"I have been working in Ukraine since 2019, first as an active Green Beret advising in an official capacity, then after leaving that service, directing special operations on the ground and more recently carrying hard-won lessons back to NATO before they are forgotten or overtaken by the next news cycle."
"I write it alongside friends from the humanitarian and policy world who came to the same fight from very different directions. We come from different backgrounds and often speak with different vocabularies, but common cause in Ukraine forged a shared set of concerns and a purpose."
"My natural habitat is not a briefing room. It is not a Hollywood set, where I spent time advising filmmakers like Sean Penn on how war actually looks and sounds and smells. It is not a think tank conference room or a war journalist's interview chair, and it is certainly not the back of a cab crawling past the Capitol."
A former active-duty Green Beret who has worked in Ukraine since 2019 travels to Washington to brief policymakers and speak at forums about lessons learned from special operations work. After leaving official military service, the author directed special operations on the ground and now carries these experiences to NATO and policy circles. Working alongside humanitarian and policy professionals from diverse backgrounds, they share common concerns about Ukraine despite different vocabularies and approaches. The author describes the discomfort of operating in Washington's political environment—briefing rooms, think tanks, and Capitol Hill meetings—rather than their natural habitat of active operations. The visit includes Senate briefings and speaking at the 5th Annual Ukrainian Week Veterans Forum, attempting to translate battlefield realities into policy-relevant information.
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