Meet Ryan O’Leary. He currently is in the Bakhmut area of operations fighting under the command of Ukrainian officers. Mr. O’Leary is not happy. He is a 34 year old alumni of Carroll High School in Iowa and a National Guard veteran who served in Afghanistan and Iraq,
He reports that his unit is undermanned and lacking in heavy weapons because “they’ve gone missing.” In other words, the weapons are being sold on the black market. O’Leary blames the logistics problems on the corrupt, criminal behavior of his Ukrainian chain of command — from the Major General to his Captain. He specifically calls out a Captain Baroda, noting that Baroda traffics in a host of illegal narcotics. Read the following series of tweets. They are self-explanatory:
I fear that young Mr. O’Leary has signed his death warrant. Men like Captain Baroda will retaliate in a very brutal way against anyone who interferes with their “entrepreneurial” activity. At some point the U.S. legislators, media and public need to wake up from their delusional dream that Ukraine is a budding democracy fighting for truth and justice and realize it is a kleptocracy celebrating a neo-Nazi ideology. President Zelensky and his general, Zalushny, have sent the cream of Ukraine’s youth into a slaughterhouse while depriving them of the supplies, ammunition and weapons required to fight the Russians.
It is a tragedy that Ryan O’Leary has traveled so far from the bucolic farms of western Iowa to learn a very hard truth. I hope he survives.