Suzanne Kelly
Editor’s Note: As President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin talk about meeting face-to-face in Alaska later this week to discuss an end to the war in Ukraine, The Cipher Brief is publishing this raw and unfiltered personal account of today’s war through the eyes of a former U.S. Special Forces operator, who is fighting alongside Ukrainian soldiers. We have granted his request for anonymity for personal security reasons. You can read more from the author on his X account.
OPINION / EXPERT PERSPECTIVE -- I wrote this report on the night of 22nd-23rd July 2025 in the space of two and a half hours, after midnight, and after having not done any writing in years; and thus, I can be forgiven, I hope, for my idiosyncrasies and informality. I'm a soldier. I go by the callsign ‘Xen’ and I currently work under a Ukrainian Special Operations Forces (SOF or “SSO” in Ukraine) regiment. My team leader and I are both former U.S. Special Operations personnel. Without wasting time on the details, I’ll say that we are “true believers” who supported Ukraine long before we left the U.S. military and long before the full-scale Russian invasion.
My reasons for coming to Ukraine as a soldier-volunteer were so intensely personal. I was motivated by ethnicity, history, philosophy, and a deep intuition of where all signs in my life were pointing. I mostly spun my wheels my first year in Ukraine – it was more Jarhead than Band of Brothers. I am now actively participating in combat operations – in particular, rotary and fixed wing drone strike operations. We train (and these days are trained by…), advise, assist, accompany, and enable Ukrainian SOF; and in such capacity, have near-total freedom of movement, granting us a breadth and depth of understanding across the conflict.
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