Why Taiwanese are volunteering to fight in Ukraine

When Tony Lu made the long journey from Taiwan to Ukraine just weeks after war broke out, he planned to distribute relief supplies.

“As I handed out aid packs, I realised that I could contribute much more at the frontlines,” he said. “That’s where many people, like the elderly and young, needed the most help.”

Immediately, he signed up as a volunteer foreign fighter.

The horrific images on the news had called him to action. To him – and many others he knew – the war in Ukraine was an ominous warning for his homeland of Taiwan, an island nation that China claims as its territory and has threatened to take by force.

“I really wanted to understand what was happening between Russia and Ukraine. Like China and Taiwan, the two countries have a lot of shared ties and history,” Mr Lu told The Telegraph.

“This is not a war anybody wanted; it is Putin’s own war,” he said.

Just as Russia did to Ukraine, he added, “China is threatening and intimidating us…one day, missiles really might rain down here [in Taiwan].”

Another recruit, Jack Yao, 29 – inspired by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky's plea for international support – signed up around the same time as Mr Lu, though the two didn’t cross paths.

“In Taiwan, we’re always talking about whether the US would come to our aid if China invaded,” he said. “Now that this has happened in Ukraine, well, shouldn’t we go there to assist, too? If we don’t help them now, how can we ask others to do that for us later?”

Mr Lu, 35, agrees. “We must train, we must be ready – we’re an island nation; we can only rely on ourselves,” he said. “Neighbouring countries like Japan and the Philippines are worried about China’s military build-up, too.”

He and Mr Yao are among about 10 Taiwanese who have fought in Ukraine over the last year.

So far, one is known to have died – Tseng Sheng-kuang, 25, thought to be the first soldier from East Asia killed in action.

Before being deployed, Mr Lu trained for about 20 days with hundreds of others in Kyiv, rising at 5am for daily workouts, learning how to handle sniper fire and administer emergency medical care.

It was familiar – at 22, he served a year in the Taiwanese military, as conscription is mandatory for males, given long-time tensions with China.

But he had to retrain on Soviet weaponry, rather than the US models Taiwan uses.

Evenings were filled with Ukrainian lessons so that the foreign legions could understand basic orders. “Slava Ukraini!” – long live Ukraine – is among the few words he remembers.

On the battlefield, he and other foreign soldiers held the line as Ukrainian troops launched counter-offensives. “The Ukrainians driving the tanks, charging into certain death are the true heroes,” said Mr Lu.

“We were so exhausted that any of us could have toppled over and fallen right asleep,” he said. “But we were never able to sleep; you were always startled awake by constant shelling and gunfire.”

One day in early June in Izyum, an artillery shell landed within a few feet of his unit, lodging in the soft mud next to his trench. He held his breath, wondering if this was his last moment alive.

“Everyone froze,” said Mr Lu. “All of us could have died then; this was no laughing matter.”

By chance, it didn’t explode. Barely able to believe their luck, the troops immediately fell back into action, engulfed in a cacophony of bombs and bullets.

In combat, he continued to carry and distribute relief supplies: milk powder, gloves, medicine, heating pads. Sometimes, he’d visit Ukrainian churches, just for a minute, to pray and pay his respects.

Gruesome carnage was everywhere. When Mr Yao arrived in March, the Russian military was still trying to take Kyiv.

“There were so many dead bodies,” Mr Yao recalls of his visit to Bucha, a town near Kyiv  where Russians massacred citizens before retreating. “Anybody seeing that would be filled with rage.”

Moments like that boosted morale in his unit, with soldiers from Norway, Chile, Romania and Georgia, even though everybody was freezing and worried they’d die far from home.

“That’s somebody’s husband, somebody’s child…inside, we are all the same,” said Mr Yao, who was tasked with reconnaissance, supply transport and evacuating the wounded.

Sometimes, people he met in Ukraine would challenge him, thinking he was Chinese and therefore on side with the "Russian enemy", because Beijing and Moscow have strong ties.

“I’d show my passport – unfortunately, it says ‘Republic of China, Taiwan’ so it took some explaining, but I also had the Taiwanese flag, clearly different from the Chinese flag.”

For protection, he carried a small Ukrainian bible in his pocket, even though he’s Buddhist by faith.

In June, Mr Yao decided to head home, worried that conflict was about to erupt in Taiwan.

China was becoming increasingly bellicose – last year saw a record number of incursions across the Taiwan strait, with more than 1,700 Chinese warplanes and drones buzzing the island.

To Mr Yao, it felt eerily similar to the Russian military buildup along Ukraine’s eastern border in the months before invading.

Since then he has been preparing for the worst, while running his coffee-roasting business.

He’s stocked up on food and water for his family of nine, with three generations living under one roof in Taipei. He consults the journal he kept in Ukraine, as he maps out where best to shelter neighbours if under attack.

He frequents the gym to stay in shape, and plans to sign up for additional reservist training programs announced in January by the Taiwanese government.

“I’m not a professional soldier, but I should refresh these survival skills, to know what to do in an emergency,” he said. “You have to keep training, so actions like loading gun cartridges become muscle memory.”

Settling back to regular life hasn’t been easy, both struggling with recurring nightmares.

Mr Yao says he’ll never forget the scent of war – a mix of smoke, corpses and possibly poison gas – given his trained barista nose.

Mr Lu has also returned home to a job in the meat industry, while mourning the deaths of others in his unit.

Friends and family only learned the extent of what he did in Ukraine after he got back.

It was dangerous, but now with combat experience, he says he’s more than ready to act at home if necessary.

“There was a chance that I wouldn’t be sitting here today,” said Mr Lu. “I don’t think I’m particularly brave. We all did this so that others could have their freedom and democracy.”