ACanadian soldier known as “one of the world’s deadliest” snipers left his computer programmer job, his wife and year-old son to cross the Ukrainian border at night to fight Russian invaders alongside other foreign volunteers, according to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC).
Capable of killing a person with a rifle from over 2 miles away, the 40-year-old soldier—identified only by his nom de guerre “Wali” (in order to protect his family’s safety)—is now one of the over 20,000 foreign-born fighters who answered Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s call to fight Russia as part of Ukraine’s International Legion of Territorial Defense.
Wali previously served with the Royal Canadian Infantry’s 22nd Regiment in Kandahar during the war in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2011, according to The Independent. He also volunteered to fight alongside Kurdish forces to combat ISIS in Iraq in 2015.
When he left for Ukraine, the only combat equipment he had was a backpack, a gas mask, a ghillie suit (a camouflage suit typically used by snipers), binoculars and his combat jacket from Afghanistan, the French publication La Presse reported.
“I want to help [the Ukrainians]. It’s as simple as that,” he told the CBC. “I have to help because there are people here being bombarded just because they want to be European and not Russian.”
Upon finally meeting the Ukrainian forces, they greeted his group with hugs, handshakes and Ukrainian flags. “They were so happy to have us,” he told CBC. “It’s like we were friends right away.”
He soon sheltered with other British and Canadian veterans inside a renovated home. In the days that followed, he found himself grabbing anti-tank missiles in a warehouse, stocking up on oil and fuel to make Molotov cocktails and buying amateur drones to help with surveillance, La Presse reported.
He told the publication that Russia’s unique style of warfare levels cities with extensive cannon and artillery fire before bringing in infantry ground troops. As such, he said he’d have to “brush up…on how to shoot down a chopper or a tank.”
Though he has been called “one of the world’s most deadly snipers” by the British tabloid The Mirror, he said the hardest part was leaving behind his son whose first birthday occurred the week after he left.
“I know, it’s just awful. But me, in my head, when I see the images of destruction in Ukraine, it is my son that I see, in danger and who is suffering,” he told La Presse. “When I see a destroyed building, it is the person who owns it, who sees his pension fund go up in smoke, that I see.”
Wali’s wife, who remained nameless in media, said she knew when she met him in 2015 that he could possibly leave again for battle.
“I knew that if I didn’t let him go, I would have broken him,” she told The Sun. “It would have been like putting him in jail.”
Wali said he’s “not very keen on the idea of shooting the Russians,” according to The Guardian. As Christians and Europeans, he said he felt a “certain affinity” for Russians, adding, “I don’t hate them.”
He is one of more than 20,000 people from 52 countries who have volunteered to assist the country’s foreign legion, according to Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba.
While the Canadian government has advised its citizens to avoid all travel to Ukraine, Canadian Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly said that her country’s citizens may join Ukraine’s forces as an “individual choice,” the CBC reported.
Ukraine has offered its volunteer forces the chance to wear a Ukrainian uniform and secure citizenship. This helps ensure that volunteer soldiers are treated more humanely under the Geneva Conventions of war if captured by Russian forces, Tyler Wentzell, a doctoral candidate of law at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law who studied the foreign fighters and the legal responses to them, told the CBC
