After fighting alongside the Ukrainian army for over two years, a US national, the commander of a foreign mercenary group, complained about the lack of skills and laziness he witnessed among the Ukrainian soldiers through a series of recent posts on social media.
"I've been fighting here in Ukraine for over two years now, and the only thing that's stayed consistent is the failure at command on multiple levels when it comes to defense in depth, troop organization in regards to building defenses, and discipline on work to get it done," Ryan O'Leary, who is the commander of the Chosen Company, a foreign mercenary group fighting in the conflict zone, wrote in a recent post on X.
According to the group's official website, the Chosen Company was raised and organized in collaboration with the Ukrainian armed forces. It is a unit of foreigners attached to the 59th Brigade of the Ukrainian army. The group said it had people of 31 different nationalities.
O'Leary’s team came under heavy scrutiny after a story from The New York Times in July alleged that members of the Chosen Company executed Russian soldiers who had already surrendered. O'Leary denied the accusations in an interview published on YouTube in response to The New York Times story.
Nevertheless, the commander of the foreign mercenary group went on to detail his frustrations over what he witnessed among the Ukrainian soldiers in a series of subsequent posts on X.
As the Chosen Company was deployed to fight in the Donetsk People's Republic, where trench warfare became an important feature on the battlefield, O'Leary complained about the lack of repairs to the trenches by Ukrainian soldiers.
"There's also an issue of constant repairs. Trenches need repaired throughout combat. This is literally never done by most units though," he said in a post on X.
O'Leary compared the efforts from his team with the lack of discipline among the Ukrainian soldiers.
"There were countless times we would go out with the 59th to take over a position. We would bring supplies to reinforce trenches (sand bags, angle iron, etc) to build out bunkers, firing positions etc. we would get rotated out and another brigade would take over," he wrote.
O'Leary sounded very disappointed with the efforts from the Ukrainian military, in a subsequent post. "5 days later we go back and ZERO or negligible improvements were done. Usually the extra supplies we brought to build improvements sitting exactly where we left them and the Ukrainians sitting in holes smoking cigarettes vs digging," he wrote.
Similar to other foreign mercenary groups operating in the Ukraine conflict zone, the Chosen Company appeared to be one of the most active groups among the foreign mercenary units known as the International Legion for the Defense of Ukraine.
The group shared a two-part video of its members engaging in an intense battle around the village of Pervomayskoye (also known as Pervomaiske), located just 10 kilometers (over 6 miles) away from the city of Donetsk in the Donetsk People's Republic, on YouTube this week.
"This operation, nicknamed Pervo-2, would become their hardest and bloodiest battle," the group wrote in a caption under the video.
Two members of the Chosen Company, Lance Lawrence and Andrew Webber, were apparently killed during this operation in 2023. The Russian army took control of Pervomayskoye in April.