As David Rauser stood outside the entrance to a makeshift Russian bunker in the besieged Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine in November, the former Alberta firefighter-turned-soldier held his automatic weapon. He glanced at the shelter which was mostly obscured by a large plastic tarp.
Inside, Russian voices cut through the darkness, asking who was there. With his second-in-command right behind him, Rauser shouted in Russian, ordering those inside to raise their hands and surrender. Getting no response, he opened fire.
Video taken from a camera attached to his helmet recorded the next moments as gunfire rang out outside the bunker, aimed directly at him.
But in the chaos, Rauser, 40, was hit by friendly fire.
“One of the guys on my team, he was new to the team, and I don’t know why, but he mistook me for a Russian,” he said. “He shot me once in the head and once in the arm.”
Rauser was shot down on November 10, 2025, during the most intense mission of his 10 months of service in Ukraine with the 63rd Separate Mechanized Brigade. He often worked in a small unit made up of conscripts, professional soldiers, and fellow foreign fighters. He spoke to CBC News from Ternopil, in western Ukraine.
Now out of the hospital, he is awaiting administrative formalities before returning, perhaps only temporarily, to Canada.
It is not clear how many Canadian citizens are fighting for Ukraine, but more than a dozen have been killed since Russia launched its full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022. (These deaths include both soldiers and a few paramedics.) Besides Rauser, CBC knows of two Canadian citizens who were recently wounded in combat and are currently hospitalized in western Ukraine.
“War is really scary. It’s terrifying,” he said. “It’s kind of a miracle that I got shot in the head and can sit here. I’m grateful for that.”
“Please don’t die”
In the minutes following his shooting, the video recording shows Rauser, blinded by the injury, almost stumbling into the bunker before a team member grabbed him and administered first aid. The American soldier who shot him can be heard apologizing, begging him not to die.
A few days later, when he woke up strapped to a hospital bed in kyiv, Rauser didn’t remember much about his medical evacuation from the east. He was later told he had been tied up to prevent him from moving. His head injury was severe and he was missing part of his skull.
He spent almost two months in hospital, first in kyiv and then in two separate facilities in western Ukraine.
A member of his team later told him that a bullet had hit him just under the brim of his helmet, leaving the equipment completely intact but shattering a front portion of his skull.
On his upper left shoulder is a large scar where the second bullet hit him.
He said he felt 90 percent recovered, although he had not regained his full physical strength.
“I will always be different after an injury like that,” he said. “But it’s enough. I can function.”
Growing up in Ukraine and Russia
Rauser had no military experience when he decided to move from Poland to Ukraine early last year, but he had strong ties to the region, including language skills. When he was a child, his father did missionary work and the family spent three years in Russia, then another six in Ukraine.
They lived for four years in the southern city of Zaporizhzhia – the capital of one of four regions claimed by Russia throughout its invasion – then spent two years in kyiv.
The family returned to Canada when he was a teenager, settling in 2012 in Sherwood Park, Alberta, a community on the eastern outskirts of Edmonton.
A decade 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 Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged foreign citizens To take up arms against Russia that year, Rauser considered enlisting. But after thinking and praying, he decided now was not the time.
By 2024, the situation on the ground 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 thought, ‘OK, they need me now, so I should go.'”
Ukraine has struggled throughout the war to recruit enough people to defend its front line, which exceeds 1,000 kilometers. By the end of 2023, Ukrainian military commanders were seeking half a million additional troops. Videos have appeared online showing conscription officers enlisting men in streets, malls and gyms, in some cases taking them directly to enlistment centers.
A former Alberta firefighter who went to fight in Ukraine tells CBC News he came close to death after being shot outside a Russian bunker in Donetsk. David Rauser explains what drove him into combat and why he fears war will make headlines.
From firefighting to the front line
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 believed the time spent fighting wildfires in northern Alberta would serve him well. He knew how to read a map, was comfortable in remote areas, and had experienced many high-stress environments.
“I remember the first fire, my mind went to mush… just full of adrenaline,” he said of his experience as a firefighter. “This experience was helpful because I learned to control that a little bit.”
However, in Ukraine, the challenges were on a completely different level. After about four weeks of training, which he describes as very broad but adequate, he was sent to the front for his first mission. He described being sent to a position that was essentially “a little hole in the ground.”
“I spent two weeks there and it really changed my life. Drones attacked our bunker. Russian soldiers flew by about two or three hundred meters from us.”
Soon after, he took on another role, working as a guide escorting soldiers to and from their positions. The constant threat of drones made traveling by vehicle too dangerous, so soldiers had to walk several kilometers through the forest.
Earlier this fall, Rauser said a few small units of Russian soldiers broke through Ukrainian defenses near Lyman, about 18 kilometers northeast of the city of Sloviansk.
The Russians established small positions behind the Ukrainian lines, “causing a lot of chaos”, so his mission was to evacuate them from the area, alongside a small team.
One day, while he and his team were set up in the basement of a house, they heard footsteps above them and glass cracking. The Russians were moving above them, apparently unaware that Ukrainian troops were sheltering below.
After a radio call, a Ukrainian drone unit struck the house and it caught fire.
“The house burned above our heads,” he said. “It was very hot, but we survived and we were safe.»
A potential return
Rauser has been offered a coaching job to return, which he is considering, but first he returns to Canada for a visit.
He needs additional surgery to put a plate in his head and is unsure in which country he will receive 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.
“A lot depends on other world leaders. Trump is everywhere.”
On Tuesday, when asked about Ukraine, US President Donald Trump said once again that negotiations were going well, but that there still appears to be a significant gulf between the two sides. Ukraine does not want to simply cede more land to Russia, as the Kremlin demands.
As Rauser follows the news coming out of western Ukraine, he hopes something positive will come out of all the turbulence, including a wake-up call to Europe to renew its support for Ukraine.
“They can’t count on the United States to solve the problems,” he said.
“[Europe] will have to intensify his efforts and sacrifice himself.
