.

• 2:48:45Speaker 03

  Uh, they also defended, um, the Luhansk airport, not the Donetsk one where cyborgs, you know, that cyborg thing happened, but they defended another part and then they took a lot of, uh, they did a lot of work at the start of the two thousand fourteen issue. So they, they, he was a fairly well known commander, uh, didn't put up a lot of bullshit. And basically, like, when I contacted him, he was like, look, if you want to do storm operations, like.

• 2:49:15Speaker 03

  Like have at it, like more than welcome. If you're volunteering to like, do frontal assaults, we'll let you do whatever the fuck you want. Like, perfect, we need that. So I got the guys around in the tent and I said basically like, look, uh, anyone with military experience, you're welcome to come. If you don't have military experience, sorry, like, sorry, we're not taking you. Uh, because like, what we wanted to do was

• 2:49:41Speaker 03

  literally, it's not something you don't want to bring guys without experience in because when I say frontal assaults, like we basically said to the fifty ninth brigade, like we will do full on frontal assaults, whether it's through open fields or whatever. Um, and our whole goal, if we were going to move to the, if everyone, if we had enough people that wanted to move, our whole goal to move to the fifty ninth was to basically show that you can build out a foreign contingent that can do, you know, they, they, you could be the sledgehammer of a unit. Uh, so like when there's an issue, send in the foreigners, let us go fuck everything up. And then, you know, we'll come out and then you guys can put your defenders back in.

• 2:50:25Speaker 03

  So we didn't take anyone without military experience, except for one guy. He was a Canadian Ukrainian. He spoke fluent Ukrainian, fluent English, and he also was extremely disciplined and he called on quick. Um, uh, we took three foreigners, but two of them had deployed up north to us. So otherwise, the majority of the unit was all foreign. Uh, obviously, everyone in the tent that was prior service is basically like, yeah, we'll join you. Um, it's, it was for a while known as Ryan's Rebellion because we basically all went straight to the

• 2:51:07Speaker 03

  uh, battalion headquarters, walked in his office and uh, like, like I, I talk to them now, we're friends now. Um, basically we had some choice words that were said and basically said, you either cancel our contracts right now, or we're all just going to go AWOL to the fifty ninth anyway. Um, it probably, like hindsight, it probably should have been handled much.

• 2:51:34Speaker 03

  Much more respectable than what we, what, like what happened, but it is what it is. So within a week of all of us basically mute, like rebelling against the command, we were on a bus heading to Akros, basically. Um, and

• 2:51:56Speaker 03

  I, I think we, we might have overestimated ourselves a little bit at the beginning, but like, so we, we got there. Um, our battalion commander, his name was Kozak, he had had been in command of the reconnaissance unit for the fifty ninth brigade for a while, uh, was previously in the military before that as well. So he's had experience.

• 2:52:19Speaker 03

  Uh, we initially got there and within like, so they, we had contracts within like two days, which is unheard of in Ukraine. Um, and then we had weapons within like three days. And after that, he was like, hey, uh, you have two days of training for a trench assault, then you're going on your first assault. So like five days from signing a contract, it's like, do by, you're going to go to a frontal assault. Uh, we were like, okay, perfect. Not a big deal. Here's a list of equipment we want for the assault, like rockets, all this other dumb shit. And at that point, a lot of us haven't, hadn't done like a full on trench assault because most of the fighting in two thousand twenty two was, you know,

• 2:53:03Speaker 03

  CQB in urban environments, or it was like tree line to tree line. And like, there wasn't always like i- i- in the east of Ukraine, because that's where the frontline was, you had actually like developed trench systems. So like you would have fifty to seventy meter long trenches. They would have bunkers in it. They would have firing positions. Uh, they would have wired radios into them. So like you actually had like full on trenches where in the west, like north of Kiev or even up in Sumy, a lot of those trenches were like, you know, knee deep trenches that were just hand dogged. They weren't, they weren't very good. So we go out to do this first operation.

• 2:53:46Speaker 03

  Um, I think we called it Mars. It might've been. I don't, I don't know what we, I think it was Mars. So it's myself, uh, Dave and four other guys, so a six man group. And basically, we didn't plan this one, the Ukrainians did, we let them do it all however they wanted. We were gonna infill on foot, so we got dropped off like two kilometers away, infill the rest of the way through random trenches. And then like, sometimes you'd have to sprint across open ground. We get to this trench line and we meet up with the Ukrainian that we're supposed to, his name's Kopp. Kopp is like, okay, uh, like Kozak told you, tomorrow morning, we're going to bring some tanks up

• 2:54:30Speaker 03

  and some heavy machine guns. We're gonna shoot at the Russians to, uh, your right, like, it was like a position that stuck out in between like a Russian position here, here, and then you had Ukrainian up here. But basically what they were gonna do is they would pull the tanks up and the heavy machine guns and they'd shoot at the Russians on our right flank. And then we were supposed to hop over top of the trench and run like a hundred meters into machine gun fire to take the enemy trench. And like, none of us at this point were like, no, like, fuck it, let's do it, let's see how it goes, we can handle it. Um, so we get woke up in the morning like five AM, everyone preps their stuff.

• 2:55:13Speaker 03

  And what ended up happening is they pulled the tanks forward. And before this operation could even take off, it was just an absolute clusterfuck. Um, the Russians on the right side had managed to get even further down. So now the trench that we were in, they could shoot RPGs and stuff straight down the trench line. Um, it was just a total shit show. The command ended up saying, okay, everyone needs to fall back, like basically abandon the position, the assault's called off. We We got stuck there for like two hours, just getting our shit pushed in by the fucking Russians. Um, none of us, I, I got hit in the face, uh,

• 2:55:56Speaker 03

  with some minor debris. So like, we all tried to like crawl into like this one little fucking dugout. And like, it, it was mainly meant for like two people and we had like six guys cramming this and I'm in like the front of it. And like, I'm in this, I'm inside, but like I'm not inside because there's not enough room. Uh, a mortar goes off right above on the other opposite side of the opening. And like, I just get smashed in the face with rock and dirt, fucked my eye up. Um, cause I wasn't wearing eye pro, cause I'm a dumbass. Um, like, wear eye pro, it'll save your eyes, but like, but I, I, I'm mainly okay mine now. I have like sixty percent vision.

• 2:56:38Speaker 03

  But I also got hit later on in two thousand twenty-three again in the eye and that sort of fucked it more. But so, we ended up getting exfil. We get back to base and like,

• 2:56:53Speaker 03

  some of the guys that did that operation had never been in combat. So like, we get back to base and some of them are like, what in the fuck did we sign up for? But it was, it wa- it wasn't in a bad way. It was just like, like one of the guys, like I had to tell, Dave's gonna get mad about this, but I don't know if you've ever heard about chosen company, Aussie Dave, the one that's always like screaming stuff and when he's like in combat. Like when we were exfil-ing, we were getting shot at and like you would hear it snap above your head. And like, I would get down and this kid had never been in combat before. And he's just standing there. I'm like, dude, like they're shooting at us. Like that, that noise is the round coming over top. Like you need to get down. Like they are

• 2:57:34Speaker 03

  directly shooting at you. And like, he had never heard what it sounds like to be actually physically shot at. So he was fucking clueless on it. Um, I think he was a little concussed too from all the fucking artillery, all the artillery rounds we ate, but like, it was just, like we got back to base and all the guys at base were like, yeah, did you guys like, did you like, was it successful? And we're like, man, like, No, we got fucking obliterated, basically, like, they wiped the position off the map. Um, luckily, the command wasn't mad at us because it wasn't really like, it wasn't like, they're the ones that told us to leave the position. Um, so then they're like, Kozak comes up, he's like, okay, you have two more days.

• 2:58:16Speaker 03

  You're gonna try another position. This time, we're not gonna wait. Like, once you go out there, you're just going to go. Like, no, no wait overnight, just full on go. And so, I were, I basically told Ryder, who's a Ukrainian Israeli. I was like, okay Ryder, tell him that if we're just gonna launch an assault, let's just do it with the Humvees. Instead of getting dismounted, because we have, we have the old, we had mostly the two-door Humvees. So like, you know, like, your, your front's armored and then the whole back's open. Uh, and then we had two, like, gun truck Humvees that you can mount a 50 cal on or a Mark 19. So I basically told Ryder, I was like, look, tell him we're gonna take three Humvees in.

• 2:58:59Speaker 03

  We'll have a gun truck in the front, and then we're just gonna stack as many people in the open-top Humvees as we can. And we're just gonna fucking bum rush the position. Like, I want the Ukrainians to drop us off on top of the fucking enemy, like, five meter, like, as close as they can fucking drive. Like, we're just gonna fucking pile out of these fucking Humvees directly into the Russian trench, like, within 60 seconds of the trench. Um, that video, I believe, is on YouTube. It went extremely well. We, we spent two days basically rehearsing, like, how to dismount out of a fucking open-top Humvee. Uh, so that nobody would eat shit and people would like, if you know, if you're on the front right and you're on the front left of the back end,

• 2:59:41Speaker 03

  you know, like, you're filtering out the doors, and then you immediately cut down and start covering, but you have to get, you know, get out of the path so people can keep going. So we did, we rehearsed for two days. Um, operation went off flawlessly. The, the Russians.

• 2:59:58Speaker 03

  Just fucking didn't know what the fuck was going on. A majority of them tried to run away from the position. And unlucky for them, they literally ran out in front of our gun truck. And like our fifty cal machine gunner just ate lunch on them. For with like a whole fucking belt from like thirty meters away, just like just laid down religious hell on them. Um, and like you can see in the video where they they tried to scoot out. But like the rest of them fled in another direction and anyone else in the trench, it was like pretty, it was. It was like, it was like done within like ten minutes, like we had taken the trench.

• 3:00:39Speaker 03

  Um, so then they called out Ukrainians, Ukrainians came out and then we fucked off immediately out of the trench. Uh, back to our base camp, commander was like, holy fuck, it works. Can you guys do it together? And we're like, yeah, like as long as you give us the vehicles, we will drive. Like as long as you you have the armored vehicles, we'll do the planning. Like, give us what we need, tell us what the objective is. And as long as you drive us directly up to the frontline into the position, we will storm it. It doesn't matter where out on the frontline. Um, our next operation uh was basically to try to take back a village that they had lost, uh, Parvomais. So this is like

• 3:01:22Speaker 03

  eight kilometers from Donetsk city. So it's like at the very, it's it's been like a battleground. It was a battleground area up until February, March of two thousand twenty four. So it held for two years, basically, under constant attack. Um, and actually, two thousand twenty three, we were able to push line even closer. At one point, a Ukrainian unit got with like within eight hundred meters of the Donetsk airport. So like we like the line got pushed back. Yeah. And I don't think it's fairly well known like that that was going on because like when all of this, these assault operations were happening. You had the southern offensive happening in Rovetny, and then you had like the Bakhmut defensive happening.

• 3:02:06Speaker 03

  So like we were like this little, it was, it was not like a sector wide operation. It was like the fifty ninth brigade worked with like one or two other units. It was like, hey, let's push our fronts as well. Um, and we did decent work, honestly, for.

• 3:02:23Speaker 03

  Up until the Avdeevka counteroffensive, um, then it turned into more of a... So, so we did, we, we attacked Paravamias, we took back. Uh, on our initial, on our initial village attack, we cleared... Well, so on, on, on Paravamias 1, the whole thing was basically clear, every position up to, uh, what we call, called Objective Kiev. Objective Kiev had like a backyard pool, so it was fairly easy to figure out which building you were in. Uh, in reality, the command wanted us to clear every bunker on the way up.

• 3:03:04Speaker 03

  In reality, what we devised as a strategy, it was myself and, uh, he was sadly killed on the next operation, but Andrew Weber, he was a former, I think, uh, officer in the 173rd. Uh, our strategy was basically like, instead of stopping to engage each bunker on the way, we would basically run the gauntlet through the Russian positions. And then, once we got to the objective, we would radio that we're at the objective, and then we'd send teams back to back clear the positions. Because like, in, in these houses, they would sandbag the front of it, but they never had any fighting, like, once you got around behind them,

• 3:03:46Speaker 03

  they could, there was no, they couldn't really defend the position because it's basically an open doorway, you can throw grenades in it. So, we basically, it was

• 3:03:57Speaker 03

  sprint through or like move as quick as you can through this village. Uh, if you get engaged, engage and keep moving till you get to the objective. Once we got a foothold of the objective, then we'll send like four man teams backwards to back clear the Russian positions. That way, they're not behind like sandbags, it's basically like a more even fight. Number one, number two, again, like, if you get in, like with, uh, Erpian, Moschun and the other CQB environments, if you can hold the initiative and you can have like the violence of action, the Russians don't have good NCO corps, so like, they just, they melt, like, they don't understand what to do. And when you get intermixed in their lines, it makes it even harder for them to understand like what they should do.

• 3:04:41Speaker 03

  Uh, so it's like,

• 3:04:45Speaker 03

  it's like...

• 3:04:48Speaker 03

  For lack of a better example, like shooting schoolchildren. Because like they just, they just don't like they're, they're just like.

• 3:04:54Jack Murphy?

  Helpless.

• 3:04:54Speaker 03

  They just stand there.

• 3:04:55Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 3:04:57Speaker 03

  So we got to Objective Kiev. And like, we didn't take a single contact. We were throwing grenades the whole way in like the basement, like the cellar basements from the blown up houses. We didn't get shot at a single round until we got to this objective. Uh, once we got there, I pushed a two man team even further past the objective than, than what we realistically should have. Um, and they got engaged from a house that had a bunker system in it and a tunnel. So they're fucked off engaging that. And anyway, we engaged this house for a little bit and like the video's online with it. You'll see it. Um, and then they come back and then on our exfil, we basically back cleared all these positions.

• 3:05:42Speaker 03

  And not a single Russian in these, these other positions turned around and fired at us. They would hide in the fucking houses. Like I went, we, we found a machine gun position where there was like two PKMs in it. And I went to reach it and grab the PKM and like start looting the fuck out of this building. And there's literally a Russian in a fetal position under the stairwell. So like, I'm like, oh fuck, I lean back, grab a grenade, just chuck it around the corner and fucking chested him with it. Like, they just didn't know what the fuck. I don't, I think they, they just didn't know what to do. Like they just lost all.

• 3:06:16Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, they weren't trained soldiers.

• 3:06:17Speaker 03

  All sense of anything. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it was, it was, it was like the Vostok battalion. Like some of them had experience, but like, they just didn't have command and control. Like once, they, they just didn't have, nobody could tell them what to do. They didn't know what to do. They didn't. And like, the Russian military as well as the Ukrainian military is really bad at like, seizing the initiative or like, you know, making, making decisions without a commander. So like, it was literally like, fucking nothing. Like it was easy kay. All the way back to fucking slotting Russians.

• 3:06:52Speaker 03

  It was probably like eight hundred meters we had to clear back through.

• 3:06:55Jack Murphy?

  I mean, yeah, you spent a long time fighting. Um, so tell us how that leads into where you are today.

• 3:07:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, so, um.

• 3:07:10Speaker 03

  So, we, we did assault operations up until, uh.

• 3:07:17Speaker 03

  Probably October of two thousand twenty-three. And at that point, the Avdiivka counteroffensive happened, and we were basically like the southern flank for Avdiivka. Um, we got absolutely mauled by the Russians. So, we were, we were never set up.

• 3:07:37Speaker 03

  So, we, we, we never trained for defensive operations, which is probably largely a failure on my part for never doing it. Um, our whole agreement with the fifty-ninth Brigade, uh, was always like, hey, we'll go out, do an assault. We will, you know, get the foothold, we will kill everyone up to that position. And then we will radio in, and then you need to send Ukrainians within, you know, six hours. If you don't, we're just gonna fuck off out of that position. We're not here to defend it, we're here to kill everyone and make it so you can defend it. Like, basically, we were just there to assault, like, we didn't, we weren't gonna defend anything. If we assaulted an objective, we took a foothold,

• 3:08:22Speaker 03

  and then we had to temporarily defend it because of a counterassault, that's fine. But like, we never, we trained every day, seven days a week, on trench assault, CQB, um, dismount, getting in and out of vehicles, like, nothing but assault actions. We never once trained, uh, for defense. And like, that's probably, as, as being a commander, that's like my, my fuck-up. Because what happened, eh, later on in two thousand twenty-three, uh, because the lines were faltering and the Ukrainians were taking such high casualties, we basically got used as a, as, as gap fillers. So.

• 3:09:07Speaker 03

  The Ukrainians typically knew if we got into the fight, we would stay in the fight. And that's regardless of, like, we did one operation where we had forty-eight guys go out, Paravomias two, we had two killed on that operation, Andrew Weber and Lance Lawrence, and then forty-four people got injured. Instead of retreating, we did like a retrograde defense where people basically fought their way back to the Ukrainian side. And then even after, we didn't actually pull out until the next morning.

• 3:09:47Speaker 03

  So we had guys with gunshot wounds, half their fucking calf muscle blown off, you know, still gunning it out with the Russians. And that's like one operation. We had another operation where we lost another good soldier, Gimli. We assaulted a position, took that position, and then we realized that if we didn't take another position nearby, that if the Ukrainians came into this position, they would likely get overran. So we attempted to attack another position after we just got done clearing two positions.

• 3:10:28Speaker 03

  Ultimately, we lost one soldier Gimli in that, and we had six or seven guys severely wounded.

• 3:10:39Speaker 03

  But like, typically, like, the Ukrainians knew that if we got somewhere and there was a fight, we were gonna stick it out and fight. It doesn't matter if it was like fucking three tanks driving through a field at us. Like, the guys, we don't run. It's just, everyone, everyone knows, everyone's disciplined enough to listen to the team leader that's in that position. To say, "Hey, you're either falling back or no, like, this is where we stand, this is where you stay, you're not leaving it." So like, we started getting used as...

• 3:11:12Speaker 03

  The the last ditch effort to prevent line collapses, uh we got repeatedly abused. In so far as we would go out and take a position back from the Russians. They would move the Ukrainians in it and then within hours we would get called back like we cleared. We cleared one position like fucking eight times in one goddamn day. And instead of the. The upper sector command at the general staff level saying, hey. You have permission to just avoid holding that position anymore. You know, they basically forced the fifty ninth brigades hand saying, no, you need to go get that position back. Like the land is more important than your fucking lives. Um, so we got. Pretty beat up from October.

• 3:11:57Speaker 03

  You know, October, Sep- September, like October, November, December, January, February. So up until that point. We had basically lost like three guys. Like killed in action on assault. Everyone had been wounded. We had like a ninety. We we joke around that there was like a like a ninety eight percent injury rate, but we had like an eighty five percent injury. If you went on an operation. If ten people went out. Eight of you were coming back with a bullet hole or fragmentation. Uh, we had guys literally, we had one soldier get shot in the leg. Went to the hospital, three days later was back on an operation where we would just patch them up in the field if it started bleeding down. Like it's just what we did. We did it for seven months fucking straight.

• 3:12:40Speaker 03

  Um, but once we started getting utilized for defensive measures, we started taking casualties fast. We lost.

• 3:12:52Speaker 03

  Fuck eleven, eleven guys in. Three months, uh but but again, like it it was. It was sort of a. I like the fifty ninth brigade in the command, so like I don't want to blame them because it wasn't them. It was a, it was above their pay grade level. But like we had this agreement where. We would be the assault force and then your Ukrainians would defend it. We were perfectly fine, you know, re-clearing positions when it made sense. When when it tactically made sense to like hold that position, it made, you know, we would do it. But like we would go out to positions that were like. A dick out in the middle of a, you know, three other Russian positions surrounding it. Um.

• 3:13:36Speaker 03

  So that sort of grinded my gears. Um.

• 3:13:42Speaker 03

  For quite a while, uh, because we lost some good men for no fucking reason. Other than somebody at the general staff level having their head up their ass. Um.

• 3:13:52Speaker 03

  So in February two thousand twenty four. Um, I had a meeting with some of my other NCOs and we basically. Put it up to a vote, like I don't, I don't ever make my own decisions. I always. Put it up to a vote for the men because like, yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm leading it, but when it comes to like. Making decisions on.

• 3:14:14Speaker 03

  How we are, how we're, how we're gonna operate. As a unit, as a whole, as like a, as our little family. Uh, I always leave it up to the men to decide. We put it to a vote if we leave the fifty ninth. And then we take up an offer from another organization in Ukraine. Um. It was pretty much a unanimous vote at that time to like basically say, you know. Um. The last nine months was an honor, but like. The deal we had is no longer the deal we had. Right. Um, we're not, we're not gonna put up with it anymore. Um, and quite honestly, I made it very clear a few times out the field. Uh, like we, we, the positions that the fifty ninth was meant and was, was, was told to hold.

• 3:14:59Speaker 03

  Were positions that held no strategic value. Um, held no tactical value. And it was just.

• 3:15:08Speaker 03

  It, it, it, it, it was not a decision that anyone. Militarily would make. It was. Obviously more of a political statement on, you know, every meter at any cost. And, uh, so like the decision to leave the fifty ninth was unanimous one because like. None of us signed up for that. We signed up for. Uh. Strike operations. Proper military lead, yeah, like proper military operations that made sense. Um, wasting lives is not. Tactically proficient anything, so. Uh, we did what we could, but when it, you know. When, when it was very, very obviously clear in February two thousand twenty four. That.

• 3:15:52Speaker 03

  The very upper leadership was going to waste manpower. Uh, at that point, it was like, we're done. Um, you know, it's not, it's not worth it, so. Land, land, like Ukrainian land obviously is always worth it, but there's a point where you say.

• 3:16:10Speaker 03

  Is a hundred meters worth a thousand men?

• 3:16:13Speaker 07

  Right, right.

• 3:16:14Speaker 03

  Or is it better to pull back? Create a kill zone and then make the Russians fight through that hundred meters? And that wasn't happening. It was basically, you need to go out on position, you need to sit there and hold that. And like at that point, it was just not, it was no longer acceptable. But, so we took, we took an offer to join another organization. I can't go into, uh, what the name of the organization is. It's part of the Ukrainian military, Ukrainian defense, um, to do drone operations. So then we went back to Kiev and we spent

• 3:16:53Speaker 03

  six months. So some, some guys stayed in training. Some of us, like I went and did some operations with the organization in regards to some other stuff that I had experienced doing from Iraq. Um, but a majority of the guys went back to Kiev and they went through like three months of drone school, um, drone training. We had to do a assessment course and then we did a month of like training at one of their operational centers. Um, and then our first deployment after we joined them was for drone operations back to Pekrovsk, believe it or not.

• 3:17:36Speaker 03

  Basically where we just were. Um, but at that point, all of the area that we had fought for was basically gone. Uh, the Russians, after we left in February, the Russians in March, April and May, basically steamrolled that whole sector. Uh, they took Seladov almost without a shot. Like they basically collapsed the front lines. Uh,

• 3:18:00Speaker 03

  And like they got to where they were up until recently with the Pecro stuff. And honestly, that's largely just because of how much. How much we wasted trying to hold that fucking Nevelesky and Parvamai's run. If they would have pulled out sooner, we probably would. See. Some different things as far as the eastern land goes, like Pecro's might still be Ukrainian. Instead, we got a tritted on a zero sum. Fucking piece of land out in the middle of a field. Um. But we deployed doing drone operations. I think drones was. And so we had drones in the fifty ninth brigade, but we didn't fly them. So when we would do assault operations, we would have.

• 3:18:44Speaker 03

  An ISR team for every for every like four man fire team. We had one DGI team, one bomber team, and then usually we would have FPVs. So like our all of our call for fire instead of artillery. It was like, hey, we're getting hit with machine gun fire. Fly a fucking drone into it right now or drop a bomb on it from a from a bomber drone. So like we understood. Like. From the infantry side of it, but I don't think we really understood how complex. And how quick the drone warfare aspect was moving until we started doing it. Ourselves in two thousand twenty four, like.

• 3:19:23Speaker 03

  For the for the FPVs, I never worked with an FPV up until two thousand twenty four, like actually sat there and flew. I mean, like. I flew it, but like when it comes to like programming it. And understanding like. Your your radio frequencies and everything else like that was it was like, okay, cool. I can take off like woo. You know, I never did an operation with it. So like going through the school. It the the the initial school we did was four weeks and by the time we got out of that four week school. Everything that they originally taught was already changed. Like, that's how quick in 2024 drone warfare was changing like almost every week.

• 3:20:05Speaker 03

  Like, it was like, like, your frequencies would change, your tactics in regards to how you engage the enemy would change. Um, like, air repeaters were showing up, um, new flight software that Ukrainians were creating. Like, every week, there was like a new innovation. Um, so like, it was, it was, from an infantry standpoint, it was like,

• 3:20:32Speaker 03

  it was based like, fuck, like infantry stuff is gonna be screwed, like, you know, it's, it's, it's gonna put a halt on everything, or it's gonna make the cost extremely, extremely high.

• 3:20:43Jack Murphy?

  Ryan, uh, as we start to like wrap up here a little bit, um, you've had some wild experiences in life and, you know, you're still in it over there in Ukraine. Um, where do you see yourself going next? You're still with this drone unit, as I understand it. Um, what do you think is next for Ryan?

• 3:21:01Speaker 03

  So,

• 3:21:05Speaker 03

  so we, we, so we, we shut down the unit. So there was some other issues with some, uh, unit that we worked with where we basically called it quits publicly with Chosen Company. Um, at least as like me being a full-on commander of foreigners, um,

• 3:21:25Speaker 03

  due to largely what I would say is like some Ukrainian command issues, not within our organization, but like an organization that also, uh, more like a land forces, like your army, army type. Um, I disagree with some of the way that they utilize manpower and still do. So we shut down Chosen Company in 2025. Um, at the same time, we had guys who've been fighting here. Since 2022, like me, they wanted to move on from Ukraine for a little bit. They were burnt out due to some of the bad, poor decisions that were made. So in 2025, we actually started up an advisory group based out of Europe to basically teach drone

• 3:22:08Speaker 03

  tactics, drone awareness, how to counter drones. And like to help show like the evolution of how drone warfare was in like 2022, 23, 24, where it's at now and where it's likely progressing. And we mainly started it up to help bolster like, not so much the American side because like we're never going to learn, like I say this all the time and it sounds terrible. But for the American drone warfare program, like we're getting there now, but for us to fully embrace and fully understand it, bodies are going to come home in boxes, just like in Iraq with the IED threat and how it took three years to get B bottoms. Like we don't make changes to our doctrine or recognize threats until America.

• 3:22:53Speaker 04

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• 3:24:48Speaker 03

  Americans come home sadly, and usually that's coming home, you know, disabled or not breathing. But so we started it up mainly to teach the Europeans saying, hey, like, you know, your eastern border is with Russia. If you don't understand and respect what's happening here and like learn or try to engage with the Ukrainians to learn what's going on, like you're gonna be fucked. Like you're fucked. Drones, like I'm a firm believer that you can still do maneuver warfare in a drone environment, but it takes a lot more planning now. There's a lot more data that your commander and like the command staff have to sort through to understand what the drone threat they're gonna face is. Like

• 3:25:33Speaker 03

  there's a lot of nuances to drone warfare, and it takes a while to learn. And like what you're seeing now in the Middle East, like now they're like, oh shit, maybe we should have paid attention to like interceptors. Like not necessarily like Ukrainian interceptor technology is the greatest, but how Ukraine has integrated interceptors with radar groups, with early warning, and like the expertise on how to properly engage your Shahids or whatever drone, like that's what they need. Like they don't need Ukrainian technology necessarily. It's all of the experience that Ukraine has earned in blood. And like, I think now some countries are changing. But like, the future for me personally...

• 3:26:18Speaker 03

  Like I've, I've lost sixteen guys under my command.

• 3:26:27Speaker 03

  Sorry.

• 3:26:29Jack Murphy?

  That's okay. It's been a long war and you know, you guys were in the thick of it.

• 3:26:36Speaker 03

  The, the future for me is, uh, I'm gonna stay here and fight till the end of it. Um.

• 3:26:47Speaker 03

  I think.

• 3:26:53Speaker 03

  Like, look, I've asked a lot for the, the men under my command. Um, a lot of guys have been severely injured. Uh, there's sixteen guys who died. So there's sixteen families, plus wives, sons, daughters who will never see their loved one again.

• 3:27:15Speaker 03

  For me to quit now, uh, in my opinion is, uh, dishonorable and, uh, wouldn't,

• 3:27:24Speaker 03

  wouldn't show the respect that those men deserve. So, um, I guess I'm, I'm in it to win it. And then, uh, to be quite honest, I'll probably go after Russians in whatever country they're into. Uh, it'll probably be Africa. Um, I really don't give a shit.

• 3:27:46Speaker 03

  I'm at the point in my life

• 3:27:49Speaker 03

  where I

• 3:27:53Speaker 03

  trying to phrase this politically correct. I'm at the point in my life, I've been here four years. I've seen what the Russians have done to the civilians here. Um, I'm at the point in my life where if you're in the Russian military, you deserve nothing but death. Um, so I'm gonna follow wherever their military goes. I will support whatever group, whether it's the Tore rebels, the Syrian fucking government, whatever group, just to kill the fucking Russians at this point. Like I, I, I just have, I have nothing.

• 3:28:21Speaker 03

  That like that's that's my motivation, honestly, at this point in life. Like I did like what they've done here in Ukraine, uh what they did to the Syrians, uh what they're currently doing in Africa, um like the Russian military and the current Russian government is a is a plight on humanity, so the more of them that I can either send to their deaths or back home disabled and uh you know block the Russian geopolitical bullshit, you know, I'm gonna do it. Um, some people might disagree with that, but like, you know, it is what it is like this is this is just, this is how I feel.

• 3:29:05Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, I mean, they're just thugs and butchers. There's not anything there to admire. Um, and I mean, there there's like one part of me that I can feel a little bit for like an 18 year old Russian conscript. It's not their fault that their government's a bunch of assholes. But at the same time, it's like, if you're serving that that country, then I mean, you're a legitimate target. And you know, just like you and I were when we were in uniform.

• 3:29:28Speaker 03

  You know, you know, I used I used to think that, but like the the the thing is, is the ones that are committing this, the one the ones that are in Ukraine aren't your 18 year old conscripts.

• 3:29:41Jack Murphy?

  Not anymore. Yeah.

• 3:29:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, like your your conscripts that got mobilized in 22, 90% of them are dead, man. They're dead or they're wounded back in Russia. The ones that are coming to Ukraine and the ones that initially invaded Ukraine and the ones that were in Syria, they've been motivated by money, um or they're motivated by this whole fucking Russian superiority, fucking imperial shit.

• 3:30:07Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 3:30:07Speaker 03

  And like like it's just, it's not like I I I'm not, I don't hate all Russians, like there are good Russians, but like if you voluntarily. Join the Russian military at this point because it's a paycheck and you knowingly know you're gonna go kill civilians. And you're fine with your government flying fucking drones and missiles into schools and apartment complexes nightly. Like you don't deserve any, any sympathy when you get fucking killed. Like I honestly hope like. All the drone videos where you see Russians getting hit, I hope. Like I hope it continues and I hope we increase the death rate to like fucking.

• 3:30:47Speaker 03

  A half a million to be quite honest a year because like they don't deserve to live in this world. Like if you sign up. To go kill people for money. It's inhumane. Like there's, there's no. Like. It's one thing to sign up to defend your country. It's another thing to sign up and say, hey. Um, you know. There's, even if it's something as stupid as like there's an existential threat for Ukraine being a country. I can understand that, but like when, when your military is signing up. To make basically what amounts to blood money.

• 3:31:19Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 3:31:20Speaker 03

  Like that's not a professional military. That's just a bunch of fucking thugs.

• 3:31:25Jack Murphy?

  Ryan, I don't know how public your group is, but is there a place that like if people wanted to hire your consultancy firm? Um, for this drone stuff, a place that they could go to find you guys?

• 3:31:36Speaker 03

  Yeah. So we do have guys that are off contract that do a lot of that. Um, because I am on contract, I don't really do much of that, but yeah, I can, I can send you. Uh, like an email, um. And like our pamphlet on that too. So.

• 3:31:51Jack Murphy?

  Okay. Yeah.

• 3:31:51Speaker 03

  But a lot, a lot of it, a lot of it's like just the very basics, you know, like, hey, like here's what a drone is. Like here's how to count. Like it's, it's not, we don't, we're not teaching like civilian stuff like that, although like. To be honest, people in general should understand what drones are because like we haven't seen terrorist attacks yet with it. But man, like.

• 3:32:13Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, it's coming.

• 3:32:14Speaker 03

  It's coming like assassination attempts like Trump. Somebody keeps trying to kill Trump every six months. Luckily, they fail. Whether you like the president or not, nobody should be trying to kill our president. Um, but like the drone threat to sitting heads of state. It's there and like it's, it's coming quick. Like I like, I think within the next year, somebody ahead of state will be assassinated. Well, who knows where Europe, Africa, South America, like it's coming. Somebody's going to get killed with an SPV drone or a bomber drone.

• 3:32:48Jack Murphy?

  Well, Ryan, um, thank you for sharing your experiences with us today and I hope, you know, our listeners take away a lot from this about the future of warfare and how things have developed and, uh, you know, you, you should consider writing a book at some point. Um, it's a wild, wild story so far. Um, and, uh, I hope you stay in touch.

• 3:33:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, definitely. Hey, thank you again. Hopefully nobody thinks I'm too big of an asshole for that last Russian.

• 3:33:15Jack Murphy?

  No, no, it's, it's not. It's natural to be angry about, uh, some of this stuff.

• 3:33:22Speaker 03

  Yep. All right. Hey, thanks again.

• 3:33:24Jack Murphy?

  Yep. Yeah. Everyone else out there, we will see.

• 3:33:27Speaker 04

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At The Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 3:33:41Speaker 05

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic. In a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 3:33:52Speaker 04

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 3:33:57Speaker 06

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 3:34:03Speaker 04

  So join us and hear their stories and more because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At The Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At The Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.

• 3:34:23Speaker 00

  ChatGPT for Teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. ChatGPT for Teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down rather than giving teens the answer. Study mode helps teens work through problems, and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default, and parental controls offer families additional options like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.com/parents to learn more.

• 3:34:51Speaker 01

  Cash Flow Crunch on Deck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds, up to $200,000, right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 3:35:21Jack Murphy?

  See you again next time. Take care.

• 3:35:27Speaker 04

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 3:35:42Speaker 05

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic, in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 3:35:53Speaker 04

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 3:35:58Speaker 06

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 3:36:04Speaker 04

  So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast, on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeartRadio app today.

• 3:36:24Speaker 00

  ChatGPT for Teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. ChatGPT for Teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down rather than giving teens the answer. Study mode helps teens work through problems, and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default, and parental controls offer families additional options like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.com/parents to learn more.

• 3:36:51Speaker 01

  Cash Flow Crunch on Deck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds, up to $200,000, right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 3:37:21Jack Murphy?

  I want to take a moment to tell you about the Team House Podcast newsletter. If you go and subscribe, it's totally free, and what it will do is aggregate all of our data, all of our content that we put out, the things that are on the Team House, on our geopolitics podcast, Eyes On, things that I write journalistically with Sean Naylor on the high side, anything else that we have going on, books we recommend, upcoming guests that we have coming on the show, and also filtering in some fun stuff in there as well. If you go and check it out, we send it out just once a week. We don't want to spam you guys. It's just a kind of roll up of all of our content on a weekly basis. You can find

• 3:38:06Jack Murphy?

  our newsletter at teamhousepodcast.kit.com/join. Again, the website for that is teamhousepodcast.kit.com/join. So we hope.

• 3:38:18Speaker 04

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 3:38:33Speaker 05

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic, in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 3:38:44Speaker 04

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 3:38:49Speaker 06

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 3:38:55Speaker 04

  So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.

• 3:39:15Speaker 00

  ChatGPT for Teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. ChatGPT for Teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down. Rather than giving teens the answer, Study Mode helps teens work through problems, and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default, and parental controls offer families additional options, like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.com/parents to learn more.

• 3:39:42Speaker 09

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 help make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 3:40:12Jack Murphy?

  Good to see you there. The link will be down in the description.

• 3:40:19Speaker 04

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 3:40:34Speaker 05

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 3:40:45Speaker 04

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 3:40:50Speaker 06

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 3:40:56Speaker 04

  So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.

• 3:41:16Speaker 00

  ChatGPT for Teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. ChatGPT for Teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down. Rather than giving teens the answer, study mode helps teens work through problems, and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default, and parental controls offer families additional options, like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.com/parents to learn more.

• 3:41:43Speaker 09

  Cash Flow Crunch, OnDeck's small business line of credit, gives your business immediate access to funds, up to $200,000, right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 3:42:19Speaker 04

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 3:42:34Speaker 05

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to "I'm deathly allergic," in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 3:42:45Speaker 04

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you, you're not alone.

• 3:42:50Speaker 06

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 3:42:56Speaker 04

  So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat, it's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast, on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeartRadio app today.

• 3:43:16Speaker 00

  ChatGPT for Teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. ChatGPT for Teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down rather than giving teens the answer. Study mode helps teens work through problems, and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default, and parental controls offer families additional options like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.com/parents to learn more.

• 3:43:43Speaker 09

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 help make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 3:44:18Speaker 04

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 3:44:33Speaker 05

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic, in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 3:44:44Speaker 04

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 3:44:49Speaker 06

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 3:44:55Speaker 04

  So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.

• 3:45:15Speaker 00

  ChatGPT for Teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. ChatGPT for Teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down, rather than giving teens the answer. Study mode helps teens work through problems, and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default, and parental controls offer families additional options, like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.com/parents to learn more.

• 3:45:42Speaker 09

  Cash Flow Crunch? OnDeck's Small Business Line of Credit gives your business immediate access to funds, up to $200,000, right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 3:46:20Speaker 04

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 3:46:35Speaker 05

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to "I'm deathly allergic," in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 3:46:46Speaker 04

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 3:46:51Speaker 06

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 3:46:57Speaker 04

  So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat, it's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast, on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeartRadio app today.

• 3:47:17Speaker 00

  ChatGPT for Teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. ChatGPT for Teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down rather than giving teens the answer. Study mode helps teens work through problems, and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default, and parental controls offer families additional options like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.com/parents to learn more.

• 3:47:44Speaker 07

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 3:48:19Speaker 04

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 3:48:34Speaker 05

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic, in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 3:48:45Speaker 04

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 3:48:50Speaker 06

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 3:48:56Speaker 04

  So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeartRadio app today.

• 3:49:16Speaker 00

  ChatGPT for Teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. ChatGPT for Teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down rather than giving teens the answer. Study mode helps teens work through problems, and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default, and parental controls offer families additional options like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.com/parents to learn more.

• 3:49:43Speaker 09

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 help make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 3:50:18Speaker 04

  Hi, I'm Jenna Ushkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 3:50:32Speaker 05

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic, in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 3:50:43Speaker 04

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 3:50:48Speaker 06

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 3:50:54Speaker 04

  So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat, it's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast, on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.

• 3:51:14Speaker 00

  ChatGPT for Teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. ChatGPT for Teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down, rather than giving teens the answer. Study mode helps teens work through problems, and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default, and parental controls offer families additional options, like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.com/parents to learn more.

• 3:51:42Speaker 09

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses, like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 help make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 3:52:18Speaker 04

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 3:52:33Speaker 05

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to "I'm deathly allergic," in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 3:52:44Speaker 04

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 3:52:49Speaker 06

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 3:52:55Speaker 04

  So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat, it's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast, on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeartRadio app today.

• 3:53:15Speaker 00

  ChatGPT for Teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. ChatGPT for Teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down rather than giving teens the answer. Study mode helps teens work through problems, and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default, and parental controls offer families additional options like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.com/parents to learn more.

• 3:53:42Speaker 09

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 help make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 3:54:18Speaker 04

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 3:54:33Speaker 05

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic, in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 3:54:44Speaker 04

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 3:54:49Speaker 06

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 3:54:55Speaker 04

  So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat, it's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast, on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeartRadio app today.

• 3:55:15Speaker 00

  ChatGPT for Teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. ChatGPT for Teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down. Rather than giving teens the answer, study mode helps teens work through problems, and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default, and parental controls offer families additional options, like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.com/parents to learn more.

• 3:55:42Speaker 01

  Cash Flow Crunch onDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds, up to $200,000, right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 3:56:15Speaker 10

  She's been thinking about this sleepover all week, but I think about her food allergies all the time. Fortunately, her doctor prescribed Zolair, omalizumab. It's proven to significantly reduce allergic reactions if a food allergy accident happens.

• 3:56:28Speaker 11

  Zolair 150mg is a prescription medication used to treat food allergy in people one year of age and older to reduce allergic reactions due to accidental exposure to one or more foods. While taking Zolair, you should continue to avoid all foods to which you are allergic. Don't use if you are allergic to Zolair. Zolair may cause a severe, life-threatening allergic reaction called anaphylaxis. Tell your doctor if you ever had anaphylaxis. Get help right away if you have trouble breathing or if you have swelling of your throat or tongue. Zolair should not be used for the emergency treatment of allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis. Zolair is for maintenance use to reduce allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis, while avoiding food allergens. Serious side effects such as cancer, fever, muscle aches and rash, parasitic infection, or heart and circulation problems have been reported. Please see zolair.com for full prescribing information. Ask an allergist about Zolair. This is an advertisement for Zolair,

• 3:57:13Speaker 11

  paid for by Genentech and Novartis.

• 3:57:15Speaker 00

  ChatGPT for Teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. ChatGPT for Teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down. Rather than giving teens the answer, study mode helps teens work through problems, and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default, and parental controls offer families additional options, like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.comPARENTS to learn more.

• 3:57:43Speaker 09

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