His Last Words Before Mariupol Fell | Marine Nick Laidlaw on Ukraine

<p>Nick Laidlaw enlisted in the Marine Corps to go to war. The war never came for him. So he spent the years after collecting other men&#39;s: over 1,100 first-hand accounts from more than 20 armies, both sides of nearly every war since 1939, including a Taliban fighter who later apologized to him.</p><p><br></p><p>Then he stopped collecting from a distance and went himself. In 2022 he was talking into encircled Mariupol over Starlink, interviewing a 22-year-old Azov soldier named Anton &quot;Pazman&quot; Krill almost every day until Anton was killed. Nick holds his last words: &quot;When we are relieved from here I will immediately marry my girlfriend and everything will be Ukraine.&quot; Two and a half years later, a man Nick was certain had died in Russian captivity messaged him. They met in a tea shop: &quot;Thank you for giving me Anton back.&quot;</p><p><br></p><p>In 2025 he rode into Pokrovsk at one in the morning in a soft-skin pickup, after a brigade deputy commander told him it was 50-50 he&#39;d be hit going in or coming out. He went. Seven hours: the wound that started it, and the work that came out of it.</p><p><br></p><p>▶ Watch on YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=JNZvkcO3fsE</p><p><br></p><p>CHAPTERS</p><p>0:00:00 Cold open</p><p>0:04:04 Eight months in the making</p><p>0:09:51 Adopted at birth, and the half of his life he knew nothing about</p><p>0:19:21 He found his biological family in six days</p><p>0:37:13 Growing up on the GWOT, and why the Marine Corps</p><p>0:47:10 Boot camp, SOI, and FAST company</p><p>0:58:07 He enlisted to have his metal tested. The war never came.</p><p>1:03:43 Getting out, and the transition nobody prepares you for</p><p>1:08:29 A Glock in the car door, and the song that stopped him</p><p>1:16:02 Battles and Beers begins</p><p>1:28:06 Kabul falls, and the people he tried to get out</p><p>1:39:14 &quot;You are the target audience&quot; - how propaganda really works</p><p>1:46:32 He interviewed a member of the Taliban</p><p>2:03:43 Maidan, Crimea and the Donbas: how this war started</p><p>2:27:14 What Azov actually is</p><p>2:33:02 Russia&#39;s justification, and what he says is the truth</p><p>2:53:22 Into encircled Mariupol on Starlink</p><p>2:59:01 Anton &quot;Pazman&quot; Krill, 22 years old</p><p>3:15:52 Standing at Anton&#39;s memorial wall with his brother</p><p>3:26:36 &quot;What right do you have to take these stories?&quot;</p><p>3:30:37 Bucha, from a man who lived through it</p><p>3:40:26 The Coke can in th