It was “devastating” to receive confirmation of her brother’s death in Ukraine through a video posted by the Russian Wagner Group, Nick Maimer’s sister has told Newsweek.
Maimer, a former U.S. Special Forces soldier who spent more than 20 years in the military, was killed in the fiercely contested Donetsk city of Bakhmut in mid-May. He had traveled out to Ukraine the previous May and was one of an unknown number of U.S. volunteers who signed up to fight on Kyiv’s behalf against Russia.
The Russian mercenary organization, the Wagner Group, posted graphic footage to its social media platforms on May 16. In the black and white video, Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin shows identity documents with Maimer’s name to the camera, before it cuts to several shots of Maimer’s shirtless body.
Ukrainian forces were largely facing off against Wagner mercenary troops fighting for the Kremlin in Bakhmut at the time. The city has been labeled a “meat grinder” and has racked up high casualty counts for both Russian and Ukrainian forces.
Maimer, 45, told his family the previous Friday he was heading into Bakhmut before his relatives received word on the following Monday that he had likely been killed in the embattled settlement, his sister, Amanda Weishaar, said.
Courtesy of Maimer Family
But his loved ones “didn’t have confirmation” at that point, she recalled. “We got our confirmation when the Wagner Group posted that video of his dead body,” she said. “That’s how we all found out.”
Amanda recounted how she searched her brother’s name online and came across reports of him being killed in eastern Ukraine. “Then I actually saw the video of his dead body laying there, and that was how we all kind of found out for sure that he had been killed,” Amanda said.
It was “extremely difficult” to see the video of her sibling “and to know that the people that killed him were videotaping it and had taken his shirt off,” Amanda said.
“It’s very disrespectful for someone to post a video of him dead after they killed him, and just in that vulnerable state,” she continued. “When you die, you expect your body to be respected and cared for,” Amanda said. “And that’s not what they did to him.”
Courtesy of Maimer Family
“They just left him there until the Ukrainians could recover his body,” she added.
Posting the video, the Wagner Group appeared “pretty proud to have killed an American,” Amanda said. But the mercenaries “had no idea who Nick was as a person, and that he was there to just support people because he was a kind person.”
He had “the biggest heart of anyone I knew,” Amanda said. “He always stood up for what he believed in,” she added, saying: “He fought for that too, and that was that was just Nick.”
“It was really tough to see them kind of bragging about killing him,” she added. It was “devastating,” and there “really are no other words to describe how it felt.”
After the video appeared online, the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) think tank said the footage “emphasizes Wagner’s continual promotion of brutality and glorification of war.”
“The video appeared to showcase Wagner gloating over the death of an American and amplified the graphic nature of his death,” the ISW said at the time.
Fellow former U.S. Army soldier and close companion of Maimer, retired Lieutenant Colonel Perry Blackburn, told CNN last month that it “doesn’t surprise me that they would do it, it just really makes me mad.”
Prigozhin claimed in the footage that he would hand Maimer’s body to U.S. authorities, the think tank added in its analysis.
But to date, Maimer’s body has not been transferred back to the U.S., Amanda said, adding it would likely be another few weeks before he arrives back.
Maimer’s family has started a fundraising page for the transportation of his remains back to the U.S. and for memorial services dedicated to his life. Leftover funds will be donated to veteran charities, Amanda said.
“That’s been the hardest part for me, personally,” Amanda said. “Not being able to make plans for a memorial service, to grieve, or to start that kind of closure.”
Since the start of the full-scale war in Ukraine, foreign nationals from across the world have made the journey to the war-torn country to fight for Kyiv. Several U.S. volunteers are now known to have been killed in the many months of war since February 2022.
Maimer said in a video posted to Facebook shortly after he arrived in Ukraine that he had “linked up” with the Mozart Group, a Western private military company operating in the country. But he quickly left and ended up working with Blackburn on a training program for Ukraine’s Territorial Defense Force.
When he was entering Bakhmut, Amanda said, he was there to work out how to offer better training for those fighting Moscow’s forces.
Now, the family is left with wanting feelings for time lost with Nick. Amanda and her younger brother, Dustin, did not know they had a brother until they were well into adulthood. They had a different mother, Amanda said, adding: “We actually weren’t aware of Nick until he found us when he was 43.
“We all got really close in the last couple of years… We were all really regretful that we didn’t get more time with him.”
