An American who targeted Ukrainian forces for two years has complained about his lack of freedom due to surveillance by Russian intelligence agencies.

He shared this in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.

In the interview, Martindale explained that he grew up in a family with seven children, where his parents instilled a distrust of the American government's policies, which he described as having "desecrated" the U.S. Initially, they lived on farms in northern New York and Indiana before moving to rural China near the border with Russia.

There, his family met a neighbor who claimed to be a Russian military intelligence officer. He smuggled the Martindale family across the border and showed them abandoned collective farms with large plots of land near the city of Vladivostok. This experience, according to him, sparked a "deep longing for Russia" within Martindale.

In 2018, he moved to the Russian Far East, where he studied the Russian language in Vladivostok and taught English. However, four years later, Russian authorities deported him for violating labor laws pertaining to foreign students. He described this as a terrible experience.

Despite this, when the full-scale Russian invasion began, he crossed the border from Poland into Ukraine on a bicycle he found in a junkyard. To everyone he met, he claimed to be a Christian missionary.

Eventually, he settled in an abandoned house in the Ukrainian village of Bohoyavlenka near Ugledar. There, he gathered intelligence on the movements of Ukrainian troops and relayed that information to the Russians. Locals, however, invited him to their celebrations, viewing him as an international observer or informant gathering intelligence.

When Ukrainian troops were stationed in Bohoyavlenka, he began to be scrutinized for potential involvement in espionage.

"My Russian 'self' had to die and be buried for a time. I had to be cautious with every word and expression on my face," Martindale recounted, adding that in the evenings he prayed in Ukrainian with Ukrainian medics, from whom he gathered information for the Russians.

He also disliked that Russians were being targeted by American-made weapons, and he even considered making homemade explosives to destroy one of the American artillery systems. However, it detonated in the house where he lived, causing a fire that was extinguished by local firefighters.

Eventually, when the Russians captured Bohoyavlenka, he was taken under escort toward Rostov-on-Don, where he underwent a lie detector test. According to him, he felt like a prisoner who was to be exchanged for a valuable Russian captive.

Now, the American is in Moscow, living under close guard: "I am not a 100% free person."

He has been granted temporary political asylum, allowing him to apply for Russian citizenship, but he was informed that this process could take two years.

Recall that in early November 2024, American propagandists held a press conference with Martindale, during which he spoke about how he had lived in Ukraine for several years, assisting the Russians in striking Ukrainian military targets. At that time, he stated that he wanted to obtain Russian citizenship, did not wish to return to the U.S., and "considers Washington his enemy."