A year later he fought with the Kurdish peshmerga in northern Iraq before coming back to the United States. In Ukraine, Cuvelier, also known as Lenormand, fought for the Russian-backed Donetsk People’s Republic, the breakaway state subject to U.S. government sanctions and labeled terrorist by the U.S.-allied government in Kiev. It appears in the documentary that Cuvelier may have been honored with the medal in Moscow in 2015. Following his time in Ukraine, Cuvelier traveled to northern Iraq in 2015 and set up another unit of foreign fighters, this time allied with the Kurdish Peshmerga. The group, called Qalubna Ma’kum, was located near Daquq in northern Iraq from the end of 2015 to mid-2016.

Source: Washington Post May 01, 2017 18:30 UTC