If this report is true then those trigger happy Americans that had to dash off to Ukraine to the new partisans will provide Russia/Putin a wealth of new propaganda for the folks back home.
Two US military veterans from Alabama are thought to be the first Americans captured by Russia while fighting for Ukraine. Alexander Drueke, 39, from Tuscaloosa, formerly of the US Army, and Andy Tai Ngoc Huynh, 27, from Hartselle, formerly of the Marine Corps, volunteered to assist in the war effort but are now missing and feared to have been taken prisoner, according to family members, who are in contact with US congressional offices and the US Embassy in Ukraine, per the Guardian and Washington Post. “If it’s true, we’ll do everything we can to get them safely back home,” says John Kirby, National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications.
Family members tell CNN that the men haven’t been heard from since June 8, when they said they would be spending a few days on a mission. Another fighter, who provided CNN with photos of the men’s passports and entry stamps into Ukraine, said both vanished during a battle near the town of Izbytske, northeast of Kharkiv, on June 9, while under the command of Ukraine’s 92nd mechanized brigade. He described the battle as “absolute chaos,” with “about a hundred plus infantry advancing on our positions. We had a T72 firing on people from 30, 40 meters away.” The man said searches failed to turn up any sign of the men but a Russian propaganda channel on Telegram later claimed “two American mercenaries” had been captured, per the Telegraph.
Drueke’s mother, Lois “Bunny” Drueke, said her son told her he would be training Ukrainians on how to use US-made weapons, per the Post. He said “if [Russian President Vladimir] Putin is not stopped there he is not going to be satisfied, he will become emboldened and eventually Americans will be threatened,” she told CNN’s AC360 on Wednesday, appearing with Huynh’s fiancee, Joy Black. Huynh “really had this gnawing at his heart and this big burden on him to go and serve the people however he can,” Black said. “I’m still very proud of him. I just want to see him back safely.” (Russia has sentenced three foreign nationals to die for fighting on behalf of Ukraine, in what UK officials say is a violation of the Geneva Conventions.)
Like I said…..if true Putin just got boost to his war propaganda machine.
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Our country is giving 10’s of billions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine, and you think a couple of guys providing training in country is a big deal?
Pay attention…I think it is a big deal for propaganda purposes for Putin…..They were either CIA or mercenaries either way being captured is a fact of war……chuq
Or they were volunteers.
The Biden administration is not doing anything to hide its support for Ukraine. Those people blab anything and everything to prove they are “doing something.” Putin needs prisoners just to show he is “doing something.”
What is a big deal for liars has next to nothing to do with the truth. It may, however, have everything to do with appearances. Kind of like a “trans” woman.
You could make the point with that……all is lies…the US, NATO, Ukraine….propaganda is at a premium in our MSM chuq
All lies? No. More complicated than that. We must try to separate the truth from the half truth, and that is not easily done.
Education helps….critical thinking helps….a couple of things Americans seem to lack. chuq
I really dislike even thinking like this.. but if American citizens find themselves compelled to go over to countries where they can easily be kidnapped/arrested on bogus charges/detained indefinitely for no reason simply because they ARE American… should we be bound to be responsible for getting them out?
No question.. some Americans inside such countries for various reasons before some internal political climate changed and they got caught up in it.. sure. But things like going over to help fight their battles… knowing full damn well they can fall into enemy captivity.. and we have to responsible for them? Even these Afghanistan folks re-patriated here in America, and they decide to take a trip back there to see extended family, and they get detained indefinitely. Why is that on us?
The same for media reporters going to these countries. You go there, get stuck there for years.. and that’s our responsibility?
As for those two who decided on their own, and against State Dept. warnings, went to fight against Russians in Ukraine.. were they so damn gung ho with American military cockiness that they thought they’d never get captured or killed.. or even used as political pawns to be used against America? Now we have to listen to the moms and dads of these guys pleading with our State Dept. to do something as Russian propaganda trickles out photos of these guys to keep the national emotion alive?
As I told Tom….being captured is a fact of war…..I agree all options should be considered before going batcrap crazy…….but for me their actions are on their heads. chuq
Captured Americans really pose a big problem. Many releases are set around prisoner exchanges wherein the US must trade away some very bad people who are so well connected in upper echelons of war, weapons and terrorism they pose a real threat to the world if released. A soldier of fortune is responsible for his own misfortune.
They create a problem that is they care nothing about anything but themselves….being captured is their problem…. used against the US….they are doing it for fame and glory…..they need to face the music…..chuq
Education helps and so does critical thinking, which we learn in part through a good education. What I think matters most, however, is humility. Until we realize that God is God and “I” am not, we tend to be too full of ourselves.
We have a bunch of big government advocates in this country, for example, because too many of us are determined to make other people do “the right thing.”
A diminished government helps NO one. There is the rub…good education….too many see education as some sort of demonic instruction….I am not one of them. chuq
When we put politicians in charge of educating us, instead of being a people who govern themselves, we become a people who are governed by a wolfish elite. That kind of government needs to be diminished.
The wolfish elite are those that pretend to be for the people but are easily bought….our politicians…..I disagree there needs to be a national standard for if you let elected officials decide you get the US of today. chuq
Brevity may be the soul of wit, but sometimes brevity just leaves too much unexplained.
Does there need to be a national standard or not? What national standard are you talking about?
The same standard they help my grandfather to in 1938…if one fights for another country they lose their rights, all rights, as Americans. Can you understand that? You would know all of this if you were a regular reader..,.I have written on it several times. chuq
My bad…I thought we were talking about people fighting in other’s wars….on education then yes there needs to be a curriculum that includes lots of civics..there are too many that have No idea what the government is suppose to be doing. ….and history, all history…too much whitewashing going on now…..everyone seems afraid of our history. chuq
If you are serious about achieving the objective you apparently want, then you should be advocating that the education be under the control of parents, not politicians.
Those seeking Utopian solutions constantly seek to control the education of other people’s children, and they make all kinds of solutions to justify such nonsense. But politicians have no excuse forcing taxpayers to pay for the indoctrination of other people’s children in beliefs they abhor, and politicians have no excuse for forcing parents to send their children to politician-run schools so those children can be indoctrinated in beliefs their parents abhor. Such behavior is an inherently tyrannical abuse of power, and it is exactly the sort of thing we should expect when we give politicians that sort of power.
Think! You want children to get a decent education in civics? Since the vast majority of parents want what is best for their children, doesn’t it make more sense to allow parents to choose how their children are educated? Since nobody in their right mind trust politicians, why would anyone want to trust them with their children when they do not have to do so?
The solution is some form of school choice for parents.
It seems the greater issue to school choice is the idea that any one of us can simply decide where our tax money should go.. and I don’t mean that collectively. I mean, you personally don’t want YOUR tax dollars funding abortions because current policy cannot discriminate on medical care based on economic status, because you feel that takes a life. Now you are saying that you don’t want your personal tax dollars going to public education when you want to send your kid to a non-public school and prefer your money be spent there. Let’s carry this further…. you don’t like a certain foreign policy.. let’s say, invading Afghanistan, so you object to your personal tax dollars going there to kill people. Even further.. Let’s say I’m a Trump person and I object to the Jan. 6 committee, should I be able to withhold my personal tax dollars paying for that body to investigate? I personally never liked the military deciding that service personnel look better with those stupid looking berets (fortunately adopted after I left the military). Should I withhold paying my tax dollars that pay for those things?
We don’t live in a corporate “cafeteria-style” government where we can pick and choose where our personal tax bucks go.
@Doug
You have just made a great argument for limited government.
There is no right to make someone else pay for your child’s education. Therefore, I would be pleased to see government get out of the education business.
As the Declaration of Independence explains, we need a government to protect us from each other. When the government starts trying to run our lives from cradle to grave — for our own good, supposedly — we become the slaves of that government. Then we have a failure of government which can only be made worse by the complete absence of any kind of government. That we refer to as anarchy.
Note something important. The more the government does, the easier it is for special interest groups to pervert government institutions. For example, consider again the subject of education. The teachers’ unions, not parents, dominate how the public schools operate, and that is obvious at this point.
Why are the teachers’ unions able to dominate the public schools? Is that not something the parents should be most concerned about? Yes and no. The more the government does the more fragmented we become, divided into special interest groups. Therefore, when the teachers’ unions run the schools for the union’s benefit instead of the student’s benefit, it is difficult to organize opposition, including parents. Parents also belong to special interest groups.
Just consider the mechanics of voting. Each of the candidate may have a record or a position statement on such a large variety of issues that it can be horridly difficult to decide which candidate we most like. Fortunately, Liberal Democrats have become so radical that that has gotten much easier. The arrogance of Liberal Democrats is amazing.
Letting uneducated parents run the education is just another way to make history as distorted as it is now. chuq
We let a bunch of supposedly uneducated people buy automobiles, houses, clothes, books, computers health-care, and so forth for their children. For the most part that works because those people copy the examples of other people. Putting politicians in charge, however, leads to serious problems such as those you have already described.
They buy these things so they do not have to face reality…..and there is the biggest problem…….chuq
We are supposed to not want automobiles, houses, clothes, books, computers health-care, and so forth for our children? That’s a problem?
You read too much into the comment…..chuq
The two British nationals and a Morroccan serving with the Ukrainian Marines were captured by separatist Ukrainian soldiers of The Donetsk People’s Republic. It was their court that sentenced them to death as mercenaries, which gave the Russians the opportunity to say it was nothing to do with them.
During the Spanish Civil War, captured members of the International Brigades were often executed by the Nationalists, and any foreigner volunteering to fight in Ukraine needs to be well-aware of what might happen to them as prisoners.
Best wishes, Pete.
I agree…but being trigger happy makes one stupid. chuq
If they have the balls to stick their nose into some foreign crap hole where a war is raging, and if their machismo gets them captured or killed, whose fault is that and why should our government be responsible for extricating them from their own folly? I think people like that and especially those who have families here at home, need to think twice before locking and loading their minds to put themselves in harms way because children deserve parents …wives deserve husbands, husbands deserve wives … If the self-proclaimed warriors will just wait awhile, they might get their chance to face an armed and hostile enemy because sooner or later I believe that we are going to become embroiled in a world war anyway.
Blood lust is the killer of nations…..and we are headed down that road at break neck speed. chuq
I give an absolute “Amen” to your insight on that one.
😎
I hate to be an unsympathetic asshole (which everyone who knows me will attest that I actually am) but if those guys had families and left them to go over there and put themselves in harms way, regardless of their reasoning, I have very little feelings of compassion for them …. if that is what they did, it was the stupidest damn thing I ever heard of anybody doing …going into the middle of a lost cause, leaving family back home to fend for themselves …what is this country coming to? “Family First” should be every American’s first priority.
Seems everyone is trying to find that individual glory….war is not the way….I am not so sure that family means much to these guys. chuq
A lot of them appear to me to act like self-absorbed, arrogant, aggressive, totally selfish attention-seeking narcissists with something of a blood lust who want to treat their trips to combat zones more like hunting trips instead of some patriotic zeal in action .
They may think blood lust but few seem to have the nuts to do anything about it….other strut around trying to bully…..chuq
Maybe they are closet homosexuals who need the stimulus of danger to feel like real men.
“We’re men, we’re men in tights, yeah!
We roam around the forest looking the forest looking for fights.”
Sounds about right chuq