James Vasquez

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Part of a series on 2022 Russian Invasion of Ukraine. [View Related Entries]

About

James Vasquez is an American contractor and Army veteran from Connecticut who in February 2022 decided to aid the Ukrainian forces in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. After announcing his decision and departure on Twitter, Vasquez was fighting in Ukraine by mid-March 2022, live-tweeting during his days in battle and joining the Ukrainian Foreign Legion. He allegedly had taken down multiple Russian tanks in his first weeks. He also started posting videos that surfaced on other platforms like TikTok and YouTube.

Online History

James Vasquez is a professional contractor in Norwalk, Connecticut. He's also a U.S. Army veteran, aged 47-years-old. In late February 2022, when Russia first invaded Ukraine's eastern border, Vasquez started attending pro-Ukrainian rallies in Connecticut.^[1] In the end, this prompted him to post a tweet^[2] on February 24th that detailed how he had made a decision to go fight in Ukraine and that he was going to document the whole journey via Twitter. He also admitted in the tweet that he joined Twitter for the sole reason of documenting the journey. Over the course of one month, the tweet (shown below) received over 550 likes.

On February 26th, Vasquez posted three videos of himself talking to the camera about his situation and plan. The first video he posted (shown below) received over 100 likes in one month. In it, he detailed how he was very close to heading off to Ukraine. He praised the Ukrainian soldiers in the video amid his broader update regarding his business and family.

He continued to post and repost pro-Ukrainian content on Twitter going into March. On March 14th, he posted a video showing that he was all packed up and ready to go to Ukraine, earning over 500 likes in two weeks (shown below).

By March 17th, Vasquez was in Ukraine, and according to him, he was ready to hit the frontlines in a video he posted on that day, earning roughly 66,600 views and over 620 likes in less than two weeks (shown below). It is unknown exactly where Vasquez was stationed due to confidentiality complications, however, the NY Post^[1] speculated he was somewhere outside the city of Lviv due to him stating he had been woken up by huge explosions.

Vasquez started receiving increased engagement for his tweets going into the remainder of February with the majority of them reaching over one thousand likes each. This coincided with him posting more photos and videos of his Ukrainian surroundings. For instance, on March 19th, 2022, Vasquez tweeted^[3] two photos of himself in a military uniform, captioning them, "Another day in the hood," and earning roughly 1,600 likes in nine days (shown below).

On March 22nd, Vasquez received the most amount of likes for one of his tweets^[4] up to that point, in which he stated, "Captured 159 Russians today!" Over the course of one week, the tweet earned roughly 5,600 likes (shown below, left). On March 24th, Vasquez announced in a tweet^[4] that he'd been in an intense combat mission, earning roughly 16,200 likes in five days (shown below, right). He also hinted in the tweet that he'd be sharing a video from it later on.

Inherently, on March 24th, Vasquez uploaded the video he promised, having someone else film him while he talked about what happened in combat. The video earned roughly 2.9 million views and 107,800 likes over the course of five days (shown below). He mentioned in the video how he and his Ukrainian comrades had taken out seven Russian tanks and countless Russians.

He continued to post more videos of himself talking to the camera going into March. They started to surface on other platforms too like TikTok. For instance, a March 25th Twitter^[5] video of his was reposted by the TikTok^[6] account mikefl189 on the same day, earning roughly 2.6 million plays and 184,400 likes in four days (shown below).