On a sweltering day in June, soldiers from Ukraine’s 47th Assault Regiment went into battle against advancing Russian forces in Bakhmut.
The city in eastern Ukraine has been the center of intense fighting since summer, with mercenaries from the Russian private military contractor the Wagner Group at the forefront of attempts to capture it.
Thousands on both sides have been killed on a front line that has barely moved. The relentless fighting has been compared to World War I, with trench warfare and house-to-house fighting.
On that day in June, Brian Wang, a 35-year-old US citizen, found himself amid the carnage. Wang, a firearms instructor originally from Pittsburg who now runs a firearms school in California, was one of the thousands of foreigners who volunteered to go and help Ukraine after Russia invaded in February.
Some joined to fight with the International Legion of Territorial Defence of Ukraine. Others with relevant skills, like Wang, volunteered to train Ukraine’s soldiers.
While entering a house in Bakhmut, two Ukrainian soldiers were ambushed by Russian troops. The first Ukrainian died on the spot. The second was shot several times, including in the abdomen. Wang stepped forward to try and save him.
The second soldier did not survive. And what happened next has become the subject of a fierce debate between a group of US military veterans in Ukraine and Wang and raises questions about the role of foreigners in Ukraine, war tourism, and what rules of conduct apply in warfare.
Ambush in Bakhmut
Sons of Liberty International is a nonprofit security-contracting firm composed of veterans primarily from the US and Canada who went to Ukraine as volunteers to train the country’s soldiers.
Two SOLI instructors alleged to Insider that Wang, who was not affiliated with SOLI but worked to train the same unit as them, took on more responsibility than he was qualified for and may have endangered the lives of Ukrainian soldiers.
“I definitely feel like he would be a war tourist,” Erik Inbody, a 29-year-old SOLI instructor and retired Marine, said about Wang, using a term to describe thrill seekers in a war zone.
The deaths in Bakhmut are the source of most of the contention. According to a newsletter written by Wang at the time, which Insider has viewed an archived version of, he was not supposed to be involved in the action that day.
Wang traveled to Bakhmut with the battalion but was left behind the line at the camp because the battalion commander deemed him not experienced enough to be in the heat of battle.
“I was a liability, and he didn’t want me getting hurt,” Wang wrote.
While he was doing laundry, Wang said a dark-green SUV suddenly pulled up and he heard a Ukrainian soldier shout, “De medyky?” meaning, “Where are the medics?”
Wang wrote that at that point, “My war had become real.” He said he responded: “Ya tut! Ya tut!” — “I’m here! I’m here!”
More muscle than the pork ribs
Wang, by his own admission, decided to take charge of rescuing the wounded Ukrainian soldier. Wang is not a trained medic and not in charge of leading the unit. It is not clear whether any of its senior commanders were present.
He went on to detail his efforts to save the soldier along with a squad medic nicknamed Wolf.
Wang described a scene from the fog of war: In a chaotic blur, the two performed a needle decompression on the soldier, a procedure to treat tension pneumothorax, in which air becomes trapped between the chest wall and the lung after chest trauma. A needle catheter is used to release the trapped air, and an audible hiss is heard.
The soldier was eventually loaded into a van to be rushed to a hospital, accompanied by Wang and Wolf. The situation was desperate, Wang wrote: The soldier “was dying, and there was nothing we could do about it.”
Wang described how they decided to perform another needle decompression and said he was unsure and “timid” because the soldier “had so much more muscle than the pork ribs we normally used.”
“I doubted myself then as the needle and catheter didn’t want to move, and I pressed harder, hearing and feeling it go through the chest wall,” he wrote in his blog. “I was afraid my needle would puncture something else inside his lungs, and I was too timid to sink the catheter all the way in.”
Wang said he then decided to perform CPR.
“The CPR was no longer about Kot now, ” Wang wrote, referring to the dying soldier, “it was for Wolf., it was for me. It was the most I could do and the least I could do.”
Insider obtained screenshots of a Signal group chat in which Wang discussed the situation in the immediate aftermath. Wang confirmed the authenticity of the screenshots.
In the Signal conversation, Wang described performing chest compressions on the dying soldier.
Another member of the Signal group, who multiple people, including Wang, have identified as a combat medic named Will, responded: “Brian…chest compressions don’t work in tac med. I’ve taught you this.”
CPR is not recommended to be used on the battlefield under the Tactical Combat Casualty Care training, according to guidelines from the National Association of Emergency Medical Technicians.
“In combat, futile attempts at CPR may interfere with caring for casualties who have a chance to survive and may interfere with the unit’s ongoing mission,” the guidelines say.
Wang said that performing CPR in that instance was appropriate, as it was a final resort to try and save a dying man.
“Everybody’s improvising in combat. That’s just the nature of the beast,” he told Insider in a phone call. “Every step of the way, there were delays because people were doing their best and they didn’t know what to do. And we didn’t have a mature medical evacuation plan.”
In the phone conversation with Insider, Wang defended his involvement in the death of the Ukrainian soldier. He did not respond to follow-up queries from Insider about why he took charge instead of Wolf, whom he described as a medic in his newsletter post.
A wider tapestry of issues
The SOLI instructors said the Bakhmut deaths were just one part of a wider tapestry of issues caused by Wang’s inexperience and overzealousness.
Inbody, who was working on training members of Ukraine’s 47th Assault Regiment along with Wang and other SOLI instructors, said that he soon became concerned with Wang’s behavior and training methods.
“He’s a shooting instructor in California, so that gives him some marksmanship ability,” Inbody said. “So he definitely could help, as long as he would have stayed within his scope of expertise.”
Wang does not deny the facts as described by SOLI but told Insider it was misrepresenting him and taking facts out of context.
“I think he has good intentions. It’s just that there are some personality flaws,” Brandon Boisvert, a 29-year-old SOLI instructor from Canada, told Insider of Wang.
“He tries to be kind of like this jack-of-all-trades-type person, and the problem is that he doesn’t understand where his information is either outdated or if it’s just incorrect information.”
At the time, the 47th was a battalion of about 350 people, a combination of preexisting soldiers and civilians with no experience.
While the US has declined to send any active-duty troops to the frontlines, it’s estimated thousands of American veterans and civilian volunteers have gone to Ukraine. The US Defense Department has said it “is not affiliated with any of these groups” and recommends “that US citizens not travel to Ukraine or depart immediately if it is safe to do so,” The New York Times reported.
Foreign volunteers who go to Ukraine cite a variety of reasons for joining the fight. Being on the right side of history and fighting for the principles of sovereignty and democracy are among them.
While many of the foreign volunteers in Ukraine appear to have provided invaluable support, either through fighting or training, some reports have painted a picture of inexperience and war tourism — perhaps propelled by good intentions but nonetheless unhelpful.
An American veteran working to train soldiers in Ukraine told The New York Times in July that he and others had encountered some “would-be trainers with overinflated résumés and, in some cases, no military experience at all.”
‘I’m a tool. I’m a vehicle of transferring knowledge.’
The SOLI instructors Inbody and Boisvert said Wang went beyond his designated firearms-instruction responsibility of teaching soldiers military tactical training straight out of a handbook, which they said he did not have experience in.
For example, they said Wang taught Ukrainian soldiers to keep the barrels of their firearms pointing up instead of down when not in use, which they say is unsafe.
They also said that Wang, on one occasion, endangered trainees by leading them into an area marked with a sign warning of land mines.
Wang did not deny any of the allegations but said there was nothing wrong with his methods. He argued that pointing barrels up was safe and said he knew the land-mine-marked area was a training area that did not have land mines in it.
Inbody told Insider he and other SOLI instructors sat Wang down to raise their concerns with him over his actions and training methods but said he was not receptive to the feedback.
Wang confirmed that conversation happened but said he did not feel that Inbody or other SOLI instructors had a right to criticize him.
“Just because he has an opinion doesn’t make that opinion right,” Wang said. “And also, just because he has an opinion doesn’t make that opinion binding on my behavior as a professional trainer.”
Wang countered that SOLI members were attempting to “character-assassinate” him and said that it did not matter whether he had previous military experience. He said he had completed the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps program while in college. He also worked with Tactical Combat Casualty Care instructors over the years as part of his work at his firearms-training school.
The SOLI instructors said they raised concerns about Wang with the unit’s leadership but that they were ignored. They alleged that Wang was protected from criticism because of his friendship with a Ukrainian woman who’s the unit commander’s girlfriend.
Wang rejected that idea, saying his friendship with the battalion leadership was evidence of his good character. The unit commander declined to speak with Insider.
SOLI continues to train soldiers in Ukraine and has raised concerns about Wang returning.
Wang said he planned to go back soon and that he had spent his time back in California fundraising and planning for his return.
“I’m a very good teacher. I’m a very smart teacher,” Wang said. “A good teacher can teach any material. You can hand me a user manual — I will review the user manual, and I will teach. Then I will present it as a presenter. I’m a machine. I’m a tool. I’m a vehicle of transferring knowledge.”
Credit: Yahoo News