Hard drinks and shady finances: How a group of American veterans ended up in Ukraine

Kyiv, Ukraine – Andrew Milburn, a former US Navy colonel and leader of the Mozart group, was in a cold meeting room on the second floor of a Kyiv apartment building and was about to deliver bad news. Across from him sat a half dozen men who had traveled alone to the Ukraine to work with him.

“Guys, I’m gutted,” he said. “The Mozart group is dead.”

The men looked at him with expressionless faces.

One asked as he made his way to the door: “What should I do with my helmet?”.

The Mozart group, one of the most important private US military organizations in Ukraine, has collapsed under a cloud of accusations. ranging from financial irregularities to misjudgments due to alcohol. Their struggles offer an eye-opening window into the world of groups of foreign volunteers who have flocked to Ukraine with noble intentions only to deal with the stresses of running a complicated business in a war zone.

“I’ve seen it happen many times,” said one of Mozart’s veteran trainers, who, like many others, only spoke anonymously out of fear the Russians might target him. “You have to run these groups like a business. We didn’t.”

Hundreds, if not thousands, of foreign veterans and volunteers have passed through Ukraine. Many of them, like Milburn and his crew, are hard-living men who have spent their adult lives immersed in violence.loners trying to work together in a very dangerous environment without much structure or rules.

The Mozart Group soon thrived, training Ukrainian troops, rescuing civilians from the front lines, and raising over a million dollars in donations to fund it all. But then money started to run out.

After months of struggling to be together, the Mozart group was plagued by defections, infighting, a robbery of their office building, and a lawsuit filed by the company’s chief financial officer, Andrew Bain, who called for Milburn’s removal.

The lawsuit, filed in Wyoming, where Mozart is registered as a private limited company, is a litany of petty and serious allegations, accusing Milburn of, among other things, making disparaging comments about Ukraine’s direction while being “significantly intoxicated,” to make his dog urinate in a borrowed apartment and to “divert corporate funds” and other financial crimes.

“I’ll be the first to admit that I have flaws”said Milburn, who admitted in an interview that he drank when he made the comments about Ukraine. “We all have them.” But he denied the more serious allegations of financial wrongdoing, calling them “completely ridiculous”.

When Milburn showed up in Ukraine in early March last year, the capital Kiev seemed to be on the brink. Russian forces were fighting their way out of the suburbs and Ukraine was sending thousands of inexperienced soldiers to the front.

It was then that, through a mutual friend, Milburn, 59, met Bain, 58. Bain, also a former Navy colonel, has worked in media and marketing in Ukraine for more than 30 years. “The Two Andys”as Mozart’s employees would call them, they shared the vision of doing everything possible to help Ukraine win the war.

Milburn, whose career spanned the American wars of the past three decadesFrom Somalia to Iraq, he’s had both the combat experience and the contacts. He counts naval heavyweights such as writer Bing West and former Secretary General of Defense James Mattis among his friends.

Bain had the organization. For eight years, since Russia invaded eastern Ukraine in 2014, he has run the Ukrainian Freedom Fund, a charity he created that has turned donations into desperate equipment for the Ukrainian military.

The two founded Mozart, a name that is a blatant response to Russian mercenary force by using the name of another famous composer, the Wagner Group. They also broadcast a short podcast called “Two Marines in kyiv”.

But they had very different styles. Milburn is gregarious, comfortable in the spotlight—he’s written a scathing memoir—and, by his own admission, short-tempered. Bain, who studied classical music at Yale, is more reserved and cerebral.

Both say there have been tensions from the beginning. “For 30 minutes he’s the most fascinating man alive,” says Bain of Milburn. “But in the 31st minute, you’re like, ‘Wait, something’s wrong.'”

Milburn said that while he did not want to insult Bain, “the facts speak for themselves, and I cannot give any more insight into his character than he already has.”

With the Ukrainian military desperate for all the Western support it could get, Mozart quickly went from a handful of combat veterans to more than 50 employees from a dozen countries.. The group’s two specialties became last-minute extractions of civilians trapped on the front lines, extremely dangerous work, and condensed military training.

As spring turned into summer, multiple Ukrainian military units asked Mozart for training. But the Ukrainians couldn’t afford it, so Mozart relied on a small group of steady donors, including a group of East Coast financiers with Ukrainian-Jewish roots and a Texas tycoon.

All involved say paying payroll alone has become stressful. And several employees said the way money flowed in the organization, which is overseen by Bain, was opaque.

“I can’t tell you how many people would come up to me at a party and say, ‘Marty, I love what you’re doing. I want to give you $10,000,” said Martin Wetterauer, one of Milburn’s old marine friends and Mozart’s chief of operations. “But we never knew if the money was actually going to come through.”

Bain said he did absolutely nothing wrong and provided financial information whenever asked, which was rare.

Furthermore, the people Mozart hired were not easy to manage. Many of them were combat veterans who admitted to suffering from PTSD and excessive alcoholism.. When they weren’t working, they frequented Kiev’s strip clubs, bars and internet dating.

“There was a lot of cursing, a lot of women, a lot of things you didn’t want to bring to mass,” says Rob, another coach.

In September, they lost a major source of funding when a charity called Allied Extract decided to use less expensive Ukrainian equipment to rescue civilians. By November, Mozart was so short on cash that Milburn, Bain, and Wetterauer gave up their salaries of several hundred dollars a day.

Bain, which owned 51% of the company, then turned to Milburn, which owned the remaining 49%, to try to break it off, the two said in interviews. Bain demanded that Milburn pay him $5 million to buy his stake, but Milburn refused., saying there was no way he could come up with that amount. The two soon stopped talking.

As soon as Bain filed the lawsuit on Jan. 10, an internal battle erupted on social media. Bain posted the allegations on Mozart’s Facebook page, which he controls, and Milburn responded with nasty comments about Bain from Mozart’s LinkedIn page, which he controls.

“It was like a domestic dispute”, Rob said.

Milburn has rented a new office in Kiev and says he is determined to revive the operation.

“I dream of returning to Donbass,” he says. “When you’re there and you’re scared, everything else is in the shadows. You don’t think about money. You don’t think about your reputation.”

But he won’t be returning to the front anytime soon. This week she has spent hours in front of his computer. Are you looking for new business, such as training courses in hostile environments. Write emails to donors.

And talk to their lawyers.

c.2023 The New York Times Society