One of the world’s best snipers has arrived in Ukraine. The French-Canadian “Wali” from the Royal Canadian 22e Régiment made his reputation during tours in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq.
The 40-year-old, who became a computer scientist after two deployments to Afghanistan as a sniper with the Canadian Armed Forces between 2009 and 2011, will join an ever-growing contingent of foreign fighters responding to a call launched Saturday by the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky:
“All foreigners wishing to join the resistance against the Russian occupiers and protect international security are invited by the Ukrainian government to come to our territory to join the ranks of our territorial forces.”
Wali did not wait until Sunday to pack his bags. Everything happened very quickly on Friday when he was contacted by a friend who has been organizing “neutral convoys” of humanitarian aid for several months to bring food to the occupied Donbass region.
Wali: “He told me they needed a sniper. It’s like a firefighter who hears the alarm ringing. I had to go.”
But unlike his official deployments to Afghanistan and the one to Iraqi Kurdistan in 2015, this time around everything is different for Wali. He leaves behind his wife and his baby, who will celebrate his first birthday without him next week.
Wali: “I know, it’s just awful. But me, in my head, when I see the images of destruction in Ukraine, it is my son that I see, in danger and who is suffering. When I see a destroyed building, it is the person who owns it, who sees his pension fund go up in smoke, that I see. I go there for humanitarian reasons,” he explains.
His wife, who asked us to keep her identity secret for security reasons, reluctantly agreed to let her lover go.
Wife of Wali: “I knew that if I didn’t let him go, I would have broken him. It would have been like putting him in jail.”
