Following multiple reports of high casualties among Western combatants who have poured into Ukraine since the outbreak of hostilities there on February 24, a veteran of the NATO intervention in Afghanistan from the Royal Canadian Infantry’s 22nd Regiment has reportedly been killed in action. Having served from 2009 to 2011, the sniper known in Arabic as Wali – or ‘the Guardian’ – subsequently traveled to Iraq and volunteered with Kurdish militias to fight the Islamic State terror group. The sheer number of kills gained against Iraqi and Afghan insurgents gained him the title of NATO’s deadliest sniper – with some reports indicating that he had a record of 40 kills in a day. An active sniper under normal combat conditions would do well to gain more than 5-6 kills.
Carrying a Finnish-built Lapua Magnum .338 sniper rifle, the Canadian was reportedly killed within days of entering Ukraine by Russian forces although the circumstances of his death remain unknown. This comes as military facilities near Ukraine’s borders with NATO member states have come under Russian missile strikes at times killing dozens of foreign fighters. Citizens from Western countries have primarily for ideological reasons travelled to Ukraine in considerable numbers to fight Russian forces, although they have been dismissed in Russian state media as mercenaries. Like ‘the Guardian,’ those going have often had military experience.