The 135th Territorial Defense battalion and other Ukrainian defenders and patriots, along with US Army Special Forces and other veterans, and Ukrainian Special Operations Forces as well as Ukrainian dignitaries and politicians attended to pay their respects to the fallen American hero.

US Army Special Forces qualified and ordained Minister Christian Hickey led the memorial service, after spending several long and tense months working as part of the team under Retired Army Special Forces LTC Perry Blackburn CEO of AFGFree.org, and many teammates including Mike Robinson of Radio Free Ukraine, American TDF volunteer Jackie Hess our primary liaison with the TDF and hero of Ukraine by his selfless service. Jackie and Christian both were wounded last year in Ukraine, but stay there in the fight, each in their own ways, nevertheless.

They all knew Nick Maimer, and many others worked behind the scenes without any focus other than to provide a dignified transfer of Nick’s remains to bring him home and to honor him with a memorial service in both Kyiv and the USA. Part one is now complete. Now we bring Nick home, after the parties with authority decide who does what, when and how. If not for the FBI War crimes investigation into Nick’s death, we would have brought him home by now. Unfortunately, there may be “issues” with chain of custody and condition of the body for autopsy purposes. But rest assured, there is a Plan B. More to follow on that.

Retired LTC Blackburn shared insights from Jackie and the 135th about Nick’s service.

“Nick trained this Battalion of 500 men for approximately 10 months. He spent a few months consolidating an interpreter team and translating about 1GB worth of digital manuals encompassing the entire range of military ops from individual weapons to strategic leadership and everything in between. He did this from behind a computer every day every night. He then packaged those manuals into classes on PowerPoint and developed 1-3 week training schedules to teach 20-40 men at a time.

He got everyone through “basic training” after 6 months, while building training areas and aids such as trenches and bunker, after that we installed advanced training over the next 4 months.

Then we all went to the deadliest battleground in modern history, Bakhmut. We were directly in the killbox for 24 days in total. Two months deployed, but 24 days at the front of the “Nest” which in addition to all the normal threats, was mass thermite bombed 3 times while we were in position.

During this time we lost 10 soldiers, but only 8 in the city itself. 6 of the 8 died in the same fight as Nick. During the fight we had 63 men in a pocket surrounded on three sides by hundreds of Russians, and 200m distance to friendly lines. Nick’s training enabled those 63 men in that fight to slowly but successfully withdraw 57 of them to safety over 14 hours under constant direct and indirect fire. We estimate we killed 200 Russians during our time there, primarily through drone corrected artillery.

Nick got a ragtag group of local volunteers from a little town outside Kyiv to do that.

He did all of that while being practically broke, begging for a paycheck, subsidizing his food and housing from the Ukrainians. I’m glad that some people were able to raise funds after his death to support his burial and family travel expenses, but I want our community to think about this….

I don’t know exactly if this is true, but I am pretty sure, pretty damn sure, that Nick received more funding to cover his death than he received to cover his training while he was alive. If that is true, and I think it is, then I would call that a tragic failure.

Nick was a linebacker/running back and coach playing both ways here and leading the team. He was on the field, in the mud, moving the ball to the end zone. He was not well supported, he did not have sponsorships, he had to build the damn stadium, parking lot, hire staff, and make it to kickoff. That’s crazy….. and he did it anyways.”

Please keep Nick in your hearts and minds today, and think of all the others just like him that still need our help. DOL ?????️

RIP Nicholas D. Maimer, KIA Bakhmut 2023, Retired US Army Special Forces and 135th TDF Ukraine.