The Australian Who Came to Ukraine to Find Himself

The strange and compelling story of an Australian soldier who came to Ukraine in search of adventure, found war and discovered that the most difficult person to understand was himself.

By Matthew Parish

Thursday 5 November 2026

There is something peculiarly fascinating about the foreign soldiers who have come to fight for Ukraine. They are men of wildly different backgrounds, temperaments and motivations, united by a willingness to risk their lives for a country in which most of them were not born. Some are professional soldiers attracted by the opportunity to practise their military skills. Others are idealists, adventurers, fugitives from unhappy personal circumstances or simply people who have discovered that ordinary civilian life no longer offers them enough. The distinctions between these categories are often considerably less clear than we might imagine.

One such soldier is an Australian whom we shall call C. He is an unusual man, even by the standards of the international volunteers fighting in Ukraine. He is openly autistic, has undertaken extraordinarily dangerous military missions, has spent time experimenting with psychedelic drugs amongst hippies in the forest and has experienced what he describes as a spiritual calling to fight in Ukraine. He would also like to find love with a Ukrainian woman, establish a business and make Ukraine his permanent home. He is not entirely sure how to achieve any of these things.

C's story is not a conventional tale of military heroism. Indeed it is difficult to know quite what sort of story it is, because he himself seems uncertain about the destination of the extraordinary journey upon which he has embarked. What emerges from his reflections is something rather more interesting than the familiar mythology of the fearless foreign volunteer. It is a portrait of a young man trying to reconcile his intellectual understanding of the world with the strange impulses that have led him halfway across it.

C's fascination with Ukraine began long before Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022. Growing up in Australia, he was drawn towards distant countries that seemed to offer something beyond the familiar surroundings of his homeland. Ukraine and Russia fascinated him precisely because they appeared exotic and remote. He followed the Maidan protests as a teenager and continued to take an interest in the country as its modern history unfolded.

He cannot altogether explain the attraction. America was another possibility, but Ukraine exercised a peculiar influence upon his imagination. He describes it as a magnet pulling him towards a place he did not yet fully understand. Perhaps, he speculates, his subconscious motivations were concealing themselves beneath the explanations he consciously constructed for his own decisions.

In 2022 he travelled to Ukraine without a concrete plan. By 2023 he had begun making more definite arrangements, eventually entering military service. His first impressions challenged some of his assumptions. Lviv was considerably less like the stereotypical post-Soviet city he had imagined, although he was surprised by how few people spoke English. For someone who had travelled such an extraordinary distance to discover an unfamiliar society, the experience of actually living within it introduced an entirely new set of difficulties.

C is openly autistic, something he now describes as a characteristic he cherishes. Autism is not a single personality type and there is no reason to assume that autistic people necessarily experience danger, courage or emotional attachment in any uniform fashion. Nevertheless, in C's case it seems reasonable to ask whether his particular ways of interpreting the world have influenced his experiences as a soldier.

He does not pretend to have all the answers. Asked whether autism changes the way he assesses danger or makes decisions under pressure, he replies simply that he is not sure. He acknowledges enjoying the adrenaline of combat and even the sound of explosions. This is not an admission one hears every day, although anybody who has spent time among combat soldiers will know that the psychological relationship between terror and exhilaration can become extraordinarily complicated.

C has survived situations in which he believed he was about to die. He is unwilling to describe the details of his most dangerous military missions, a boundary that deserves respect. Yet he recalls something striking about his emotional response when confronted with the apparent imminence of death. Rather than describing panic, religious consolation or thoughts of loved ones, he remembers a sense of pure defiance: "This is it — fuck you."

There is something almost existentialist about this response. The individual confronts the possibility of annihilation and responds by asserting his own will against circumstances he cannot control. Whether this attitude is attributable to autism, military experience, individual temperament or some combination of the three is impossible to establish. What matters is that C appears to have found a particular kind of psychological clarity in situations that most people would regard as intolerable.

Yet his relations with other soldiers have not always been straightforward. He acknowledges that they sometimes misunderstand him, although he has been surprised by the extent to which people in Ukraine are familiar with autism. The battlefield may offer a peculiar kind of directness, in which actions and immediate responsibilities carry more weight than the elaborate conventions of ordinary social life. Nevertheless, even amongst comrades exposed to the same dangers, human misunderstanding remains unavoidable.

One of the most revealing aspects of C's experience concerns patriotism. Like many foreign volunteers, he initially found it difficult to understand why some Ukrainians did not seem to share his fervent commitment to defending their country. Having voluntarily crossed continents to fight Russia, he encountered people born in Ukraine whose attitudes towards the war were considerably more ambivalent than his own.

This is an apparent paradox familiar to anyone who has spent substantial time in wartime Ukraine. Foreign volunteers may approach the war as a moral choice, even a defining act of personal commitment. Ukrainians themselves have not necessarily enjoyed the luxury of making such a choice. They have lived through the upheavals of their country's political history, the uncertainties of its institutions, the economic difficulties of everyday life and the accumulating exhaustion of years of warfare.

C has gradually come to appreciate this distinction. As time passed, he found his own mentality becoming more similar to that of the Ukrainians around him. He recognised that he had not lived through the periods of national turmoil and disappointment that had shaped their attitudes. When he encountered Ukrainians reluctant to embrace his understanding of patriotic duty, he began to appreciate their perspectives rather than simply finding them incomprehensible.

His most interesting observation is that Ukrainian patriotism is generally not abstract. It is not necessarily expressed through grand declarations about national destiny or philosophical commitments to sovereignty. It may instead consist of attachment to a particular family, neighbourhood, village or way of life. The Ukrainian defending his home may have a more complicated relationship with his country than the foreigner defending an idealised version of it, but that does not necessarily make his patriotism any less profound.

In this respect C appears to have undergone an important intellectual transformation. He arrived in Ukraine attracted by an idea and has gradually discovered the complexity of the people who inhabit it. This is perhaps one of the most valuable lessons any foreigner can learn here: love of Ukraine does not require an uncritical admiration for everything Ukrainian, and the experience of living through a war is very different from observing one from afar.

Then there is the extraordinary episode involving the hippies.

At some point C left military service and spent time in the forest amongst people pursuing a very different form of existence. The contrast is almost comically dramatic. One moment we have a soldier embracing the danger, discipline and destructive intensity of modern warfare. The next we find him sitting around a bonfire, experimenting with LSD and contemplating the mysteries of human consciousness.

It would be easy to dismiss this as youthful eccentricity. C's own account suggests something more significant. He believes the psychedelic experiences changed him, although not immediately. Over time he noticed transformations in the way he understood himself and the world. He describes the experience as unlocking things within his mind, without claiming to possess a complete explanation of what had happened.

Most strikingly, his time among the hippies did not persuade him to abandon the war permanently. Instead, during an LSD experience beside a bonfire, he felt what he describes as a spiritual calling to return to military service. Earlier he had prayed at the Maidan in Kyiv and experienced a powerful intuition about what he ought to do. The subsequent experience in the forest seemed to reinforce that feeling.

Whether one interprets these events as religious experiences, psychologically significant episodes or the effects of a powerful psychoactive substance is a matter of individual judgment. C does not offer a theological system to explain them. He merely reports that they were meaningful and that they contributed to his understanding of the direction his life should take.

His return to military service also had a considerably more mundane explanation: he needed money. There is an almost endearing lack of pretension in this admission. Human beings are rarely motivated by one thing at a time. Spiritual revelation, financial necessity, personal ambition and the attractions of military comradeship can coexist within the same individual without any of them being entirely insincere.

C sees the apparent contradictions between his experiences as manifestations of recurring patterns in his life. The oscillation between military service and unconventional civilian existence reminds him of experiences he has undergone in Australia. Perhaps this is why his journey is more complicated than a simple departure from one country in search of another. Wherever he travels, certain themes appear to follow him.

This becomes especially apparent when he discusses loneliness.

C admits to having felt lonely in Ukraine. Yet the solution he describes is unexpectedly introspective. He came to believe that he had been hiding himself, and that when he began talking to himself again he experienced a sudden enrichment of his internal mental life. The formulation is unusual, but the underlying insight is a serious one.

Loneliness is not necessarily the absence of other people. It may also involve an estrangement from one's own thoughts, desires and identity. A person can spend his days surrounded by soldiers, acquaintances and potential romantic partners while remaining profoundly disconnected from the internal life that gives his experiences meaning. C seems to have discovered that companionship with oneself can be a prerequisite for meaningful companionship with others.

He suspects that he may have felt more understood in Ukraine than in Australia, although he immediately qualifies this observation. Perhaps he simply never made much effort to seek out like-minded people in his homeland. This capacity to reconsider his own explanations is one of the most engaging features of his reflections. He does not appear particularly interested in presenting himself as a heroic figure who has discovered the answers to life's most important questions.

He is also searching for romantic love. He would like to establish a relationship with a Ukrainian woman, although this ambition has so far remained unfulfilled. He is less expansive about this aspect of his personal circumstances, and there is no reason to suppose that the complexities of love become any simpler because somebody has demonstrated courage on a battlefield.

Indeed the difficulties may be considerably greater. Military service creates uncertainty, danger and prolonged absences, while relationships across national and linguistic boundaries introduce additional challenges. C initially struggled to understand the cultural differences between Australia and Ukraine, although he now suggests that, in retrospect, those differences may not be nearly as great as he once imagined.

His attitude towards the two countries contains one of the most fascinating historical analogies in his account. He sees Ukraine and Australia as countries with elements of a shared frontier mentality. Both, in his imagination, have histories of wide open spaces in which people sought freedom from established societies and opportunities to begin again.

The comparison is historically imperfect, as most such comparisons inevitably are. Australia's settler history involved the dispossession of Indigenous peoples, while Ukraine's history of the steppe, Cossack autonomy and resistance to imperial domination followed a very different trajectory. Yet the analogy tells us something important about how C understands his own journey.

He describes moving from Australia to Ukraine as a reverse journey of his ancestors. Instead of leaving Europe and its surrounding world for a distant frontier, he has travelled back towards Europe in search of another landscape of possibilities. The attraction, in his own words, includes chaos, instability, greater freedom and proximity to the rest of Europe.

These are hardly conventional arguments for choosing a permanent home. Most people seek stability, predictability and economic security when deciding where to settle. C appears attracted, at least in part, by their opposites. Perhaps the uncertainty of Ukrainian life offers him something that a more settled society cannot: the possibility of creating an identity without being constrained by the expectations of the world in which he grew up.

He would like to establish a business in Ukraine, although the precise nature of that business remains uncertain. Money and time are immediate obstacles. He recognises that being an internationally experienced native English speaker is potentially an advantage, but has not yet identified how to translate that advantage into a sustainable commercial enterprise.

Here the romantic ideal of Ukraine as a land of opportunity encounters the practical realities of everyday life. Starting a business requires more than imagination and enthusiasm. It demands capital, patience, knowledge of local institutions and the willingness to perform innumerable mundane tasks that are rather less exciting than military service or psychedelic revelations beside a forest bonfire.

Yet perhaps these difficulties are precisely what C needs to confront. It is one thing to find purpose in extraordinary experiences, where the intensity of circumstances supplies a ready-made sense of significance. It is quite another to construct meaning within the repetitive routines of civilian existence.

Asked whether he would remain in Ukraine if the war ended and his ambitions concerning love and business remained unrealised, he is uncertain. He might stay, or he might return to Australia. This is not necessarily evidence of a lack of commitment. It may instead reflect an increasing willingness to acknowledge that the future cannot be forced into conformity with the narratives we construct about ourselves.

When asked whether he was searching for something in Ukraine or attempting to escape something in Australia, C gives perhaps his most revealing answer: "Searching for myself. And I took myself with me, I couldn't leave it behind."

There is a remarkable amount of philosophy concealed within this simple observation. Human beings frequently imagine that changing their external circumstances will resolve their internal difficulties. We move countries, change professions, embark upon relationships or embrace radically different lifestyles in the hope that geographical or social transformation will produce a corresponding transformation of the self.

Yet wherever we travel, we remain accompanied by our memories, anxieties, desires and habitual patterns of thought. A person can leave Australia, enter a foreign army, survive dangerous missions, experiment with psychedelics and contemplate establishing a new life in Ukraine without escaping the fundamental question of who he is.

C appears to understand this better than many people who have spent their entire lives reflecting upon the problem.

His philosophical outlook is equally interesting. Asked what makes life worthwhile, he initially reaches for the language of hedonism and negative utilitarianism. Logically, he suggests, human beings seek pleasure and attempt to avoid suffering. Yet he immediately recognises the limitations of this formulation. People are irrational creatures, frequently pursuing objectives that appear to contradict their own happiness.

Ultimately he identifies the fulfilment of his creative drive as the purpose he would choose for himself. This is a revealing conclusion for somebody whose recent life has involved the destructive activities of warfare. Beneath the soldier's attraction to danger and the adventurer's appetite for unfamiliar experiences lies a desire to create something.

Perhaps this is why he wants to establish a business. Perhaps it also explains his attraction to romance, his psychedelic experiences and his search for a spiritual meaning in the war. These may all be expressions of an underlying desire to shape the world rather than merely respond to it.

C's reflections also challenge some of our conventional assumptions about courage. We tend to imagine bravery as a settled character trait, something possessed by certain exceptional individuals and lacking in others. Yet courage may coexist with uncertainty, loneliness, social awkwardness and an incomplete understanding of one's own motivations. The person who can confront death with an expression of defiance may still struggle with the ordinary emotional difficulties that most people encounter in their everyday lives.

There is no contradiction in this. Courage is not the absence of vulnerability, and vulnerability does not invalidate courage. Nor should autism be treated as a convenient explanation for everything unusual about C's behaviour. His personality is plainly the product of many influences, some of which he understands and others he is still attempting to discover.

His attitude towards the future is perhaps the most touching part of his story. Asked what advice he would give to his younger self, before embarking upon his journey to Ukraine, he suggests being careful what one wishes for and asking oneself what one truly wants. It is the sort of advice that can only acquire its full significance after a person has experienced the consequences of choices whose implications he could not originally have imagined.

And what of his ideal future, ten years from now, when the war has ended and he is living somewhere in a peaceful Ukraine? One might expect an elaborate answer involving military honours, commercial success, a loving family or the fulfilment of some grand philosophical ambition.

C imagines something considerably simpler: enjoying the summer and living for himself.

There is a quiet beauty in this answer. After the explosions, the dangerous missions, the search for spiritual enlightenment, the frustrations of romantic life and the repeated attempts to understand a foreign society, his ambition is to enjoy the warmth of an ordinary summer's day. The man who crossed the world in search of extraordinary experiences seems ultimately to dream of something unremarkable.

Perhaps this is the central paradox of C's life. He came to Ukraine drawn by an almost mysterious attraction towards distant lands and dramatic events. He discovered a war, confronted the possibility of death and found himself repeatedly returning to questions about identity, happiness and the meaning of existence.

Yet the deeper lesson may be that the most important things in life are not necessarily discovered through extraordinary adventures. Sometimes the adventures merely teach us to recognise the value of things we might otherwise have taken for granted.

Ukraine has become a place in which millions of people have been compelled to reconsider the meaning of their lives. For Ukrainians themselves, the war has imposed questions about duty, freedom, personal sacrifice and the future of their country that they never wished to confront. For foreign volunteers such as C, it has offered a different kind of encounter with the same fundamental problems.

C is not a conventional hero, nor does he seem particularly concerned with becoming one. He is a complicated, thoughtful and occasionally contradictory man whose courage is accompanied by uncertainty and whose search for belonging has led him into circumstances of extraordinary danger.

Perhaps he will find love in Ukraine. Perhaps he will establish a successful business, make the country his permanent home and eventually spend those long summer days enjoying the ordinary pleasures of civilian life. Perhaps he will return to Australia, taking with him a collection of experiences that will shape the rest of his existence.

Whatever happens, one suspects that the journey will continue to be as much internal as geographical. C travelled halfway around the world in search of himself, only to discover that the self he was seeking had accompanied him all along.

And somewhere between an Australian childhood, a prayer on the Maidan, a forest bonfire and a Ukrainian battlefield, he may have begun to understand what that discovery means.