A park on the edge of downtown Kiev.
For a short stretch, it goes steeply down from an old building street with graying facades under dense trees.
The ground covered with crackling leaves.
Then a few excavated holes in the ground appear, from which fresh root remains are still sticking out.
Alexander Haneke
Editor in Politics.
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A group of men trotted down the slope.
A motley crew, some in full riot gear with bulletproof vests, others just jogging suits.
Some carry an assault rifle on their backs, an elderly gentleman in a light-colored pensioner's jacket came unarmed.
The tallest of the group carries a battered metal plaque under his arm and leans it against a tree.
Today's lesson: Securing a site while the enemy advances.
Lane Perkins is one of the instructors.
26 years old, boyish face with reserved smile, former US Navy soldier and in Ukraine for almost two months.
He lives with a few others in an old lady's apartment in Kyiv, which she gave to the foreigners for free.
During the day he gives combat training in the park.
Thousands of foreign fighters have come to Ukraine to defend the country against Russian invasion.
There are no exact numbers, but you meet them everywhere – with large army backpacks on the way to the war at Polish border towns, in thick flatbed trucks or vans with foreign license plates out in the country itself or in downtown Kiev.
Many have joined the newly established Ukrainian Foreign Legion or other voluntary organizations.
But some travel on their own account, like Lane.
We met Lane in mid-March at a base in western Ukraine where dozens of western volunteers were gathering at the time.
Most of them are not yet thirty, but almost all have military experience.
Lane was in the Navy for five years.
He then ran a small company with a friend that built charging stations for electric cars in western America.
A lucrative business, but after an accident Lane sold his stake.
When he found out about the Russian attack on Ukraine, he told his wife that he had to leave her and their young son to go to war.
"She understood that," he says.
From his perspective, this was a chance to be on the right side of history.
Now was the moment when he could be useful.
Like most other foreign fighters, Lane had hooked up with like-minded people via Facebook before starting.
Flight to Warsaw, overnight in hostel, then on to the border.
The base in western Ukraine was in a hurry.
New ones kept arriving, everyone tried to organize themselves and braced themselves against the all-pervading nervousness with chain smoking and pithy remarks.
For the first time in a war zone without the certainty of having the powerful US military machine with its helicopters and drones at its back.
At that time, the battle for Kyiv was raging, and every day it was to be expected that Russian soldiers would move into the capital.
And that Ukraine would then have to throw its last forces against the attacker, including the newly formed Foreign Legion.