A Texan Risked Everything to Defend Ukraine. So Did His Father.

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, thousands of foreign volunteers have traveled to the country to fight alongside Ukrainian armed forces. Erik Giggleman—”Giggles,” a decorated US Army staff sergeant who survived two tours in Afghanistan—was one of them. Laura Beil’s moving profile of Giggleman is a miniature family epic, rooted in early exposure to the senselessness of loss. Because of his experience, Giggleman spent his first weeks in Ukraine helping train other volunteers, but he quickly found his way to the front. At the time, Russia was occupying roughly a third of the Kharkiv Oblast, a key region in northeastern Ukraine, and had seized many of its cities. In September 2022, Ukraine mounted a counteroffensive. Giggleman joined a band of foreign fighters near the village of Petropavlivka. One of the new guys was a Canadian named Jack. His first day on the team, his commander gestured to the American with a vest full of grenades and said, “Stick with Giggles.” More stories of defiance from Ukraine The Prom Went On in Kyiv, but Masha’s Date Danced Alone “Masha Polska, 15, was an avid dancer who had been dreaming of a star turn in the group waltz. That was not to be.” Russia’s ‘Ghost Detainees’: The Investigation That Cost Viktoriia Roshchyna Her Life “Forbidden Stories investigated her detention and death, which came on the heels of a reporting trip to Zaporizhzhia aimed at telling the stories of Ukrainian civilians unlawfully held by Russia.” Ukraine’s Death-Defying Art Rescuers “When Putin invaded, a historian in Kyiv saw that Ukraine’s cultural heritage was in danger. So he set out to save as much of it as he could.”