As of: March 18, 2024, 7:13 p.m
By: Karsten Hinzmann
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“No military training prepares you for what it’s like to be under fire,” says a former German soldier.
Now another German has died in Ukraine.
(Symbolic image) © Efrem Lukatsky/AP
Another German soldier in a Ukrainian uniform is said to have died in the Ukrainian war.
He comes from a unit made up of volunteers from different countries.
Kiev – “I was always fascinated by the military,” he says.
First Jonas Kratzenberg was a Bundeswehr soldier in Afghanistan, then he went to Ukraine.
Today a jagged scar stretches from his left ear across his entire skull.
The surgeons removed endless amounts of shrapnel from his feet, legs and intestines.
The splinter remained in the eye, says Kratzenberg; according to the doctors, an operation could have caused more damage than leaving the wound intact.
Spiegel
wrote this story
at the end of 2023 – about a young person who voluntarily risked his life.
In the Ukraine war, to which he completely lacked personal connection;
to Russia as well as to the country he was willing to die for.
Now another volunteer has died, a German, as the
editorial network Germany
(RND)
reports based on information from the International Legion.
This is a unit that consists of volunteers from various countries, essentially mercenaries in the service of the nation invaded by Vladimir Putin's troops.
The 37-year-old soldier, who called himself Stefan, was killed in a Russian artillery attack in eastern Ukraine on Thursday (March 14), the Legion reported.
It was said that Stefan was working with a drone reconnaissance unit from a shelter that took a direct hit and then collapsed.
“When we managed to dig him out, he was already dead. He was a hero,” the message ends.
International Legion: Volunteers quickly withdrew from the fighting
Shortly after the Russian attack, the Ukrainian government reported the number of foreign volunteers in its army as 20,000.
The largest contingent was and continues to be the international volunteer association “Legion of Free Russia”, which emerged from Russian soldiers who defected to Ukraine.
According to information from the American online magazine
Vice
, a tenth of the total number of volunteers remained after just over a year of war;
the current number is unknown.
A year ago, Vice
anonymously quoted a Ukrainian military man to explain the falling numbers: “The romantics from the beginning of the war have disappeared.”
Stefan said in an earlier interview with the
RND
that he was in the Bundeswehr for five years and deployed to Afghanistan three times.
He had a trucking company in southern Germany before he went to Ukraine in April 2022.
Just like the 26-year-old Panzergrenadier Jonas Kratzenberg, he served in a reconnaissance unit.
But it is precisely the combat and being under fire that excites me so much.
Maybe I’m an adrenaline junkie.”
Jonas Kratzenberg, ex-Ukrainian soldier, told n-tv
Zeit Online
writes that the majority of the Ukrainian Foreign Legion consisted of countries such as Belarus and other former Soviet republics; 50 nations were originally represented, and several thousand came from the USA;
like the former Bundeswehr soldier Jonas Kratzenberg, mostly former members of the regular armed forces in their countries of origin.
As the author of a book about his everyday life at the front for several months (“Schützenhilfe”), Kratzenberger became a popular conversation partner: “It may be difficult to understand.
But it is precisely the combat and being under fire that excites me so much.
Maybe I’m an adrenaline junkie,” Kratzenberg told broadcaster
n-tv
.
He explained on
ZDF
that the suffering in Ukraine had touched him so deeply that he felt compelled to act.
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Voluntarily against Russia: Soldiers want to iron out political mistakes
“I wanted to do something against the war, I was of the opinion that my country and NATO had not done enough and were continuing to do enough to support Ukraine,” he then told Südwestrundfunk
–
for him, his intervention had a moral component and the political speeches about preserving peace always seemed quixotic to him;
Putin had long since publicly portrayed himself as an aggressor and no one wanted to admit it.
For the first time, as a soldier, he saw a war that he had never encountered before in his job.
Despite his experiences, for example in Afghanistan.
However, he then turned his back on the Ukrainian army as he had previously turned his back on the Bundeswehr when he could not find himself in the sometimes chaotic structures of the first months of the war.
The affection for the freedom-loving Ukrainians remained.
Kratzenberg, who has now been living in Germany again, wants to return to Ukraine after the war, as he
told
Südwestrundfunk .
Swiss Foreign Legionnaire: Risk of prison after returning from Ukraine
The online magazine
swissinfo
currently has a similar report : “The only language the Russians understand is a steel fist in the face.
You have to beat them up and show them that it doesn’t work that way,” says Swiss Jona Neidhart.
His deep dislike for the Russians is also linked to his own background, because the Russians killed his Polish grandfather in the Second World War.
“I couldn't stay seated.
I had to act,” he tells the magazine.
Now in March he has invaded Ukraine and is reinforcing an army that is in its third year of war and is exhausted.
What makes things even more difficult for the 36-year-old devout Christian with no military training is that, according to Swiss law, he is going to war illegally.
He faces several years in prison.
But his commitment is worth it to him.
“I will suffer with this people and, if necessary, perish with them if I have to,” he tells
swissinfo
.
“Morally, however, there is no alternative for me to my actions.
No!"
A Navy Seal goes against Putin – out of fear of the domestic justice system
The voluntary German fighters are not necessarily liable to prosecution.
At least if they join the state armed forces and also wear the national emblems of the respective state.
It is something different when the volunteers join a private fighting group.
This could be considered support for a terrorist organization.
According to the international lawyer Simon Gauseweg from Frankfurt, this international legion of territorial defense of Ukraine is integrated into the regular Ukrainian armed forces, as the
Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk
reports.
In the USA, the death of a former soldier in the Navy Seals, a naval special unit, was announced around a year ago: Daniel W. Swift, however, had been on the run for four years because of leaving his troops without permission.
He may have fled to Ukraine to avoid prison.
The motives for participating in the Ukraine war seem to be complex for foreigners and lie as much in escape as in a supposed longing.
What counts in war, despite all the technology, is the appreciation of the individual, which, for example, Russian military doctrine completely ignores;
as the political scientist Herfried Münkler summarizes in the
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
in his review of the book
Soldiers
by the military historian Sönke Neitzel: “It is not political ideologies, but small group experiences that are decisive for the combat effectiveness of soldiers, their willingness to kill and their ability to persevere.
In addition to trust in the competence of the officers, it is above all the experience of camaraderie that holds a force together and allows it to continue fighting even when the political-military situation has become hopeless.”
So it's not just about good, modern equipment, but also about clear answers to the question of the meaning of the military mission.
Mental commitment - translated into combat morale - can decide between victory or defeat on the battlefield, and can even compensate for personnel and material inferiority, writes the Bundeswehr on the morale and willingness to take responsibility of the individual soldier.
However, the world in the trenches looks different than in the everyday life of an army that has never experienced war, as ex-soldier Jonas Kratzenberg confirms: “No military training prepares you for what it is like to be under fire
t.” (kah
in)