There are moments in history when private citizens make decisions that illuminate truths leaders prefer to obscure. When Jack Lopresti, a Conservative MP who served fourteen years in British Parliament, lost his seat in the 2024 election, he did not retreat to consultancies or think tanks. He joined Ukraine’s International Legion. When Chris—call sign “Hobo”—heard from his Marine Corps buddies that they were fighting in Ukraine and winning, he boarded a plane from New York. When an Australian gemstone hunter named Robert Ralph could no longer watch what was happening from halfway around the world, he traveled to Kyiv despite never having served in any military.
These are not the desperate or the dispossessed. They are mechanics and former politicians, competition shooters and aviation workers. What drives ordinary citizens from democracies across the globe to risk their lives in a country most had never visited? The answer reveals something profound about the nature of democratic character, the enduring relevance of moral clarity, and what our moment demands of free people.
I have spent years covering political trends and geopolitical shifts. I have interviewed senators who speak eloquently about defending democracy while calculating electoral angles. I have watched leaders invoke Churchill while pursuing policies Churchill would have found contemptible. But these foreign volunteers in Ukraine’s International Legion represent something our political class has nearly forgotten: that defending democratic civilization is not merely a policy position to be debated, but a moral obligation to be fulfilled. Their choice to serve illuminates both the stakes of this war and the hollowness of much contemporary political discourse.
The phenomenon of foreign fighters in Ukraine is not unprecedented. The International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War drew thousands who saw the conflict as the front line against fascism. Lafayette’s service in the American Revolution embodied the principle that liberty’s cause transcends national borders. What distinguishes Ukraine’s International Legion is the clarity with which it reveals our current geopolitical and moral situation. These volunteers understand something that too many Western policymakers resist acknowledging: this is not a regional dispute over borders. It is the defining contest between democratic civilization and authoritarian revanchism.
The Memory of Survival and the DNA of Resolve
Jack Lopresti’s explanation for Britain’s unwavering support of Ukraine cuts to something essential. “We have what happened in the Second World War in 1940 in our DNA,” he told interviewers. “It’s within living memory—when we were alone, fighting for our survival, for our existence as a nation. We were bombed, our cities were bombed.” This is not merely historical analogy. It is cultural memory that shapes political possibility.
Britain’s experience of 1940 created a particular understanding of what tyranny requires when confronted. The lesson was not that war is glorious or that military action solves all problems. The lesson was simpler and more fundamental: some evils cannot be negotiated with, only defeated. Chamberlain’s appeasement represented a failure not of strategy but of moral comprehension. It mistook a dictator’s temporary tactical flexibility for genuine willingness to coexist peacefully. Churchill understood that Hitler’s ambitions could not be satisfied, only stopped.
Putin’s Russia presents a similar challenge to Western democracies. As Lopresti notes, “Putin is a liar. He lied over Chechnya, over Georgia, over Syria, and the peace accords made after the annexation of Crimea.” This is not mere diplomatic duplicity. It reflects a fundamental difference in how authoritarian regimes view international agreements. For Putin, treaties are tactical pauses, not binding commitments. Peace accords are opportunities to regroup, not settlements to be honored.
The conservative intellectual tradition, from Edmund Burke through Russell Kirk, has emphasized that institutions and norms require active defense. They are not self-sustaining mechanisms that operate regardless of whether citizens believe in them. The international order established after World War II—the principle that borders cannot be changed by force, that sovereign nations possess inherent rights, that aggression must be collectively resisted—these principles survive only when democracies demonstrate willingness to defend them.
Ukraine represents the test case. If a democratic nation can be invaded, its cities bombed, its children kidnapped, its people murdered, while the democratic world offers only calibrated support designed not to provoke the aggressor too much, then the entire post-1945 settlement collapses. The message to every authoritarian regime becomes clear: take what you can, negotiate when you must, and democratic powers will accommodate rather than confront.
The Anatomy of Moral Clarity
What strikes me most about the volunteers I encountered in these accounts is their moral simplicity—not simple-mindedness, but clarity about fundamentals. “I couldn’t handle watching what was happening,” says Robert Ralph from Australia. “Honest to God, I’m here to do whatever is needed,” declares Bard, an American volunteer who worked in aviation and now calls Ukraine home.
This represents a form of ethical reasoning that our sophisticated political discourse often dismisses as naive. We have developed elaborate frameworks for analyzing conflicts through lenses of national interest, alliance management, escalation dynamics, and strategic ambiguity. These frameworks are not wrong. They capture real complexities. But they can obscure moral fundamentals that ordinary citizens sometimes perceive more clearly than experts.
There is a philosophical tradition, running from Aristotle through Aquinas to contemporary virtue ethicists, that recognizes certain actions as intrinsically wrong regardless of context. The intentional targeting of civilians, the kidnapping of children, the systematic destruction of a nation’s cultural heritage, the use of rape as a weapon of war—these are not matters requiring complex geopolitical analysis. They are evils that demand response.
Bard’s advice to Americans who do not understand what is at stake captures this moral clarity. “Crack open a history book,” he says. “Look at what happened in the 1930s that ultimately resulted in America sacrificing its sons and daughters. This is world-altering history, and simply standing on the sidelines watching it happen does not absolve you of the responsibility you have to end the evil where evil is most obvious.”
This invocation of the 1930s is not mere historical analogy. It reflects genuine understanding of how democratic nations fail. The pattern is consistent: democracies, war-weary and prosperity-focused, convince themselves that aggression can be managed through negotiation. Dictators, unconstrained by public opinion and clear about their objectives, interpret democratic reluctance as weakness. By the time democracies recognize the threat, the cost of confronting it has increased dramatically.
Political philosophers from Reinhold Niebuhr to Michael Walzer have grappled with the relationship between moral principles and political necessity. Niebuhr, whose The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness remains essential reading for understanding democratic character, argued that democracies face a particular challenge. Their very virtues—their reluctance to use force, their faith in negotiation, their tendency to see good in others—become vulnerabilities when confronting actors who recognize no moral constraints.
Character, Leadership, and the Institutional Challenge
Lopresti’s journey from Parliament to the front lines illuminates something about the relationship between political service and moral commitment. During his tenure as an MP, colleagues jokingly called him “the member for Kyiv Central” because of his advocacy for Ukraine. After losing his seat, he could have pursued the comfortable path—consultancies, corporate boards, the lecture circuit. Instead, he joined the International Legion.
This choice reflects a conception of political life that has become rare. Politics, properly understood, is not merely a career or a platform for advancing ideological positions. It is service to the common good, grounded in recognition that some principles transcend partisan advantage. When Lopresti concluded that he could serve democracy’s cause more effectively as a soldier than as a former politician, he acted on this understanding.
The contrast with much contemporary political leadership is stark. I have watched politicians carefully calibrate their Ukraine support to avoid offending constituencies who prefer isolation. I have heard leaders who invoke democratic values while questioning whether Ukraine’s survival actually matters to American interests. I have seen strategic thinkers argue that we must accommodate Russia’s “legitimate security concerns”—as if tyrannies possess legitimate claims to veto neighboring nations’ democratic choices.
This represents a failure not merely of strategy but of character. Leadership in democracies requires willingness to explain difficult truths to citizens: that security sometimes requires sacrifice, that evil exists and must be confronted, that short-term costs may be necessary to prevent greater long-term catastrophe. When leaders lack courage to make these arguments, democracies drift toward policies that seem reasonable in isolation but prove catastrophic in aggregate.
The Brookings Institution’s research on democratic resilience emphasizes that institutions alone cannot sustain free societies. They require citizens who understand why democratic norms matter and leaders willing to defend them. The foreign volunteers in Ukraine’s International Legion embody this understanding. They recognize that Ukrainian freedom and Western security are not separate interests but interconnected elements of a single challenge.
The Evolution of Warfare and Democratic Adaptation
The tactical realities these volunteers describe reveal how modern warfare challenges traditional military thinking. “Back in the early days, you could walk across open fields, and the biggest thing you had to worry about was artillery,” Hobo explains. “Nowadays, you’re more scared of hearing a drone than anything else.” The proliferation of fiber-optic drones, which cannot be jammed, represents a technological shift with profound implications.
This is not merely a technical challenge but a strategic one. As Foreign Affairs has documented extensively, the war in Ukraine has become a laboratory for military innovation. Both sides constantly adapt to new technologies and countermeasures. The side that learns faster gains temporary advantage until the other adapts. This creates a cycle of innovation that rewards organizational agility and battlefield learning.
Democratic militaries have traditionally excelled at this kind of adaptation. The American military’s ability to learn from tactical failures and implement changes throughout the force has been a decisive advantage in past conflicts. But this advantage depends on sustained political support and willingness to provide necessary resources. When democracies pursue half-measures—enough aid to prevent Ukrainian defeat but not enough to enable Ukrainian victory—they create conditions for protracted stalemate.
The volunteers recognize this dynamic clearly. Lopresti emphasizes the need for continued Western support, particularly air defense. “We need a lot more of it,” he notes. This is not special pleading. It reflects battlefield realities. Russia possesses vast stockpiles of missiles and drones. Without adequate air defense, Ukrainian cities remain vulnerable to the nightly bombardment that has killed thousands of civilians.
Social Contract, National Identity, and Democratic Resilience
The volunteers’ observations about Ukrainian character reveal something about what sustains nations under existential threat. “Russia has chosen the wrong people to fight,” says Robert Ralph. “Ukrainians are so resilient.” This resilience reflects more than individual courage. It emerges from a shared sense of national identity forged in opposition to Russian domination.
Ukraine’s national consciousness has strengthened precisely because of Russian aggression. The Maidan Revolution of 2014, Russia’s annexation of Crimea, the war in Donbas—these events created a Ukrainian identity defined not by ethnicity or language but by commitment to democratic self-governance. This is a civic nationalism that democracies should celebrate. It represents exactly the principle Western institutions like NATO and the EU claim to defend: that nations form through consent, not conquest.
Contrast this with Russia’s attempt to deny Ukrainian nationhood. Putin has repeatedly claimed that Ukrainians and Russians are “one people,” that Ukrainian identity is an artificial construct, that Ukraine has no legitimate claim to statehood. This is not merely historical revisionism. It is the logic of imperialism: the strong have the right to determine the identity of the weak, borders are suggestions, and national self-determination applies only to those powerful enough to enforce it.
The volunteers in Ukraine’s International Legion implicitly reject this logic. They understand that if Ukraine’s right to exist can be negated by Russian military power, then no small democracy is secure. As Lopresti puts it, “This is the front line for European and Western freedom. You cannot change borders by force. You can’t march into somebody else’s country and try and take it over.”
This principle—that borders cannot be changed by force—represents the foundation of the post-1945 international order. It is enshrined in the United Nations Charter, the Helsinki Final Act, and countless international agreements. Russia, as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, committed to this principle. Putin’s violation of it represents not merely an attack on Ukraine but an assault on the entire framework of international law.
The Cultural Dimension of Geopolitical Contest
What brings an Australian gemstone hunter, an American aviation worker, and a British politician to Ukraine’s front lines? The answer involves something deeper than geopolitical calculation. It reflects cultural memory and moral intuition about what democratic civilization requires.
Western democracies, particularly those that experienced World War II directly, retain collective memory of what appeasement costs. Britain’s experience of standing alone in 1940 created a particular understanding of moral courage under existential threat. This memory shapes contemporary British willingness to support Ukraine, even when others hesitate. As Lopresti notes, this history is “within living memory” and “in our DNA.”
But cultural memory is not universal or permanent. It requires transmission across generations through stories, education, and shared rituals. Younger generations, further removed from World War II, may lack intuitive understanding of why confronting aggression matters. This creates a challenge for democratic leaders: how to explain why distant conflicts matter when prosperity and peace seem assured.
The volunteers provide an answer through their actions. They demonstrate that some causes transcend national borders because they concern fundamental principles of human dignity and freedom. Bard’s comment captures this: “I would say merely as a human being, it is my duty.” This is not naive universalism. It is recognition that democratic civilization is indivisible—that threats to freedom anywhere ultimately threaten freedom everywhere.
This understanding has deep roots in Western political thought. The Stoics believed in cosmopolitanism—that all humans share a common moral community. Medieval Christian thinkers developed the concept of just war, which recognizes both the legitimacy of self-defense and the obligation to defend the innocent from aggression. Enlightenment philosophers like Kant argued that perpetual peace requires a federation of free states committed to common principles.
These philosophical traditions inform, consciously or not, the volunteers’ decisions. They have absorbed the lesson that democratic civilization requires active defense. They recognize that sitting on the sidelines while evil unfolds does not represent neutrality but complicity.
The Strategic Challenge of Partial Support
The Western response to Russia’s invasion reveals a persistent challenge in democratic foreign policy: the temptation of calibrated response. The logic seems reasonable: provide enough support to prevent Ukrainian defeat without provoking Russian escalation. Supply weapons that enable defense but withhold those that might enable decisive victory. Impose sanctions that hurt Russia’s economy but maintain sufficient trade to avoid complete rupture.
This approach reflects a failure to understand how autocrats think. Putin does not calculate risk the way democratic leaders do. He does not face constraints of public opinion or electoral accountability. He can sustain casualties and economic hardship that would topple democratic governments. What he respects is strength and resolve. What he exploits is hesitation and division.
The volunteers recognize this reality. When Lopresti discusses post-war security guarantees, he emphasizes that “there needs to be proper strength and deterrence.” Negotiations with Putin hold no value unless backed by credible threat of force. This is not militarism. It is realism about what maintains peace with actors who view negotiation as tactical pause rather than genuine settlement.
The Council on Foreign Relations has published extensive analysis of how deterrence works in contemporary geopolitics. The principle remains what it has always been: potential aggressors must believe that the costs of aggression exceed any possible gains. This requires both capability and credibility—the means to resist and the will to use them.
Western policy toward Ukraine has lacked this credibility. Each escalation in weapons systems—HIMARS, tanks, F-16s—followed months of debate about whether providing them would provoke Russia. This pattern taught Putin that Western support has limits and that threatening escalation produces hesitation. A more effective strategy would have frontloaded support, making clear that Ukraine would receive whatever it needed to win.
The Individual and the Institutional
These volunteers’ stories illuminate a tension at the heart of democratic life: between individual conscience and institutional action. Democratic governments operate through deliberation, coalition-building, and attention to public opinion. This produces policies that reflect multiple constituencies and competing priorities. It also produces delays, compromises, and half-measures that can seem inadequate when confronting urgent moral challenges.
Individuals possess a freedom institutions lack. When Robert Ralph concluded he could no longer watch from Australia, he simply came. When Bard witnessed the refugee crisis of March 2022, it “had a profound effect on who I am today,” leading him to enlist. When Hobo heard his Marine buddies were fighting and winning, he boarded a plane.
This is not argument for vigilantism or for individuals substituting their judgment for democratic deliberation. But it reveals something about moral agency that politics can obscure. There are moments when waiting for institutions to act becomes complicity in evil. The volunteers embody this understanding without claiming their choice should be universal.
Political theorist Hannah Arendt wrote extensively about individual responsibility in the face of institutional evil. Her concept of “the banality of evil” captured how ordinary people participate in atrocities by following orders and deferring to authority. The obverse—the dignity of good—manifests when individuals act on conscience despite institutional pressure to remain passive.
The foreign volunteers in Ukraine’s International Legion exemplify this dignity. They did not wait for their governments to declare war. They did not calculate whether their sacrifice would be appreciated or remembered. They recognized evil, acknowledged their capacity to oppose it, and acted. This represents democratic character at its finest: citizens who understand that freedom’s preservation ultimately depends on individual willingness to defend it.
Lessons for Leadership and Policy
What should Western leaders learn from these volunteers’ clarity? Several principles emerge.
First, moral clarity need not contradict strategic sophistication. The volunteers understand both the righteousness of Ukraine’s cause and the tactical complexities of modern warfare. They recognize that drone warfare has transformed battlefields and that adaptation is constant. But this tactical realism does not obscure the fundamental stakes: a democratic nation resisting authoritarian aggression.
Second, half-measures in confronting tyranny prove more costly than decisive action. The volunteers’ presence in Ukraine results partly from Western governments’ failure to provide sufficient support for Ukrainian victory. If NATO had equipped Ukraine with adequate air defense and long-range strike capability in 2022, the war might have ended differently. Instead, calibrated support has produced protracted conflict, enabling Russia to adapt and solidify control over occupied territory.
Third, security guarantees must be credible to be effective. Lopresti’s emphasis on post-war European presence in Ukraine reflects understanding that paper promises mean nothing to Putin. Only demonstrated willingness to use force in defense of agreed borders will deter future aggression. This likely requires either NATO membership for Ukraine or an unprecedented security architecture that commits Western military power to Ukraine’s defense.
Fourth, democratic nations must overcome their reluctance to acknowledge evil clearly. Much contemporary political discourse treats moral categories as unsophisticated. We prefer to analyze conflicts through frameworks of competing interests rather than recognizing that some actors simply embrace evil. Putin’s deliberate targeting of civilians, systematic use of torture, kidnapping of children, and employment of rape as a weapon of war are not strategic choices to be analyzed dispassionately. They are evils to be named and confronted.
The Question of Sacrifice and What Democracy Requires
Perhaps the most uncomfortable question these volunteers raise concerns sacrifice. What is democratic citizenship willing to endure in freedom’s defense? The volunteers have answered with their lives. They serve in conditions one describes as “World War I, World War II, and Vietnam tactics with today’s technology.” They face fiber-optic drones, artillery, and constant evolution of battlefield threats. Some, like Bard, expect to “die here one way or another.”
Meanwhile, publics in Western democracies debate whether economic sanctions are worth higher gas prices, whether military aid draws resources from domestic priorities, whether the whole enterprise of supporting Ukraine is sustainable. This reflects not cowardice but the natural human preference for comfort and safety. Yet it reveals a troubling gap between what democratic values profess and what democratic citizens will sacrifice to defend them.
The volunteers implicitly indict this gap. They have given up comfort, safety, and in some cases careers to serve a cause they believe transcends national borders. They do so while many in their home countries question whether Ukraine’s survival justifies continued support. This represents a moral courage that should inspire rather than merely humble.
There is a philosophical tradition, running from Pericles’ funeral oration through Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address to Churchill’s wartime speeches, that recognizes sacrifice as essential to democratic life. Free societies survive not through good fortune but because citizens prove willing to defend them. When that willingness erodes, freedom itself becomes vulnerable.
The question facing Western democracies is whether we retain this understanding. Can societies that have known primarily peace and prosperity for generations still recognize when their values require defense? Can democratic electorates support policies whose benefits accrue not to them but to distant peoples and future generations?
The volunteers suggest the answer is yes, but not through institutional action alone. It requires individuals who embody democratic virtues and whose example influences their fellow citizens. It requires leaders willing to explain difficult truths and to call forth sacrifice when necessary. It requires recognition that democratic civilization is not self-sustaining but depends on each generation’s willingness to defend it.
What Comes Next
As I reflect on these conversations with foreign volunteers, I am struck by how their clarity illuminates our confusion. They understand the stakes simply: Ukraine must win because tyranny must not be rewarded, because borders cannot change through force, because evil must be confronted where it is most obvious. Western capitals understand these principles intellectually but struggle to translate them into policy that accepts necessary costs.
This gap between moral clarity and political action represents the central challenge facing democratic nations. We know what is right. We understand the historical lessons. We recognize that Putin’s success in Ukraine would encourage authoritarians globally and threaten the international order on which our security depends. Yet we hesitate, calculate, and pursue half-measures that prolong conflict while avoiding decisive commitment.
The volunteers will continue their service regardless of these political failures. Ralph plans to travel between Australia and Ukraine, building a life that bridges both worlds. Hobo oscillates between wondering when he will go home and suspecting he will “just keep fighting.” Lopresti has found new purpose after losing his parliamentary seat, serving what he clearly sees as a more important cause than domestic politics.
Their presence in Ukraine—and the presence of thousands like them from dozens of countries—testifies to something that often seems absent from contemporary politics: the enduring relevance of moral duty and democratic character. They demonstrate that some people still understand what free societies require and prove willing to provide it.
The question is whether democratic institutions and leaders will match their clarity. Whether we will provide Ukraine the support needed for victory rather than merely survival. Whether we will establish security guarantees credible enough to deter future aggression. Whether we will learn the lesson these volunteers embody: that freedom’s defense cannot be outsourced or endlessly deferred.
History will judge not only what these volunteers chose but what we chose while they fought on our behalf. Did we recognize the stakes they understood so clearly? Did we provide the support our values demanded? Did we honor their sacrifice by ensuring it achieved its purpose? These questions will define not only Ukraine’s future but democracy’s character in our time.
