A football fan from Croatia became a soldier of the International Legion
He received the call sign “Gaddafi”
Native of Croatia from the suburbs of Split was a football fan until recently, and now he is a rifleman with the International Legion of Defense of Ukraine. He joined the Armed Forces of Ukraine in August 2024.
After completing basic general military training, he has been valiantly performing combat missions.
“I consider myself a Ukrainian warrior. I start the morning with a prayer with my guys... And I will fight here with them until victory,” says ‘Gaddafi’.
Gaddafi first heard about the fighting in Ukraine back in 2014, when he was a football fan and semi-professional player. At the time, he was interested in the lives of Croatian footballers in Ukraine, such as Dario Srna of Shakhtar Donetsk and Ivica Olic of Dynamo Kyiv.
But the Balkan learned about the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by the Russian army after the Booking service canceled his hotel reservation in Kyiv.
“I was planning to spend a vacation in Kyiv at the end of 2021 when I received an email like 'forget it - the war has started,'” he jokes.
According to the legionnaire, the Croatian authorities could have provided more assistance to Ukraine in its fight for independence and its victory.
“When I found out that war had broken out in Ukraine, I could no longer sleep properly. I could not look at myself in the mirror. As a child, I was taught to go do something or sit quietly. I would not sit quietly. Eventually, I went to Poland to the border crossing with Ukraine, and there was a bus with the military (International Legion bus - ed.). I said that I wanted to join, and they took me in,” Gaddafi recalls.
As for his further service in the International Legion of Defense of Ukraine, he recalls his first impressions with a smile.
“It was something incredible. A mixture of nationalities. Like a designer: people from different countries, from the US to Taiwan, with roughly the same values and IQ. You don't know all these people, but after a while, everyone feels on the same wavelength and grows together.” “For me, it (the issue of joining the Legion - ed.) was easy. Now we are fighting desperately here. It's not like you can see on YouTube. If you come here, you come to fight for Ukraine, for its independence, and for the independence of Europe. This is not just a trip. - This is the call of the soul.”
