Journalists were surprised to find an American fighter and medic amidst the ruins of the front lines in Ukraine. Known in her detachment as “Baby Dog,” the Utah native stood under the hot Eastern European sun donning her full military fatigue with a yellow tape attached to her left arm and shoulder, a color that represents allegiance to Ukraine.

“I wasn’t doing much at home. It was just working two jobs, pretty boring,” the 21-year-old said. Baby Dog shared she was a paramedic working two jobs back in Utah when news of the Russian assault on Ukraine broke out.

“This is a human thing. You can’t sit back and watch. It’s like sitting and watching someone kicking a dog for no reason, kicking a dog in the head. It’s crying. You don’t stop it,” she said, explaining her decision to purchase a one-way ticket to Ukraine and fight for a nation she had never been to before.

Baby Dog, whose name was not disclosed by the reporters in consideration of security risks, said she signed up through Ukraine’s International Legion of Territorial Defense. The Legion is a program launched by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s administration last February to allow foreign fighters to join the country’s Armed Forces as fighters.

Members of the Ukrainian International Legion of Defense of Ukraine (ILDU). Source: https://www.facebook.com/ukr.international.legion/photos/a.954614464605888/5278633492203942/
Members of the Ukrainian International Legion of Defense of Ukraine (ILDU/Facebook)

The Ukrainian Government has put up a website that outlines the process of joining the country’s defense force. Despite prior claims of receiving over 20,000 applications across the globe, many of those who volunteered were never accepted.

In early March, the Ukrainian embassy disclosed that roughly half of the approximately 6,000 Americans who signed up to join the Legion had been rejected before reaching the interview segment of the application. The envoys added that around 3,000 Americans moved on to the next stages of the application, and only 100 volunteers had been accepted at that time.

A release by Berlin and New York-based Counter Extremism Project (CEP) reported that “given the available information, it is reasonable to deduce that only a fraction of those who indicated an interest in traveling to Ukraine after February 2022 actually did so.”

“Their number ranges from merely several hundreds to a few thousands,” it concluded. “This is dwarfed by tens of thousands of Ukrainian volunteers who joined units in Ukraine’s Territorial Defense Force (TDF).”