Special operations leader shares his tough experience as the US embassy was shuttered just before Russia invaded Ukraine

Sensitive information, personal effects, and more were destroyed weeks before Russia’s full-scale invasion.

Just weeks before Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a US special operations leader found himself unexpectedly experiencing the shuttering of the US embassy in Kyiv, he shared at a recent military exercise.

In early 2022, Russian forces surrounded Ukraine, raising concerns it had plans to launch a full-scale invasion. US intelligence had assessed that Russia had moved military equipment and soldiers to borders along Ukraine, and the Ukrainians were preparing the troops and civilians for an attack.

Russia invaded on February 24, 2022, bombarding Ukraine and launching assaults aimed at swiftly seizing Kyiv.

Shuttering the US embassy in those early days before Russia’s invasion began wasn’t as simple as turning off the lights and locking the doors. There’s a lot that goes into that sort of operation. The Diplomatic Security Service and its associated security staff led that move and evacuation.

US Army Col. Lucas VanAntwerp, who was the commander of 10th Special Forces Group at the time, told B-17 that he and his team assisted with further security and the destroying of sensitive material to prevent it from falling into the hands of an invading Russian army.

“There is a part of you in the moment that’s like, ‘I don’t really know what I’m doing,'” VanAntwerp, now the director of US Army Special Operations Command’s Capability Development Integration Directorate, told B-17 during last week’s USASOC Capabilities Exercise at Fort Bragg in North Carolina.

US Army rangers fast rope off a MH-47 Chinook as part of an airborne assault demonstration.

VanAntwerp got the call in early 2022 to shuffle his forces out of Kyiv. The 10th Special Forces Group had been working with Ukrainian operators since Russia’s initial invasion in 2014.

The goal for the US special operations advisors stationed in the country had been to help Ukrainian operators break away from their Soviet-style approaches and adopt more Western-style methods, changing how the individual soldier and the critical non-commissioned officer make battlefield decisions.

“I’m not going to say we transformed everything,” VanAntwerp explained, but “it was a big contributor to how they thought and how their SOF operated.”

Empowered NCOs have given Ukraine combat and decision-making flexibility that is vastly different from Russia’s top-down approach that requires generals for battlefield decision-making, keeping them close to the front lines and vulnerable.

When it was time to shutter the embassy, staff were moved to Lviv, and the 10th Special Forces Group leader and his team began helping sanitize the diplomatic outpost, VanAntwerp recalled.

Col. VanAntwerp during the 10th Special Forces Group change of command in July 2023. 

With the Russian invasion looming, the amount of potentially sensitive materials in the embassy that needed to be swiftly removed was vast. Servers and computers were destroyed, and the personal effects of workers were tossed out.

That experience in particular, VanAntwerp said, was eerie “because you’re still sitting there seeing pictures of people’s families on their cubicles, pictures of people’s kids.”

When they wrapped, the office looked normal but empty.

He went outside and watched the US flag come down. “It was probably one of the toughest moments of my military career, standing there watching that happen,” he said.

Despite the unusual nature of this particular job, VanAntwerp explained that it’s often typical for special forces to fulfill roles that are sometimes out of the ordinary, particularly because of the relationships operators build with partners and allies.

Rangers with the 4th Regiment of Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces holding DDM4 rifles.

That is a key aspect of SOF’s role in the US military, especially as it shifts from decades focusing on counterterrorism and counterinsurgency to great-power competition, with US rivals like China and Russia front of mind.

Various SOF leaders have highlighted that operator presence around the world and the relationships that they have built are vital to success.

VanAntwerp noted the importance of the partnership between the US and Ukraine, as well as between the US and Europe as a whole.

“We’re able to tie all that together with a very small footprint, small signature,” he said, “and it really is all based on relationships.”