MACER Gifford’s mission was simple: clear Ukraine’s No Man’s Land of mines and find out everything he could about the Russians without getting killed.
The Brit fighter crawled into the enemy’s trench in the dead of night and swiped the radio and crucial documents – his heart racing as he inched back towards the treeline, thinking he’d got away with it.
But his heart stopped as he heard the sickening sound of a Russian soldier screaming: “The Ukrainians are here!” following the crack of machine gunfire.
Within seconds, a hail of bullets was raining down on Macer and his Ukrainian comrades as they lay stock still – praying they wouldn’t be hit.
First came the grenades and then the machine gun fire – and Macer’s only hope of survival was that the Russians couldn’t know exactly where they were in the darkness.
The former London banker told The Sun: “The machine gunfire came in sweeps because they weren’t exactly sure I was there.
“They would light up a position, the tree line, and the bullets would smack into the trees that would hit the ground.
“I was just lying there enduring it, just thinking to myself that there’s no cover, I’m not under the ground here.
“If I take one of these bullets, if it just slips under my armour and strikes me in the head, then I’m dead and my body will be here for months because we were a kilometre away from the nearest Ukrainian position.”
After a hellish few minutes, there was a break in the fire before the Russians began shooting 100 metres behind where they were laying in the darkness.
Macer and his team knew this was their only chance to escape with their lives.
The Brit said: “I got up and then started running forward. We just got out of that through the skin of our teeth.
“To be honest, it was just pure luck that we survived that one.”
He’d been sent on what should have been a suicide mission by a Ukrainian general who could hear Russian voices in the darkness pushing towards their position – but having no idea where they were.
Macer, whose commander had the call sign ‘Sneaky’, was used to skirting No Man’s Land, gathering intelligence, looking for minefields and preparing the way for Ukrainian assaults in Kherson.
The machine gunfire came in sweeps because they weren’t exactly sure I was there. They would light up a position, the tree line, and the bullets would smack into the trees that would hit the ground
Macer Gifford
But this mission was different – they were tasked with going into the Russian trench and retrieving vital intelligence.
Macer said: “I knew it was going to go down. I knew we were going to fight.
“There’s always a calm before the storm, it was surreal in that moment because I knew things were going to get bad.
“But I still had a moment to breathe and feel my chest against my body armour.
“I could feel the weight of my bag on my back and the weight of my rifle, and I could think to myself – I’m alive now but in a few minutes I could be dead.”
Luckily for Macer, he escaped.
The only way to survive was to dig into the ground and to hide
Macer Gifford
Months earlier, Macer had watched with horror the columns of Russian tanks massing on the Belarusian border and Vladimir Putin insisting he wasn’t about to invade Ukraine.
He knew he had to do something and – knowing that a full-scale invasion was on the cards – he travelled the 2,000 miles to Ukraine to provide humanitarian assistance.
Macer spent the first two months of the war teaching Ukrainian soldiers how to treat medical emergencies while distributing life-saving kits.
But it was during his treks across Ukraine to share the knowledge he’d gained fighting ISIS terrorists in Syria that he learned of the horrors committed by Russian soldiers in Bucha and Irpin.
He was told by Ukrainians he was training about their friends who were massacred and shot in the street, tied and left unburied.
Macer had been met with the same horrors in Syria – watching innocent civilians waving white flags shot dead by ISIS snipers and his comrades and children blown up in car bombs.
The Brit had quit his job as a banker in London to fight against ISIS after watching Jihadi John behead kneeling hostages and others being burned alive in cages.
And now, he was being met with the same horrific crimes against humanity – but this time committed by Vladimir Putin’s soldiers.
The Brit told The Sun: “I was confronted with the same dilemma as I was in Syria.
“I could have stuck with my humanitarian work and helped that way, or I could directly confront the people who are destroying the country.
“So I decided to pick up a gun, just as I had in Syria.”
The amount of times that we had patrolled the zero line – or No Man’s Land – and found the body parts of soldiers who had been hit in their positions
Macer Gifford
He joined the 131st Separate Reconnaissance Battalion, where he fought in the fields between Mykolaiv and Kherson, the islands of Dnipro and the forests of Lyman.
It was during the Christmas of 2023 that Macer and his unit switched from collecting intelligence to fighting for the key city of Kherson.
He quickly saw the difference between ISIS’ fanatical battles with their suicide missions in Syria to the sheer scale of artillery at the feet of Russian soldiers in the fields of Ukraine near Kherson.
Macer said: “The first thing that struck me was the huge amount of artillery and mortars that struck us and hit us, and it was truly terrifying to be under such sustained bombardments.
“The only way to survive was to dig into the ground and to hide.
“The amount of times that we had patrolled the zero line – or No Man’s Land – and found the body parts of soldiers who had been hit in their positions.”
He likened the burnt tree stumps, the churned up ground, the twisted wires and the bodies laying with their limbs blown off like that of the Second World War.
But after weeks of fighting, the Ukrainians were quickly making ground by Kherson and the Russians were pulling their troops back across the Dnipro river.
And for the first time in the war, Macer’s unit had pushed forward and chased Putin’s men back.
I could have stuck with my humanitarian work and helped that way, or I could directly confront the people who are destroying the country. So I decided to pick up a gun
Macer Gifford
Macer said: “It was amazing, because civilians were coming out of their homes and it genuinely felt like I was a British solider in the Second World War, liberating French villages.
“It was the same reaction, the same tears, the same human emotion.”
The next phase for Macer was the fight on the islands of the Dnipro river – and it was like nothing he’d experienced before.
The former public schoolboy, who grew up in rural Cambridgeshire, said: “It was so different because it was just small teams of about five people infiltrating these islands on speedboats under the cover of darkness.
“We would be taking ground, engaging with Russian reconnaissance teams and looking again for mines, securing positions, and utilising drones.
“And that went on for months.”
Macer said when they battled for those strategic islands, they were fighting against elite Russian units, who were “very aggressive” and worked in small-man teams.
He said: “It was very much a battle of equals, whereas in other parts of the front line there was a lot more human mean waves being used by Russia.”
The Brit banker-turned-fighter said every time their small boats would land on an island, Russians would try and hunt them down with drones.
“They would hit us in the boats and we were just losing too many good people – in fact, several of my own team were wounded by shrapnel from falling grenades and falling mortars from drones,” Macer said.
It was that ruthless, brutal drone warfare that made Macer turn his attention to creating an elite UAV unit in the 131st battalion.
His team began striking Russian targets with their homemade drones, watching in awe as Russian tanks blew up in front of them.
But suddenly, the pace shifted again – and a few days of rest turned into months of brutal battles in the forests of Lyman, a now ruined railway town near the frontlines of the Donbas region.
Several of my own team were wounded by shrapnel from falling grenades and falling mortars from drones
Macer Gifford
The Brit said: “We were moved from the South to the Far East where some of the worst fighting was taking place in the Forests of Lyman and we fought there for several more months.”
And after months of coming under relentless Russian bombardment and years fighting for Ukraine, Macer decided it was time to come home.
“I decided, after the creation of this drone team, that this was my last mission – basically for Ukraine – because it had been so successful and destroyed millions of dollars worth of vehicles, I could hold my head up high.
“I rushed home to be back with my dad and I’m so glad I did because within a month of me coming back to the UK he sadly passed away.”
For Macer, his time in Ukraine began as a humanitarian mission, hoping to make a difference that way – but he knew that picking up a gun was the only way he knew he could.
“What it’s done is it’s shown me how much injustice there is in war, and that Vladimir Putin has caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, including his own, and ripped a country apart,” Macer said.
He added that the world now faces an unprecedented level of danger – one of a looming Third World War between major powers.
Unless we win this war, it will drag on for many more years
Macer Gifford
Macer explained: “Putin has set the world on a very dangerous path, one of genuine confrontation between nuclear states.
“I hope to see the West take this more seriously and start to give more sophisticated weapons to the Ukrainians and the permissions to use them, because unless we win this war, it will drag on for many more years.
“And it will grow, and it will spread to other parts of the world. There is an axis of evil on this planet, and it includes Russia, China, North Korea and Iran.
“And unless we wake up to that reality and confront it, we are going towards a very dark place.”
You are wrong, Donald
The Sun Says...
DONALD Trump’s smearing of the Ukraine regime as scam artists who provoked a war using US taxpayers’ money is a rant beneath the dignity of his office.
Almost nothing in it is true.
It reads like a post on a forum for conspiracy theorists. It is an unprecedentedly shocking statement from the President of the United States.
Vladimir Putin has made no secret of his imperialist ambitions, nor his denial of his neighbour’s right to exist as a sovereign, free country.
He invaded Ukraine, butchered and raped its people, stole its children and bombed its cities.
President Zelensky — far from duping anyone or inviting the conflict, far from being a “dictator without elections” — has been a heroic wartime leader who needs Western aid to overcome staggering odds.
The idea he is riding a “gravy train” is laughable. And his people, with whom he remains highly popular whatever Trump claims, have resisted conquest with immense bravery.
It is troubling and short-sighted in the extreme for the so-called leader of the free world to have no interest in a war raging in Europe because he is separated from it by the Atlantic.
America is not a business where Trump, as CEO, has no task except to slash costs and maximise profits. It is the most powerful democracy on Earth with global responsibilities and — let’s be frank — a duty to discern right from wrong with absolute moral clarity.
Others in the White House should urgently point this out.
