Retired Marine colonel is teaching Ukrainians how to fight

Andy Milburn commanded a special operations task force fighting the Islamic State in Iraq.

But the retired Marine colonel says he’s never seen atrocities like the ones committed by the Russians in Ukraine.

“I have seen a lot of devastation and depravity of mankind,” he said. He was in Bucha, outside Kyiv, where the bodies of hundreds of massacred civilians, including children, were found after Russian forces were driven from the city. “Bucha — Bucha was something that really…left me numb for several days … family vehicles, every occupant killed, not just one or two, not just because soldiers were trigger happy but clearly targeted all along that road," he said. "It just left me with such a feeling of contempt and anger that I never felt for the Islamic State, [that] I never felt for al Qaeda.”

Milburn, who retired in 2019 as deputy commander of U.S. special operations forces in the Middle East, traveled to Ukraine in March intending to cover the conflict as a journalist. But he quickly decided he needed to get involved.