For the past two years, a 35-year-old Georgian has appeared on a Russian website that publicly names foreign fighters and Ukraine supporters as enemies of the state.
“After the Russians failed to take Kyiv in three days, they started hunting patriots,” Miro Vanadze says, with a laugh. “And apparently I made the list.”
The Russians call him a mercenary. But he says by serving here he answered a call to duty rooted deep in Georgia’s own history.
Vanadze is one of thousands of Georgians who have come to fight for Ukraine — a tradition that began in 2014, after Russia’s annexation of Crimea and incursion into Ukraine’s Donbas region, when Georgian volunteers formed their own battalion.
At the height of the full-scale war, the Georgian Legion grew into one of the largest foreign fighting forces in the country, with as many as 2,500 volunteers.
When Russian forces neared Kyiv in 2022, Vanadze joined the volunteer battalion Karpatska Sich, under Ukrainian commander Oleh Kutsyn.
“It was emotional,” Vanadze says, “because decades earlier, Kutsyn had fought for Georgia in Abkhazia. Thirty years later, we were fighting together against Russia.”
After helping defend the capital, Vanadze fought in the Kharkiv region and the Donbas. Then, in May 2024, an explosion shattered the bone in his right leg, and shrapnel tore into his right arm.
Recovery has taken more than a year, slowed by infection and a series of surgeries.
“Every couple of months, some kind of intervention has been necessary,” says his physical therapist, Volodymyr Yarmushuk. Doctors plan another operation to straighten the leg and begin restoring its full function.
“I regret nothing,” Vanadze says. “If I could go back, I would do exactly the same thing. Ukrainians are fighting for freedom, and I made my small contribution on behalf of Georgia.”
Vanadze has spent his life as an athlete. He competed in bodybuilding for Georgia’s national team, came to Ukraine in 2018 to study, and stayed to build a career in mixed martial arts, becoming a two-time champion in a local league.
“I wanted to go to the United States and fight in the UFC,” he says. “That dream is still with me. But then the war started, and everything changed.”
Now he is building opportunities for others. After his injury, Vanadze began organizing adaptive combat sports events for wounded Ukrainian veterans, and last year he founded the International Association of the Georgian People in Ukraine to strengthen ties between the two nations. He sees it as a continuation of something much older.
“My ancestors have been fighting against Russia for nearly 200 years,” he says. “We know the price of freedom. We have paid it, and we will continue to pay it.”
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