In his first interview, Canadian Armed Forces veteran Stephan Adams speaks with Canadian Affairs about his time as a volunteer soldier in Ukraine. He saw heavy combat in Donetsk Oblast, working as a sniper on a reconnaissance unit. He had many near-death experiences, participated in fierce firefights and won a medal for his service.
Before volunteering in Ukraine, Adams spent a decade in the Canadian navy, including working as a sharpshooter in the Naval Tactical Operations Group. When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February, 2022, he dropped everything to join Ukraine’s international legion.
Fin DePencier: What was going through your head when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022?
Stephan Adams: I had all that training that I never used… They put a lot of money and a lot of training into me… They specifically said you will never ever ever use your training. Canada won’t risk their people. They don’t want us in the papers.
So when the war in Ukraine started… I’m always for the underdog, and that’s why I went there. There was someone getting bullied, that just angers me to no end, man.
FD: When you volunteered, what did you expect of the war?
SA: I thought they would kill us all. I thought I was just going to save some families and die myself. That’s what I thought. I thought the Russians would roll Ukraine like a motherf***er. So I thought… maybe there are some families that are trying to escape to Warsaw. Then maybe I could just save a few lives. Be a little bit noble eh?… But every week, we seemed to push them back.
FD: Tell me about your first few weeks in Ukraine.
SA: Out of 70 [volunteers] only three of us were selected to go to the training centre. I had an EOD [explosive ordnance disposal] qualification, which was kind of like a Willy Wonka golden ticket. They sent me straight to a facility where I met some international hombrés. We all possessed specializations. So they made a reconnaissance team.
They sent us first to Sumy on the Russian border to shoot down planes. The flight path came right through that town, and there was an airport across the border… I was in Sumy for a week staring at the horizon. I am not joking. I stared at that horizon for a damn week looking for that plane. Nothing. So the operation changed, and they sent us to Donetsk Oblast.”
FD: How long before you saw action in Donetsk?
SA: Not f**king long… We split into two teams… and we went first, straight to the front lines.
We had one guy, he was a Czechoslovakian sniper in the Bosnian war. Because he was the only one who could speak Russian and interact with the Ukrainians, well, that’s essential, and now we can do real operations, so he got promoted to team lead. Because he was a sniper, he gave me his fancy sniper rifle. And I became a sniper.
We were in Donetsk Oblast… There was a no-man’s land… The Ukrainians booby-trapped their side, the Russians didn’t booby-trap theirs which was odd. It’s farmland, which is separated by a treeline that’s about five metres in width… You get through the treeline and it’s a little thin line that goes for kilometres into Russian territory. Booby-trapped of course, but you can never go in the fields. The fields are pure deadly. But if you can go through the treelines, you can get to Russian territory…
… I just decided to crawl around and see if I could get to their side, honestly due to pure boredom. But it worked because it turned out the Russian side wasn’t mined or booby-trapped in that one particular area.
FD: Tell me more about sneaking over to the Russian side. Was it a probing operation? Or were you actually gaining ground?
SA: We gained ground, that’s why I won that sweet medal, bro! But the problem was that we had to do something with it. I snuck over to the town, saw what was up, took some pictures and brought them back.
FD: You snuck over there by yourself or with a team?
SA: Mostly just me. It’s easier with just me. There are too many booby traps. [His fellow soldiers] kept f**king setting them off. I nearly died like 20 times. Going alone was the only way to get over there.
When I got back, the Ukrainians showed me their drone footage and asked “Is this you, or a Russian?” And I said, “Sorry, that’s me…” They showed me the drone footage, and there were two BMPs [armoured vehicles]. One was suspected to be destroyed, the other one was ferrying Russian personnel.
I was like, “Oh you want me to blow it up?” Because that would be f**king sweet! All I needed was an armour-piercing charge. We went at night and f**king hammered it. It was under a tarp in some city block, just two blocks from the treeline. We only had to make it two blocks, but I couldn’t do it alone. So I took this guy, Jimmy.
We blasted that BMP and got the f**k out of there under heavy fire. The whole Russian front came at us, so we started hopping fences until we got back to the tree line.
FD: Tell me about other intense combat moments you experienced.
SA: They told us one day that the 54th mechanized brigade got hit hard, so their little square of field got pushed back. So we went over there to conduct some reconnaissance.
We found some Russian MREs [meal kits], which was bad news. Then someone said, in Russian, “Hey, what’s up man?” And our Czechoslovakian team lead said back, “Hey, who are you?” They said, “We’re friendly.” Then our lead said, “Well if you’re friendly, come out.” And they said “We’re friendly. We’re Russians.” And then we started shooting at each other.
FD: How different was serving in the Ukrainian foreign legion from the Canadian Armed Forces?
SA: It’s not about what’s different… it’s the similarities. Whether it’s the CAF, or the Ukrainian foreign legion or the Ukrainian army, the guy next to you: It’s the same dude, you’d do anything for them. I’d give them the shirt off my back and they’d do the same. I forgot my sleeping bag when I went to the front in March, and I nearly froze to death. The Ukrainians took me in and kept me warm.
FD: How do you think the war is going?
SA: I don’t think anybody can predict it. I think the experts can’t even predict it, so why would I try? I ask the guys on the ground, they have no idea. Nobody knows.
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