A photograph of Robert Deegan, taken shortly after his first arrival in Ukraine in 2022, shows a smiling young man with two fellow soldiers.
Deegan kneels in the middle cradling a Kalashnikov rifle and making a devil horns gesture with his hand. If it wasn’t for the military uniforms and heavy weaponry, he could almost be mistaken for a young man on holidays with his friends.
Another photograph, taken this month shortly before his death, tells a different story. Now missing an eye, the result of a bomb blast, the 29-year-old sits on a stairs with three fellow fighters from his unit. He stares at the camera, grim faced. No one smiles.
“If you look in Rob’s face, you not only see the exhaustion, but you see that he’s already dead inside,” said a friend who fought alongside Deegan in Ukraine for a year and who asked not to be identified for security reasons. “I can tell you, it doesn’t take long for that to happen to people there. Only a couple of weeks.”
Deegan, from Newbridge, Co Kildare, joined the Defence Forces in 2014 and became a member of Army Ranger Wing (ARW) just three years later, the youngest soldier ever to qualify for the elite unit. He came from a well-known military family. His father John and brother Richard had signed up before him.
Deegan later left the Defence Forces and worked for Athy fire brigade for a time before taking up work with a military contractor in North Africa. Shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, he signed up with the Ukrainian Foreign Legion and, due to his ARW experience, was assigned to its 3rd Battalion, which undertakes special forces tasks.
He was assigned to the Battalion’s Omega Unit where he fought alongside US, Swiss and Bosnian volunteers and was involved in some of the heaviest battles of the war, including the Ukrainian counteroffensive in September 2022 which liberated 12,000sq km of captured territory. Deegan was awarded a medal for bravery for his role in the operation.
The following October, he was severely injured while travelling in an armoured personnel carrier which was hit by an explosion. One person was killed and three others were severely wounded, including Deegan, who lost an eye and required reconstructive surgery.
Following his recovery in Ireland, Deegan was eager to get back to Ukraine, even as the war devolved into an attritional slog costing thousands of lives on both sides, including the lives of several Irish fighters. Early in 2024, he made a trip to Thailand to study Muay Thai kick-boxing but, according to friends, never stopped talking about Ukraine.
When he finally made the decision to go back, Deegan considered taking up a non-frontline role due to his injuries. He looked at becoming involved in logistics or demining but eventually made the decision to return to special operations.
He enlisted with the Stugna Special Forces Battalion, which operates independently from the main Ukrainian army and comes under the authority of the main directorate of intelligence.
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The pace of operations of Deegan’s unit was relentless as Ukrainian forces attempted to prevent a Russian breakthrough in the Kharkiv region. The unit usually operated on its own, without support, as it undertook raids, long range patrols and missions to capture prisoners of war for intelligence purposes.
Despite his injuries, Deegan, whose call sign was Irish, occupied the role of assault team operator, meaning he was typically in the centre of the fighting. “He was always first through the door,” a fellow operator said.
Video footage seen by The Irish Times captured one of Deegan’s final missions near the city of Kupiansk in Kharkiv last week. He had been one of the first soldiers to enter Kupiansk when it was first recaptured from Russian forces in September 2022.
Now he was back, attempting to prevent it being captured a second time. The footage, which is taken from Deegan’s GoPro camera, shows him firing from inside a dilapidated building, occasionally shouting instructions to his unit.
The unit exits the building and Deegan covers the group with more gunfire as two colleagues carry a soldier who has been shot in the leg.
Unseen opponents fire at the group from up the road as Deegan and his men take cover behind a building. The footage then cuts off.
Deegan was killed a short time later on a subsequent mission while again covering the retreat of his unit. Before his death he handed over some of his belongings, including his GoPro camera, to a colleague and took up a firing position. He was shot and killed a short time later in close-quarters fighting, sources said.
His body remains at the scene. Senior Ukrainian officers have declined to authorise a mission to retrieve the remains as there is still heavy fighting in the area.
However, a group of Deegan’s fellow soldiers are attempting to organise volunteers to help recover the body. Many have come forward.
“There’s even guys from his old unit who have left and are back living in the US who want to return and get his body,” said a former colleague.
A GoFundMe has also been established on behalf of the Deegan family to assist in the repatriation of the remains.
