The Long War: A Second Interview with Justin Mishler
An American soldier reflects upon four and a half years of fighting for Ukraine, the loss of friends, the transformation of modern warfare and the uncertain prospect of peace.
By Dr Matthew Parish, Editor-in-Chief, the Lviv Herald
Kharkiv, 3 November 2026.
The lights went out halfway through our lunch. The internet had already failed, the restaurant's electronic payment system had stopped working and the kitchen was reduced to cooking our food on an outdoor grill. For much of our conversation we sat in near darkness, interrupted occasionally by the staff attempting to resolve one problem after another. It was an entirely ordinary day in Kharkiv, a city that has become accustomed to conducting the business of everyday life under the constant shadow of war.
My companion was Justin Mishler, an American veteran of the United States Marine Corps who arrived in Ukraine in March 2022 to join the fight against Russia's full-scale invasion. I first interviewed Justin for the Lviv Herald in 2025, when he described his experiences of some of the most brutal fighting of the war, the deaths of close friends and the devastating injuries he suffered in July 2024, including the loss of his left eye. At that time, he was contemplating leaving Ukraine and returning to the United States.
Yet here he was, more than a year later, still serving with the Ukrainian Armed Forces at an undisclosed frontline location in Kharkiv oblast. His military service in Ukraine has now lasted more than four and a half years, apart from periods spent abroad. He has witnessed the transformation of the battlefield from a conflict dominated by artillery and infantry into one increasingly controlled by unmanned aerial vehicles, electronic warfare and the ever-present threat of death from above.
Justin is an unusually forthright interviewee. He makes little effort to disguise his opinions about Russian imperialism, the deficiencies of Ukrainian military administration or the conduct of Western governments. Some of his conclusions are controversial, and his judgments do not necessarily reflect those of the Lviv Herald. But they are the observations of a man who has spent much of the last four and a half years experiencing this war directly, and they deserve to be heard.
Our second interview began with a question that had been troubling me since our first meeting: why was he still here?
Matthew Parish: Justin, when we spoke in June 2025, you were contemplating leaving Ukraine later that summer. What happened to change your plans, and why are you still serving in the Ukrainian Armed Forces today?
Justin Mishler: The first reason is that I still haven't received my disability compensation for the injuries I sustained. I went through the Ukrainian military medical commission process, and completed the medical requirements, but I still haven't received the money.
When we first met in 2025, I was in Lviv dealing with the paperwork. Now we're in November 2026 and the matter remains unresolved. Every couple of months, it seems, some additional document is required, and I have to attend somewhere in person to provide it.
My concern is that if I return to the United States, I may never receive the compensation. I don't have much confidence that the process will resolve itself while I'm living on the other side of the Atlantic. And I'm not the only foreign soldier in this position. There are families of foreign volunteers who, as I understand it, are still waiting for death benefits following the loss of their relatives.
Matthew Parish: And if you eventually receive this compensation, what do you intend to do with it?
Justin Mishler: I'd like to buy a few things for myself and put a down payment on a house in the United States. That's still the plan. I'm not intending to buy a house here.
Matthew Parish: You arrived in Ukraine in March 2022 and have devoted more than four and a half years of your life to this country. Have your motivations changed over that time? Are you still fighting for the same reasons that originally brought you here?
Justin Mishler: Yes, pretty much. My views haven't really changed. I still oppose communism, I still oppose Russia and I still oppose Vladimir Putin, whom I regard as a continuation of the Soviet political tradition.
My family originally came from Russia. My great-great-grandfather fought in the Russo-Japanese War, and the family left Russia following the political upheavals surrounding the revolution of 1905. There was a strong feeling in my family about what was happening in Russia at that time, and I suppose I've inherited something of that attitude.
I have always been opposed to Russian imperialism. After everything I've seen in Ukraine, I certainly haven't become any more sympathetic towards it.
Matthew Parish: Many foreign volunteers have returned home, while others have been killed or seriously injured. What is it about your own personality that has enabled you to continue when so many others have stopped?
Justin Mishler: That's an interesting question, and it reminds me of something from my childhood.
When I was about twelve or thirteen, I watched Oliver Stone's film Platoon, with Charlie Sheen and William Dafoe. There's a scene in which Charlie Sheen's character writes home to his grandmother and describes himself as a grunt.
The basic idea is that infantrymen take whatever is thrown at them and keep going. They endure the difficulties, they absorb the punishment and they continue doing their jobs.
That made a strong impression on me when I was young. I've tried to live my life according to something like that philosophy ever since. When I commit myself to something, I'm going to see it through. I don't want difficulties or setbacks to be the things that defeat me.
Matthew Parish: Without revealing anything about your current position or operations, how would you describe the experience of serving on the front line in Kharkiv oblast? How does it compare with the other fronts where you have served?
Justin Mishler: In some ways, the living conditions are better. We have better accommodation, better towns and better food in some places than we did earlier in the war.
But psychologically the war has become harder. One of the things about prolonged wars is that people continue dying, even when everyone is exhausted and hoping that the fighting might eventually end.
I think about the later stages of the Second World War, when terrible casualties continued to occur even after the broad direction of the conflict had become apparent. Soldiers were still being sent to capture or defend ground, sometimes at an enormous cost in human life.
You see something of that here. Men are killed trying to recover ground or hold positions whose value may be questionable. As the war continues, you accumulate more friends who have died. That makes the experience increasingly difficult.
Matthew Parish: You described some extraordinarily intense combat experiences in our previous interview. More than four years into the full-scale invasion, what do you regard as the most profound change in the character of this war, particularly from the perspective of the ordinary infantryman?
Justin Mishler: Drones. Without question.
In 2022, you could spend time outside your foxhole or dugout. You could sit outside eating, stretch your legs in the morning, watch the birds or even read a book. In the circumstances I experienced then, the Russian ability to hit an individual soldier was much more limited.
Now you cannot do that. If you spend five minutes outside in the wrong circumstances, you may be killed by a drone.
The widespread use of first-person-view drones has transformed everything. A soldier no longer has the same freedom to move around, and even apparently ordinary activities can become extremely dangerous.
It's the biggest change I've witnessed since I arrived in Ukraine.
Matthew Parish: Modern warfare has also become increasingly associated with electronic warfare, robotics and other sophisticated military technologies. Do you think traditional human qualities such as courage, intelligence, initiative and leadership still matter as much as they did when you first arrived?
Justin Mishler: They matter even more.
We're approaching a point where robotic systems will be able to do many things that human soldiers have traditionally done, including holding or capturing positions and engaging enemy forces on the ground.
But we're not there yet. In 2026, you still need men physically occupying positions and carrying out the tasks that machines cannot reliably perform.
As the battlefield becomes more dangerous, the quality of those men becomes even more important. You need people who are intelligent, courageous, adaptable and capable of making decisions under extraordinary pressure.
Technology doesn't remove the importance of leadership. In many respects, it increases it.
Matthew Parish: People who have never experienced combat often imagine that soldiers spend their time in continuous action. What is the reality of prolonged frontline service, including the exhaustion, uncertainty and waiting?
Justin Mishler: It depends upon the situation, but in my experience soldiers can spend a substantial proportion of their time away from the most dangerous forward positions.
If a position is so dangerous that everyone knows the men occupying it are likely to be killed after a couple of days, you have to rotate those men. Otherwise you simply lose them, and then you don't have anyone left to hold the ground.
But rotation has become increasingly difficult as the war has continued. We've all heard stories about Ukrainian soldiers spending extraordinarily long periods in forward positions because they cannot be relieved.
Those are exceptional circumstances, but they illustrate how desperate the situation can become. Men can be left in positions where their chances of survival are extremely poor.
Matthew Parish: How would you describe the morale and resilience of the Ukrainian soldiers with whom you have served? What has impressed you most about them, and how have they changed over the course of the war?
Justin Mishler: My favourite Ukrainian soldiers were the men I served with in 2022.
Many of them were veterans of the fighting in Donbas that had been going on since 2014. They had years of experience. They knew how infantry operations worked, how reconnaissance worked, how to shoot and how to behave in a forward position.
They were professional soldiers in everything but sometimes the formal description. They understood their work, and many of them genuinely enjoyed being soldiers.
You could go on a mission with those men and then come back in the evening and spend hours talking about tactics, weapons and equipment. You might even play military video games together. Soldiering was part of their identity.
Those experienced men were essential to Ukraine's successes in 2022, including the counteroffensives around Kharkiv and Kherson.
The tragedy is that so many of them were subsequently killed or wounded. Ukraine lost an enormous amount of military experience during 2022 and 2023.
The soldiers serving now are often different. Many were civilians who never intended to become professional soldiers. Some were mobilised and would much rather be at home with their wives, children or families.
That doesn't make them bad people. But it means their motivations and experience are different. You cannot immediately replace years of professional military experience simply by putting someone in a uniform.
Matthew Parish: In July 2024, you suffered a life-changing injury that cost you your left eye. How has your recovery progressed, and how have you adapted to living and serving with that injury?
Justin Mishler: It's been difficult, although perhaps not as difficult as I initially expected.
There are practical limitations. I can't reliably drive a vehicle, which makes getting around much harder. Training people can also be more complicated because I only have one eye and can only shoot effectively from one side.
But in other respects my quality of life hasn't deteriorated as much as I feared.
I can still shoot, and I consider myself a very good shot. I can still teach tactics and train soldiers. I can watch films, listen to music and enjoy the ordinary things that I enjoyed before.
Of course, having one eye is not ideal, particularly in my profession. There aren't many people doing this kind of work with an injury like mine.
But I've adapted. Life goes on, and I can still make a useful contribution.
Matthew Parish: In our previous interview, you described the death of one of your closest American friends during the fighting in which you were wounded. How have you come to terms with that loss? Does his memory influence your decision to remain in Ukraine?
Justin Mishler: Every death is personal, particularly when it's someone I know well.
When I work with younger or less experienced soldiers, I try to teach them everything I can. I want to pass on the things that I wish somebody had taught me when I was younger.
So when one of those men dies, it affects me very deeply.
And that's actually another reason why I remain here. There are always new men arriving, and they deserve the benefit of whatever knowledge and experience we can give them.
What's the point of someone coming all the way to Ukraine simply to be killed because nobody taught him something that might have saved his life?
We need people to survive this war. We need men who will eventually be able to write books, teach others, talk to children and explain what happened here.
I don't believe the larger confrontation between East and West is going to disappear simply because this particular war eventually ends. The lessons we're learning will remain important.
Matthew Parish: You also previously described what you believed to have been exposure to chemical agents during the engagement in which you were wounded. Have any subsequent medical findings or investigations clarified what happened?
Justin Mishler: In my own case, no. The Ukrainian medical system has never definitively established what happened to me in that respect.
Some of the other men who were with me at the time subsequently had medical findings that they understood to be evidence of exposure, including damage to their stomach linings and intestinal tracts.
But there hasn't been a definitive test in my case identifying precisely what substance I was exposed to or how much of it I encountered.
I remain convinced that chemical agents were used. I also believe the Russians have continued using them, and that they'll continue doing so unless there are meaningful consequences.
That's my understanding from what I've experienced and what I've heard from others. But in terms of my own medical records, I cannot give you a definitive laboratory finding.
Matthew Parish: You described serious difficulties with casualty evacuation after you were wounded. Looking back on that experience, what lessons should military institutions learn about evacuating wounded soldiers? Have these difficulties improved?
Justin Mishler: No. They've become worse, largely because of drones.
Think about what a drone represents. It's effectively a flying improvised explosive device. It's a weapon that can search for you, find you and strike you with extraordinary precision.
That makes casualty evacuation incredibly dangerous.
In the past, you might have been able to send a team forward to retrieve a wounded soldier with a reasonable expectation that the team would come back.
Now you risk losing the evacuation team as well as the wounded man. The people carrying out these missions are good people, and they're risking their lives to save their friends.
But there comes a point where the calculation becomes almost impossible. If you lose ten men trying to save one, what have you achieved? You may still have the original casualty, and now you have ten more.
It's a terrible problem because everybody wants to save the wounded. Nobody wants to abandon a friend. But the saturation of the battlefield with drones means that the act of attempting a rescue can itself become extraordinarily lethal.
Matthew Parish: We have interviewed a number of soldiers who describe the emotional consequences of surviving when their comrades have died. Have you experienced anything resembling survivor's guilt, and how do you manage the memories of those you've lost?
Justin Mishler: Yes, survivor's guilt is part of the whole experience.
What I try to do is carry on living. I try to enjoy myself when I can, spend time with friends, tell stories, listen to music, watch television and do the things that normal people do.
But one of the most important things is maintaining contact with the families of men who have died.
If you've been close friends with somebody, you've probably shared the same interests, watched the same films, listened to the same music and talked about the same things. Often you find that you have a great deal in common with his family as well.
So I try to keep talking to them. Sometimes that's several times a week, and sometimes more frequently.
One of my friends who was killed in 2024 has a son who's now seventeen years old. That's the same age I was when I joined the Marine Corps.
Talking to him is rather like talking to my younger self, except that he's carrying the additional burden of having lost his father in a war.
I want him to benefit from what his father knew and from what I've learnt. I want him to have opportunities and knowledge that might help him live a good life.
That's one way of honouring the memory of someone you've lost.
Matthew Parish: You have spent years in an environment where death and serious injury are constant possibilities. Has that changed your attitude towards ordinary life, friendship, love and family?
Justin Mishler: Not fundamentally. I think what happens in war is that everything becomes accelerated.
You read accounts of previous wars in which soldiers describe how relationships and friendships develop much faster than they would in civilian life.
That's certainly been my experience.
The things that matter to you remain more or less the same, but everything happens at three or four times the normal speed. You become close to people very quickly because of the circumstances you're sharing.
The emotions are the same. They're simply more intense.
Matthew Parish: You served in the United States Marine Corps before coming to Ukraine, including in Afghanistan. How useful was your American military training in preparing you for this war? What has Ukraine taught you that the American military never did?
Justin Mishler: This might surprise people, but I don't think I've learnt anything fundamentally new here in terms of how to approach being a soldier and a leader.
The Marine Corps taught me to work with the people available to me and develop them into the best soldiers they could become.
The Marine Corps is a relatively small organisation compared with some other military institutions. You can't simply discard people because they aren't perfect. You have to train them, encourage them and make them useful members of the team.
That's been extremely valuable in Ukraine.
The pool of experienced foreign volunteers is relatively small, so every capable individual matters. You have to treat people as members of a family and invest in them.
That's what the Marine Corps taught me, and it's the same approach I've tried to follow here.
Matthew Parish: You have undertaken substantial training responsibilities with Ukrainian soldiers and foreign volunteers. What qualities distinguish an effective soldier in this war? What advice would you give an experienced American or British military veteran contemplating service in Ukraine?
Justin Mishler: The most important quality is a willingness to learn.
Someone might have served in Iraq or Afghanistan fifteen or twenty years ago and have a great deal of military experience. That's valuable, but it doesn't mean everything he learnt then is applicable to the battlefield in Ukraine today.
Things have changed.
I come from that earlier generation of soldiers myself, so I can sometimes act as a bridge between what people remember from previous wars and what they're going to encounter here.
You have to be prepared to listen. Even if a man is younger than you, he may have experience of this particular war that you don't possess.
Some of the foreign volunteers I know have already been wounded, spent months in hospital and returned to service. They have endured things that many soldiers elsewhere have never encountered.
Those are the people you need to listen to.
Don't arrive assuming that you already know everything. Be humble enough to learn from the men who've been fighting here.
Matthew Parish: Foreign and Ukrainian soldiers inevitably arrive with different military traditions, cultures and expectations. What have you learnt about overcoming those differences and building lasting relationships of trust?
Justin Mishler: Make friends with people. Find common ground and work towards a common objective.
It's really not that complicated.
A Ukrainian soldier of roughly your own age may enjoy the same films, television programmes or music that you do. You might share interests in sports, hobbies or other ordinary things.
Once you find that common ground, it becomes much easier to work together.
You don't necessarily have to speak the same language perfectly. Friendship and mutual respect go a long way towards overcoming those barriers.
Matthew Parish: The international volunteer community in Ukraine has had its remarkable individuals, but also its controversies and disappointments. After four and a half years, do you believe the contribution of foreign fighters has been broadly positive? What could be improved in the way they are recruited and integrated into the Ukrainian Armed Forces?
Justin Mishler: I'm obviously biased, but I think the men I've served with have made a substantial contribution.
I was a supporter of the earlier International Legion arrangements, particularly the separate training structures for foreign volunteers. There were advantages in having dedicated international instructors and a training system specifically designed for those people.
When you distribute small groups of foreign soldiers among different Ukrainian units, you can lose some of the benefits of having them train and operate together.
On the other hand, more recent arrangements have sometimes allowed established foreign groups to remain attached to Ukrainian formations with which they already have a relationship.
That's a good thing.
One of the dangers with earlier arrangements was that foreign soldiers could be transferred into units that didn't know them or understand how best to use them. I believe that contributed to unnecessary casualties.
There are advantages and disadvantages to different organisational structures. As an individual soldier, you have limited influence over those decisions, so you concentrate on making the best of whatever arrangements exist.
Matthew Parish: In August 2025, you spoke publicly about the possibility of this war continuing for several more years. Do you still believe that?
Justin Mishler: Yes, absolutely. I haven't changed my mind.
I think this war will continue for several more years, and I don't have much confidence that the present diplomatic efforts will bring it to an end.
Matthew Parish: As an American who has spent years fighting for Ukraine, how do you now view the American political debate about military assistance? What do American politicians and voters fail to understand about the consequences of this war?
Justin Mishler: I think the overwhelming majority of American voters are much more concerned about their ordinary lives than they are about Ukraine.
They want to raise their families, earn enough money, enjoy themselves occasionally and live peaceful lives. That's understandable.
But it means that foreign policy is often a very distant concern.
People are much more worried about the price of fuel, the cost of food, immigration and domestic political questions than about what's happening on the other side of the Atlantic.
I grew up with an understanding of Russia shaped partly by the Cold War and the popular culture of the 1980s. Films such as Red Dawn reflected a time when the Soviet threat was something that ordinary Americans thought about.
That sense of a common external threat has largely disappeared.
If people are preoccupied with problems in their own communities, they aren't necessarily going to spend much time thinking about what happens in Kyiv.
That's one of the difficulties with sustaining American political support for Ukraine over a prolonged period.
Matthew Parish: European governments frequently describe Ukraine's defence as fundamental to Europe's security. From your perspective, have European countries demonstrated sufficient determination to support Ukraine?
Justin Mishler: No, I don't think they have.
Part of the problem is that many European governments have become accustomed to living without war. They haven't had to organise their societies around the possibility of major military conflict.
I also think European energy policy has contributed to the problem. Dependence upon external supplies of oil, gas and other fuels has restricted the willingness of some governments to confront Russia as decisively as they should.
There are political and economic interests that make governments reluctant to take difficult decisions.
From where I sit, Europe hasn't done enough.
Matthew Parish: There is considerable international discussion of ceasefires, negotiations and territorial compromises. What would a just and sustainable peace look like to you personally? How important is it that any settlement reflects the wishes of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians who have borne the greatest sacrifices?
Justin Mishler: A lot of the men are exhausted. They've been fighting for years, and they want some kind of relief.
Personally, the most I could realistically imagine accepting at this stage would be a freezing of the existing front line, something resembling the situation between North and South Korea.
That wouldn't necessarily be a permanent peace. I don't think anybody should assume the Russians would simply stop preparing for another conflict.
But it might give the Ukrainians some time to recover and rebuild.
It would also allow soldiers to go home and spend time with their families. Some Ukrainians have been involved in this war, in one form or another, since 2014.
Imagine giving those men six months, a year or even several years to live something resembling a normal life.
Of course, the Russians would use the time to rebuild as well. That's the difficulty.
I don't think the fundamental confrontation is going away. But even a temporary respite would mean a great deal to people who have been fighting for so long.
Matthew Parish: You have become something of a public figure through your interviews and accounts of military service. Has that brought you encouragement, difficulties or unwanted scrutiny? How do you reconcile speaking publicly about your experiences with protecting your private life?
Justin Mishler: My private life was already fairly public before I came to Ukraine, because I was politically active in the United States.
So I'm accustomed to people knowing who I am and having opinions about me.
I also understand that Russia has sentenced me in absentia to a substantial prison term. Given that situation, I don't have much prospect of returning to an ordinary anonymous life.
At this point, I simply accept that public attention comes with what I've chosen to do.
It's been an interesting life, and I don't spend too much time worrying about whether people recognise me.
Matthew Parish: When I interviewed you last year, I described you as a hero of Ukraine. Do you feel comfortable with that description? How do you think about heroism now, after everything that has happened to you and your friends?
Justin Mishler: I think everybody who has fought in circumstances like these deserves recognition.
There are men I've served with who did more than I did, and some of them died because they went beyond what anyone could reasonably have expected of them.
I did what I could. They did even more.
One of the things that bothers me is the difficulty foreign soldiers and their families can face in obtaining official recognition, military decorations and the benefits to which they believe they're entitled.
Some of the men I know have made extraordinary sacrifices, yet their families haven't received the recognition or compensation they deserve.
People sometimes dismiss medals as unimportant pieces of metal. But I don't think that's right.
A medal means that somebody has acknowledged what a soldier did. It means the military has recognised his service and sacrifice.
And that matters to the family.
Imagine a child growing up after his father has been killed in battle. He wants to know whether his father did something important, whether his sacrifice meant anything and whether the country he fought for remembers him.
Official recognition can help answer those questions.
I also think foreign soldiers who have served for years should be treated fairly when it comes to benefits and entitlements.
Ukraine has relied upon foreign volunteers, and some of us have spent a very long time in its armed forces. We should not be treated as though our service is somehow less valuable simply because we weren't born here.
It isn't only about money or medals. It's about fairness and recognition.
Matthew Parish: Finally, Justin, I want you to imagine that you're sitting down with the man you were in March 2022, shortly before you first arrived in Ukraine. Knowing everything that has happened to you since then — your injuries, the deaths of your friends, the sacrifices and everything you've learnt — what would you say to that younger version of yourself?
Would you still make the same decision to come here?
Justin Mishler: I would.
I don't care so much about what happened to me.
But if I could change anything, I would shield all my friends from what happened to them.
A soldier who remains
By the time our conversation concluded, the restaurant in Kharkiv had spent much of the day without reliable electricity. The food had been prepared on a grill because the kitchen's electrical equipment was unusable, and the ordinary complications of paying a bill had become yet another small illustration of life in a city living under Russian attack. Such inconveniences were minor compared with the subjects of our discussion, but they provided an appropriate setting for an interview about the extraordinary endurance of those who have remained in Ukraine throughout the war.
There is something remarkable about Justin Mishler's determination to continue serving. He has suffered a permanent disability, lost close friends and spent more than four years witnessing the destruction caused by a conflict that shows little prospect of ending. He is openly frustrated by military bureaucracy and by the failure, as he sees it, of governments and institutions to recognise the sacrifices of those who have fought. Yet he continues to offer his experience to younger soldiers who may survive because of what he can teach them.
His answers reveal a complicated man. He is uncompromising in his political opinions, unsentimental about the realities of military service and sometimes sharply critical of the institutions for which he has made considerable sacrifices. But beneath this tough exterior lies a powerful sense of responsibility towards his comrades, particularly those who are no longer alive to speak for themselves.
His explanation of survivor's guilt is especially revealing. Rather than dwelling exclusively upon his own suffering, he speaks about maintaining relationships with the families of fallen friends, helping their children understand what their fathers experienced and ensuring that the knowledge accumulated by soldiers who have survived is not lost. For Justin, military service is not merely a matter of fighting an enemy. It has also become a responsibility to preserve something of the lives and memories of those who have died.
The final answer to my final question was perhaps the most revealing of all. Asked whether he would come to Ukraine again, knowing that he would lose an eye and many of his closest friends, he did not hesitate. He would make the same decision, but he would do whatever he could to spare his friends their suffering.
There are many ways of defining courage, and many arguments about who deserves to be called a hero. After this second interview with Justin Mishler, I am increasingly persuaded that one of the most important forms of courage is the willingness to endure personal suffering without losing one's concern for the suffering of others.
We concluded by expressing the hope that we would meet again for a third interview. For the time being, Justin returns to his service somewhere in Kharkiv oblast, while the war continues around him. Like countless Ukrainian soldiers and the foreign volunteers who have chosen to fight beside them, he does not know when his work will finally be finished.
But he knows why he is still here.
The Lviv Herald thanks Justin Mishler for agreeing to this second interview and wishes him and his comrades a safe return from military service. This interview has been edited for clarity and length. The opinions expressed by the interviewee are his own.
