Inside Ukraine’s Foreign Legion | Colin Freeman
7/4/20262 hr 8 min
We speak with journalist Colin Freeman about covering wars from Iraq and Somalia to Ukraine, including his own kidnapping by Somali pirates and the early days of Russia’s full-scale invasion. We also dig into his book The Mad and the Brave, the foreign volunteers who joined Ukraine’s International Legion, and the chaos, courage, and darker realities they faced on the front lines.
Colin's book: https://a.co/d/0j8oksfv
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"Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio"
00:00 — Start
01:26 — Colin Freeman’s Path Into Journalism
05:28 — Going Freelance to Cover Iraq
08:09 — The Reality of Freelance War Reporting
11:26 — Kidnapped by Pirates in Somalia
17:46 — Covering the Opening Days of the Ukraine War
21:21 — Taking the Train Into Besieged Kyiv
24:14 — Meeting Ukraine’s Foreign Volunteers
32:04 — Fantasists, Screamers, and the Yavoriv Missile Strike
36:36 — Douglas Carter and the Chaos of the Front Line
42:04 — Hugh Lee and the Shock of Ukraine’s Battlefield
49:08 — Pez and the Hunt for a Front Line
55:19 — Pez’s Near Capture on a Dnipro Island
59:30 — Foreign Volunteers Captured by Russia
01:05:22 — Torture in a Russian Black Site
01:14:05 — Mariupol, Azovstal, and John Harding
01:25:45 — The Bizarre POW Release and Roman Abramovich
01:31:40 — Ryan O’Leary, Chosen Company, and Jack Knight
01:37:15 — The Dark Side of the Legion
01:48:47 — Did Ukraine’s Foreign Legion Actually Matter?
01:52:50 — Could the West Have Built a Better Legion?
01:58:40 — The Mad and the Brave and Closing Thoughts
#ukrainewar #ukraineforeignlegion
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Clips
Transcript preview
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Jack Murphy· Host0:59
Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Team House. I'm Jack Murphy, here with tonight's guest, journalist Colin Freeman. He is the author of The Mad and the Brave, which is a book about the Ukrainian Foreign Legion, that is the foreigners from, uh... I mean, he'll tell us, but 50 some odd countries that came to Ukraine to help defend the country from, uh, Putin's invasion, the Russian invasion. Um, mostly, you know, starting on the, the '22, 2022, um, full