An American citizen who said he helped Moscow’s war effort against Ukraine has spoken about how his home country was the “enemy” and also worked as a missionary in Poland, according to reports.
A man identifying himself as Daniel Martindale told Russian state media that he entered Ukraine on February 11, 2022, 13 days before Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion, under the pretense of being a volunteer and a foreign journalist.
“Here is my passport. It went through the war with me,” the 33-year-old said in English to Russian media, holding up what appeared to be well-used U.S. documents including a birth certificate.
It was claimed that Martindale was extracted from Ukrainian-held territory on October 27 by Russian special forces from the 29th Army whom he thanked for acting very “professionally.”
Gaelle Girbes/Getty Images
Newsweek has contacted the U.S. Embassy in Moscow for comment.
State news outlet RIA, citing an unidentified Russian intelligence source, said Martindale supplied information to Moscow’s forces about the coordinates of Ukrainian military facilities for two years.
Martindale told Russian media he entered the Donetsk region where he had contacted pro-Russian forces via Telegram and passed them information about Ukrainian locations, even using a phone delivered to him by drone.
Open-source intelligence X account Chris O_Wiki posted how he “played a key role in preparing the assault on the village of Bohoiavlenka [north of Vuhledar] in late October” that Russians captured on October 27.
1/ US citizen Daniel Martindale, who has disclosed that he spied on Ukraine for Russia for two years, worked alongside German volunteers as an aid worker in frontline towns near Vuhledar and Pokrovsk. It’s likely that he used this as cover to spy on the Ukrainian Armed Forces. ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/0O3JzepS8E
— ChrisO_wiki (@ChrisO_wiki) November 2, 2024
“I have done everything to save the lives of Russian soldiers and ensure some kind of future for Russians in Ukraine,” Martindale said. When asked if he would seek asylum in Russia, he replied, “I believe that process is already in motion.”
An account on the social network VKontakte purporting to be that of Daniel Martindale listed his address as Palowice in Poland and said that he was born in 1991.
It also said he had studied at the Indiana Institute of Technology and knows Russian, Polish and Chinese. The most recent post was from February 28, 2022, four days after the war started.
The social media channel shows Martindale’s support for the Church of Free Christians in Pałowice. His feed contains posts with information about the case of the former governor of Khabarovsk, Sergei Furgal, who was arrested in 2020 and jailed in 2023 in what were seen as politically motivated charges.
Martindale said he had been working as a missionary in Poland for two years before the start of the war, had wanted to go to Russia for a long time and sensing the invasion would start “realized that this was the very moment I had been waiting for.”
However, independent Russian news outlet Agentstvo reported that, according to its analysis, he may have lived “for several years” in Russia in the late 2010s. Radio Free Europe noted that there are images online of Martindale, taken in 2018 in the far eastern city of Vladivostok at a student sports competition.
In reporting the story, the Kyiv Post reported that Martindale “parroted the Kremlin’s usual propaganda” about how he was shaped by a different point of view to what was broadcast by Western media. He said in the interview he did not want to return to his country and that “since 2005, I consider the U.S. my enemy.”
