A former US soldier has been killed in the city of Bakhmut, which has become the scene of Ukraine’s longest and bloodiest battle since the Russia invasion began.
Retired Army Staff Sgt. Nicholas Maimer has been identified as the American citizen killed by Russian artillery in the embattled city of Bakhmut this week, according to a close friend and the founder of a non-profit group working in Ukraine.
The ex-Special Forces soldier was in a building in Bakhmut that collapsed after being hit by artillery fire, according to Retired Lt. Col. Perry Blackburn, founder of the non-profit AFGFree, with which Maimer was working in Ukraine.
Ukrainians who were with Maimer believed he was either trapped in the collapsed building or killed by a “barrage” of Russian artillery fire, Blackburn said.
“They got in the position that they were, artillery started coming in heavy and the building started to collapse. That’s when most of the Americans and Ukrainians there were able to escape. Unfortunately, Nick was not able to escape,” an American friend of Maimer in Ukraine also told CNN.
The head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group shared a picture on a Russian social media platform purporting to show the body and identification documents of a the former US Army Green Beret.
In video shot at night that was shared on the Wagner Group’s Telegram channel Tuesday, Yevgeny Prigozhin is shown leading pro-Russian war blogger Alexander Simonov to a shelter on the western side of Bakhmut and shows him the body of a man lying motionless on his back with a visible injury to the right side of his partially exposed torso.
Prigozhin shows to the camera what appears to be the dead soldier’s US-issued ID card with his photo and then reads aloud his name, “Nicholas”.
“So we will hand him over to the United States of America, we’ll put him in a coffin, drape him with the American flag with respect because he did not die in his bed as a grandpa but he died at war and most likely a worthy [death], right?” Prigozhin says.
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