It’s estimated that there are between 1,000 and 3,000 volunteer foreign fighters in Ukraine, and during interviews with The Washington Post, several said being there has given them a renewed purpose.

At the onset of the war last February, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky asked for volunteers to help his military, and Ukrainian officials said by the spring, about 20,000 people from more than 50 countries answered the call. A majority left before the summer, taken aback by how intense the fighting was and the lack of air support, and those who remain “tend to be highly committed, willing to withstand the winter conditions and to overcome the language barriers and cultural tensions that occasionally flare,” the Post‘s Jeff Stein writes.

Most of the foreign fighters are with three battalions of the International Legion. One fighter, a 30-year-old British military captain, told the Post he had a hard time transitioning to a desk job. “The war has been a terrible, terrible thing for Ukraine, but the last nine months have been the best, most enjoyable of my life,” he said. “I can’t go sit in an office and do PowerPoint for the next 50 years.” The man, who asked that his name not be used for security reasons, said he almost died in battle in Bakhmut, and “there’s a part of me that’s doing it for the right reasons, and there’s part of me that’s doing it for the violence. It’s kind of a bit of both.”

Some of the volunteers are troubled veterans, and experts say this may point to governments not doing enough for service members who are struggling with returning to civilian life. There are other fighters who are trying to escape things at home, like criminal cases, and those who do not have any military experience and are on the battlefield for the first time.

About 100 volunteer foreign fighters have died and 1,000 have been wounded since the start of the war, the Center for Research on Extremism at the University of Oslo estimates. Joseph Hildebrand, a 33-year-old farmer from Saskatchewan, was one of them. He served two tours in Afghanistan, and told his wife Carissa he was fine with no longer being part of the Canadian military. “He literally could not handle it,” she told the Post. “He started talking to his friends who went over and just felt he had to do it.  … It just bothered his soul.” Hildebrand was killed in Bakhmut during combat, and it took more than five weeks for his body to get to his family.

Hildebrand’s friend, a former paratrooper in the Canadian military, spent four months fighting in Ukraine, and told the Post that Hildebrand was sent on “a suicide mission.” When it comes to the Ukrainian forces, “There are really big issues because a lot of these guys are not trained soldiers,” he said. “It’s really hard for me to watch. There’s a lot of panic. There’s a terrible lack of training.”