This Albertan has signed up to fight in Ukraine. He was almost killed by friendly fire
As David Rauser stood outside the door of a Russian temporary home in Ukraine’s restive eastern region of Donetsk in November, the former Alberta firefighter grabbed his automatic weapon. He peered into the shelter which was heavily covered by a large plastic tarp.
Inside, Russian voices echoed through the darkness, asking who was there. With his second in command behind him, Rauser shouted in Russian, ordering those inside to raise their hands and surrender. When no one answered, he opened fire.
Video taken from a camera attached to his helmet captured the next moments as gunfire rang out outside the basement, aimed directly at him.
But in the chaos, Rauser, 40, has been struck by friendly fire.
“One of the guys on my team – he was new to the team, and I don’t know why, but he thought I was Russian,” he said. “He shot me once in the head and in the arm.”
Rauser was shot on Nov. 10, 2025, on the hardest mission of his 10 months serving in Ukraine with the 63rd Separate Mechanized Brigade. He often worked as part of a small team made up of soldiers, professional soldiers and other foreign soldiers. He spoke to CBC News from Ternopil in western Ukraine.
Now he’s out of the hospital, waiting for paperwork before he can return, maybe just temporarily, to Canada.
It’s unclear how many Canadian citizens are fighting in Ukraine, but more than a dozen have been killed since Russia launched its full-scale offensive on February 24, 2022. (Those deaths include both soldiers and a few paramedics.) Besides Rauser, the CBC knows of two Canadian citizens who have recently been injured in the fighting in western Ukraine.
“War is really scary. It’s scary,” he said. “It’s a miracle that I was shot in the head that I can stay here. I’m thankful for that.”
‘Please don’t die’
In the next few minutes after the shooting, video footage shows Rauser, blinded by the wound, almost stumbling into the basement before a crew member grabs him and begins first aid. The American soldier who shot him is heard apologizing, begging him not to die.
Days later, when he woke up strapped to a hospital bed in Kyiv, Rauser didn’t remember much about his medical evacuation in the east. He was later told that he was tied up so that he could not move. His head injury was severe, and he was missing part of his skull.
He spent almost two months in hospital, first in Kyiv, then in two different centers in western Ukraine.
A member of his team later told him that the bullet hit him just below the brim of the helmet, leaving the gear intact but shattering the front of his skull.
On his upper left shoulder is a large scar where the second bullet hit him.
He said he feels he is 90 percent recovered, although he does not have all his physical strength.
“I will always be different after being injured like this,” he said. “But that’s enough. I can work.”
It grows in Ukraine and Russia
Rauser had no military experience when he decided to cross into Ukraine from Poland, early last year, but he had strong connections in the region, including language skills. When he was young, his father did missionary work and his family spent three years in Russia and then another six in Ukraine.
They lived for four years in the southern city of Zaporizhzhia – the capital of one of the four regions that Russia claimed at the time of its invasion – and then spent two years in Kyiv.
The family returned to Canada when he was young, and in 2012 he settled in Sherwood Park, Alta., a community on the eastern edge of Edmonton.
Ten years later in 2022, as Rauser watched a convoy of Russian tanks roll through Ukraine, he spent sleepless nights worrying about the country and his friends there.
When the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy appeals to citizens of other countries to take up arms against Russia that year, Rauser considered enlisting. But after thinking and praying about it, he decided it wasn’t time yet.
By 2024, the situation in Ukraine had changed, and so had Rauser’s thinking.
“The fact that the war got harder, I think, and a little more desperate as it went on actually increased my motivation to go,” he said. I felt like, ‘Okay, they need me now, so I have to go.’
Ukraine has struggled throughout the war to recruit enough people to defend its front line, which stretches over a thousand kilometers. By the end of 2023, Ukrainian military commanders wanted another half a million soldiers. Videos have surfaced online of police recruits rounding up men from the streets, malls and gyms, sometimes taking them directly to registration centers.
A former Alberta firefighter who fought in Ukraine tells CBC News about his death after being shot outside a Russian home in Donetsk. David Rauser explains what led to the fight, and why he worries that the fight is being pushed out of the headlines.
From fighting fires onwards
When Rauser arrived in Ukraine, he signed a three-year contract with the 63rd Separate Mechanized Brigade and was sent for four weeks of training.
Despite his lack of military experience, he realized that his time fighting forest fires in northern Alberta would serve him well. He could read a map, was comfortable in remote areas, and had been in many high stress areas.
“I remember the first fire, my mind was blown … the adrenaline was full,” he said of his time as a firefighter. “That experience was helpful as I learned to control that a little bit.”
However, in Ukraine, the challenges were on a completely different level. After four weeks of training, which he described as extensive but adequate, he was deployed on his first tour. He described being sent to a place that was “a small hole in the ground.
“I spent two weeks there and that was a real life-changing experience. We were attacked by drones that landed in our residence. We had Russian soldiers … passing by about two to three hundred meters from us.”
It wasn’t long before he took on another role, working as a guide to accompany soldiers to and from their posts. The constant threat of drones made it too dangerous to travel by car, so the soldiers walked several kilometers into the forest.
Earlier this fall, Rauser said some small Russian military units broke through Ukrainian defenses near Lyman, about 18 kilometers northeast of the city of Sloviansk.
The Russians set up small positions behind the Ukrainian lines, “causing a lot of chaos,” so his job was to get them out of the area, along with a small group.
At one point, when he and his team were standing in the basement of the house, they heard footsteps walking over them and the breaking of glass. The Russians were walking above them, apparently unaware of the Ukrainian soldiers hiding below.
After a call on the radio, a Ukrainian fighter jet crashed into a house and set it on fire.
“The house burned over our heads,” he said. “It was really hot, but we survived and were safe.“
Potential returns
Rauser has been offered the job of returning as a coach, he thinks, but he’s coming back to Canada first for a tour.
He needs another operation to put a plate on his head and is not sure in which country he will get it.
“I wish I could say peace [in Ukraine] it’s going to happen tomorrow… I don’t think it’s going to happen,” Rauser said.
“It depends a lot on other world leaders. Trump is everywhere.”
On Tuesday, when asked about Ukraine, US President Donald Trump reiterated that the talks are going well, but there still seems to be a big gulf between the two sides. Ukraine does not want to simply hand over more land to Russia, which is what the Kremlin wants.
As Rauser sits and follows the news from western Ukraine, he hopes something good will come out of all this chaos, including a wake-up call to Europe to renew support for Ukraine.
“They can’t rely on the US to solve problems,” he said.
“[Europe] He will have to stand up and sacrifice himself.”
