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A United States citizen killed by Russian artillery fire in the besieged Ukrainian city of Bakhmut has been identified as a retired U.S. Army Special Forces soldier who was training volunteers.
Retired Army Staff Sgt. Nicholas Maimer, 45, was in a building that collapsed after being hit by artillery fire earlier this week, retired Lt. Col. Perry Blackburn, founder of the nonprofit organization AFGfree, with which Maimer was working in Ukraine, told multiple outlets.
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“From what I understand, he was providing them with firsthand training in that area so that they can continue to do the fight, and he got caught behind enemy lines,” Blackburn told the Idaho Statesman. “It’s just a crazy, crazy time right now. And then having Nick die over there, it’s just brutal.”
Maimer served 20 years before retiring in 2018.
The leader of the Russian private military company Wagner, Yevgeny Prigozhin, claimed to show the body of an American in a video posted on the Wagner Group’s Telegram on Tuesday. Prigozhin was shown inspecting a body and what he claimed were identification cards.
Blackburn and Maimer’s uncle, Paul Maimer, each identified the body in the video as Maimer’s, with the latter telling the Idaho Statesman of his nephew, “He persevered through a lot in his life. I had the utmost respect for him. A lot of people can learn from who he was and what he had accomplished in his short life. In 45 years, he lived a lot. He went over there as a humanitarian trying to do good for this world.”
Prigozhin said in the video that his forces would “hand him over to the United States,” though he often uses his social media for propaganda.
“We’re just trying to get him home for proper burial,” Paul Maimer added. “I think he’s deserving to be put to rest in a veterans cemetery. He might not have been fighting for our country, but he was fighting for the right reasons.”
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Last year, Sen. Jim Risch (R-ID) met with Nicholas Maimer in Kyiv when the ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee traveled to Ukraine to see the consequences of the war up close.
Thousands of Western volunteers traveled to Ukraine after Russia’s invasion to assist Ukrainian forces in the war effort, even though Biden administration officials warned against it repeatedly. Maimer is at least the ninth U.S. volunteer to die in the conflict.
Original Location: Former US Army Special Forces soldier killed by Russian artillery in Bakhmut
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