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A US veteran went to struggle in Ukraine however has defected to Russia.
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Those that fought with him in Ukraine informed Insider he was unstable and erratic on the battlefield.
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His time in Ukraine calls into query the vetting processes of the nation’s Worldwide Legion.
When Russia invaded Ukraine in February final 12 months, scores of overseas fighters flocked to assist defend the nation.
Amongst them was John McIntyre, a 25-year-old American veteran nicknamed Johnny Alabama, or Bama, by his fellow fighters who took up arms and joined the Worldwide Legion of Territorial Protection of Ukraine.
Movies present the American among the many uniformed fighters on the bottom calling out, “God bless Ukraine,” and, “Fuck you, Russia.”
Then he switched sides.
In February 2022, McIntyre was sitting in a restaurant in Moscow and speaking to a journalist from the Russian state-controlled community RT about his determination to defect from Ukraine to Russia.
McIntyre is the primary identified overseas fighter to have crossed enemy traces to affix Russia. In the RT interview, he claimed that he went to Ukraine with the intention to defect all alongside.
However two legionnaires who immediately labored with McIntyre informed Insider he was an erratic and unstable one who wreaked havoc in Ukraine and was pushed out of the legion earlier than he determined to defect.
They painted an image of a troubled man who at the least as soon as excessively drank alcohol while preventing and urinated in a military car, defaced Ukrainian guard posts, and was ultimately barred from dealing with weapons as a result of he was deemed a hazard to himself and others.
Malcolm Nance, a former US Navy officer and counterterrorism knowledgeable who joined Ukraine’s Worldwide Legion within the early days of the struggle and has since turn into a recognizable face of overseas fighters in Ukraine, stated McIntyre induced points from the start.
“Bama is a extremely unstable character,” Nance informed Insider. “Bama was identified to be knowledgeable fuckup and mentally unwell.”
He added: “We used to say loopy with a capital Ok.”
Whereas the fighters who spoke with Insider cited McIntyre’s psychological state whereas speaking about his actions, psychological sickness alone doesn’t essentially point out combat-readiness, and the legionnaires should not professionally certified to evaluate an individual’s psychological standing.
Little is thought about McIntyre’s background, however he is initially from Cell, Alabama, attended Lincoln County Excessive College in Lafayette, Tennessee, after which went into army coaching at Fort Bliss, Texas.
He served within the US Military as an indirect-fire infantryman from June 2015 to August 2017 however was by no means deployed and left the service as a non-public top notch, Madison Bonzo, a US Military spokesperson, informed Insider.
The US army was unable to verify which kind of discharge he acquired, or any details about medical or personnel actions associated to him due to federal privateness legal guidelines. Insider was unable to succeed in McIntyre.
The retired Marine Elliot Smith — not his actual identify, as he was granted anonymity so he might converse freely — was second in control of McIntyre’s platoon and met him in April, quickly after they each joined the struggle.
McIntyre “initially gave a great impression,” Smith stated, however cracks began to indicate as they bought nearer to the battlefield and started to face the specter of demise.
“One evening, he confided in me that he noticed the ghost of a canine that he had killed,” Smith stated. “So I assumed, ‘OK, perhaps he is not all there.'”
The warning indicators continued, as McIntyre informed Smith that he was wished by the FBI for threatening to kill personnel on the White Home, Smith. Insider has been unable to confirm the validity of this declare.
“As time went on, he confided to me that he had transformed to Islam and that he was planning on doing a jihad,” Smith informed Insider.
Nance, who labored because the chief of intelligence of the battalion, stated that he was introduced many reviews of comparable outlandish claims made by McIntyre.
“I feel he was a mentally disturbed man who was in search of a spot of notoriety to slot in,” Nance stated.
Smith provided an identical evaluation of McIntyre.
“What I bought from Johnny, and that is mirrored in his conduct in our unit all the best way to him leaving for Russia, was that he was simply in search of individuals to concentrate to him,” he stated.
McIntyre and Smith’s unit was preventing in Molodova, a village close to Kharkiv, after Ukraine recaptured it in Might. With the Russians livid that they’d misplaced maintain of the village, the fighters typically discovered themselves below assault.
That, Smith stated, is when the actual cracks in McIntyre’s talents began to indicate.
Smith stated McIntyre loaded his machine gun the wrong way up and that whereas he was working by the forest dodging artillery fireplace, he “bodily confirmed that he was not able to fight.”
When on the retreat, Smith stated he and one other fighter needed to keep again within the forest as a result of McIntyre could not proceed with the remainder of the unit. They spent an hour ready for him till extra assist arrived.
Because the stress of struggle continued to mount, Smith stated he was informed that McIntyre had began excessively consuming in secret, which introduced him to a “breaking level.”
Smith stated that in the future, McIntyre was given permission to go to Kharkiv with management and got here again drunk, having discovered alcohol within the metropolis.
“His rights had been learn, and he needed to be detained as a result of he had induced a battle with officers and management,” Smith stated. “He had urinated within the car being introduced again to our fight level after which made a scene in the midst of the village, half bare, and threatened the management and all of the legionnaires current within the space.”
The platoon commander selected to be lenient and stated that McIntyre ought to simply sleep it off. As McIntyre slept, the platoon was warned of an incoming artillery assault.
McIntyre took benefit of the chaos. He escaped from the watch he was below and ran off, nonetheless intoxicated and half bare, into the forest.
“We spent about perhaps an hour or two in search of this man, at nighttime till the morning got here up,” Smith stated.
Ultimately, McIntyre turned himself in and was despatched to the principle command, the place Smith stated everybody hoped he’d be despatched residence.
However McIntyre was given a second probability — however this time away from the motion, on logistical responsibility.
As soon as again to battalion, McIntyre’s erratic conduct continued
McIntyre was despatched in June to the battalion headquarters in Kharkiv, the place he met Nance.
“If you screw up, an organization eliminates you, pulls you off the road, and sends you again to the battalion,” Nance informed Insider. “And now you are our downside. What we’re doing is we’re filling out the paperwork to kick you out of Ukraine.”
From the start, McIntyre would speak about crossing the river in Kharkiv to go to the Russian aspect “out of sheer boredom,” Nance stated, which raised a purple flag.
As soon as he was again on the battalion, McIntyre’s erratic conduct continued. On one event, Nance stated a close-by Russian strike had induced massive home windows on the HQ constructing to shatter, leaving 1-foot-high piles of damaged glass.
With an artillery barrage exterior, he stated he noticed McIntyre sitting amid the shattered glass.
McIntyre was smoking a cigarette in his uniform pants, a white tank high, and flip-flops and seemed to be “mesmerized” whereas “watching the gorgeous lights” of the artillery barrage, Nance stated.
“So I’ve to exit on the roof — glass is crunching in every single place — and I stated, ‘What the fuck are you doing out right here?’ and he says, ‘I am simply having a smoke.’ That is once I notice he’s out of his thoughts,” Nance stated.
To maintain him out of bother and away from the entrance line, Nance stated, McIntyre was not allowed to deal with weapons and given menial duties, together with transferring provides and cleansing the kitchen.
At one level, he was placed on guard responsibility, working a makeshift checkpoint constructed from white sandbags.
When Nance went away for 2 days in July, he returned to be informed that McIntyre had spray-painted greater than 200 sandbags with the phrases, “Fuck you,” and incomprehensible phrases.
“It is mind-boggling as to the depth and dedication that it took,” Nance, who inspected the defaced checkpoint, stated. “It was simply insane. After which, growth, he was gone out of the legion that day.”
Fleeing throughout enemy traces to Russia
McIntyre stated within the RT interview that he went and joined the Carpathian Sich, a unit of Ukrainians and overseas nationals that Nance described as an “licensed militia.”
After a while, he tried to rejoin the Worldwide Legion, however the management refused, Nance stated. A number of months later, he appeared on TV in Moscow claiming that this was his plan all alongside.
McIntyre stated within the interview that he went to Moscow through Istanbul and claimed that he did so to move alongside beneficial info he gathered whereas performing as a “spy” in Ukraine.
“It is the explanation I got here to Ukraine within the first place, you understand. I am a communist. I am an anti-fascist,” he stated within the interview, whereas repeating the false Russian propaganda line that Ukraine is filled with Nazis.
Nance stated he categorically rejected the concept McIntyre had any robust ideological bent or that he might have gathered any helpful info to take over to Russia.
“He is an fool who was mentally unwell,” Nance stated. “And on the final minute, when he could not get again into the legion, he simply determined he would go to Moscow.”
McIntyre made numerous different dramatic claims in his interview. He stated that he was below menace of execution as a whistleblower, that the Ukrainian military had snipers set as much as shoot defectors and used civilians as human shields, and that many fighters had Nazi tattoos.
Nance stated all these claims have been fabricated and an instance of him “utilizing the Russian political line to additional an agenda.”
His conduct calls the Intentional Legion’s vetting course of into query
When McIntyre went to Ukraine within the early weeks of the struggle, following Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s public attraction for overseas volunteers, the vetting course of didn’t seem rigorous.
Smith, the retired Marine, stated that when he joined the legion in March 2022, he realized “all you needed to do was shoot a gun and breathe.”
The apparently lax course of meant that individuals like McIntyre who could also be ill-suited to warfare have been capable of slip by the cracks. The method has modified, Smith stated, and is now extra sturdy.
The Worldwide Legion didn’t reply to a request for remark.
Whereas McIntyre is an instance of somebody who could have gone to Ukraine with the mistaken intentions, Nance stated this was not typical of the volunteer fighters he’d labored with.
“Eighty % of the people who come into the legion are nice,” Nance stated. “They’re ideologically pushed. They do not like what Russia has carried out. They really feel of their hearts that they’ve to return assist.
“However each now and again, there is a class of what I name ‘the criminals, crazies, and con artists’ — the people who find themselves there to reinvent themselves.”
Smith affords McIntyre some sympathy. “He legitimately wanted institutional assist. He was going by psychological points,” he stated.
“There’s pity available for him, however it is a struggle,” Smith stated. “There are individuals right here who’ve legitimately died, who’ve bled out, and this man simply took it as a PR stunt.
“Johnny Alabama is actually self-destructing and simply making an attempt to undermine this personnel group who’ve given all that they bought.”
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