“He Was Forging His Own Hero’s Journey When He Was Tragically Killed in Eastern Europe”

In a video, a thin young man with long hair tied in a messy bun carefully releases three tiny chicks from a box onto the grass. A tattoo of a peace sign — the emblem of the anti-war movement — is visible on his finger. “We found some baby chicken in the [Turkish] local market and Itthobaal had the idea to get a few of them and maybe he will travel with them. He bought maybe three or four chickens and put them in a nice little box with straw and everything he could find. But the next one of the chickens died and the second one too. He was quite sad about it and felt very stupid that he had this dream of a whole journey together with this little new family.”

A year later, Itthobaal — one of the many names that 21-year-old American Michael Gloss used to introduce himself — signed a contract with the Russian Defense Ministry and died in Ukraine. IStories has reconstructed his final route. This is the story about how a young anti-fascist, environmental activist and women’s rights advocate from the family of a CIA deputy director dreamed of traveling light around the world, but ended up in the Russian army.

Michael Gloss is one of more than 1,500 foreigners who passed through the Russian military recruitment center during the war in Ukraine, whose identities were established by IStories. In total, mercenaries from 48 countries — including EU states and the U.S. — are fighting on Russia’s side. You can read more about it here.

The Gloss family: “He created shelters for friends, sisters and dogs”

“Michael was born in a rush, on a snowy evening, on December 4, 2002,” — his family tells in an obituary. — “As a boy, Michael was affectionate and curious, with a gift for building and fondness for nature and all its creatures. Given a few minutes and any materials at all, Michael would build a shelter for those around him. He created snow caves, tree and pillow forts, forest shelters and secret lookouts for friends, sisters and dogs. Spending time with Michael was certain to include adventure, motion, invention and laughter.”

Michael was buried in his native Fairfax County near Washington, D.C., eight months after his death.

Michael Alexander Gloss was born into a military family. His mother Juliane Gallina Gloss graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy and became the first woman to serve as a Naval Academy brigade commander in 1991. She worked in intelligence for more than 30 years, serving in the U.S. Navy, and held various positions in the military, civil service and industry, according to her biography. Juliane Gloss has spent the last six years building a career with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. In February 2024, she was appointed the CIA’s Deputy Director for Digital Innovation. “I strive to accelerate the digital transformation of my Agency to maintain strategic advantage for our nation,” Gloss writes on the business social network Linkedin.

Michael’s father, Larry Gloss, is also a veteran of the U.S. Navy and has a medal for his participation in the famous Operation Desert Storm, the invasion of Iraq by the U.S.-led coalition in the early 1990s. All his life Larry Gloss has worked in the cybersecurity field — in particular, in the National Interest Security Company, serving the national interests of the United States. He now heads a company that creates security software for clients including the U.S. government, the U.S. Department of Defense, and other NATO countries.

Michael thrived in Scouts, loved camping and playing soccer, his family says of him in his obituary. According to them, from an early age he protected others and fought against injustice: “Michael had a heightened sense of fairness, and saw those in our community who are unseen and unheard — whether they were people, or animals, plants or streams. He wanted the world to be a better place with more fairness, peace and harmony with nature. In his brief life, he built houses in Honduras, he restored buildings in Türkiye destroyed by earthquakes <...>.”

College: fighting for the environment and women’s rights

After attending public Oakton High School, in 2021 Michael enrolled at the private liberal arts College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine, where students study Human Ecology, a science that explores the relationship between people and the environment. The college is located on an island in the middle of a national park by the Atlantic Ocean: pink granite mountains, spruce forests, bays with islands, and miles of rugged coastline. In 2016, College of the Atlantic was named the greenest college in America: students are taught to conserve energy and reduce their use of plastic, and they spend a lot of time in nature and with animals.

A quarter of the college’s students are foreigners, including from Ukraine; one such student is among Michael’s friends on social networks. In the first week of the full-scale war, his college took part in a demonstration in support of Ukraine: photos show students holding large sunflowers made of paper.

In July 2022, Michael was detained by police at climate protests: his handcuffed photo was published on the spread of The Washington Post, the largest newspaper in the U.S. capital. Activists were trying to stop a baseball game sponsored by corporations: according to the protesters, they were preventing the passage of laws to combat climate change. “Save your daughter! You’re killing your daughter!” — yelled Michael at an attendee at a baseball game. He fought not only for the environment, but also for women’s rights: in the spring of that year, he protested against the abortion ban.

Michael did not manage to finish his college studies — he went traveling around the world. “With a tremendous love of music, Michael had wide-ranging taste in artists. The Beatles were his gateway band, which led to a love of Bob Dylan’s protest rock and many other artists. He decided to play the guitar and gathered the Christmas money given from close friends to buy his own instrument,” — the parents write, mentioning their son’s departure. — “He regretted not being able to carry his guitar with him on his adventures overseas, and instead of carrying his own, he opened himself to the music of friends from all over the world.”

The Rainbow Family: “He was dressed like Jesus and distributed bread to people”

Judging by his social media footprints, Gloss left the U.S. no later than winter 2023: one February video shows him swinging in a hammock at a villa in Amendolara, Italy. In Italy, he worked on farms studying sustainable agriculture, his parents mentioned in his obituary. In March, he posted photos from another Italian city, Bari, against a backdrop of anti-fascist graffiti. One of the hashtags he put under the photo was #endukrainewar.

In April, Gloss wrote in one of the public Telegram chats: “Three days ago I tried to travel to Jerusalem to visit some ecovillages. I was deported by Israeli immigration police and my camping backpack was seized. They sent me to Cyprus, I decided to travel to the Balkan gathering instead.” This was written in the Rainbow Family community chat. Founded in the late 1960s as an offshoot of the anti-war and hippie movements, the Rainbow Family describes itself as a “the largest best coordinated nonpolitical nondenominational nonorganization of like-minded individuals on the planet.” The annual Rainbow Family Gatherings bring together “different layers of marginalized culture: bikers, Jesus freaks, computer programmers, naked yogis, and gutter punks,” Vice wrote.

The “Balkan gathering” that Michael wrote about in the post was a Rainbow Family gathering that took place in the spring of 2023 near the town of Kıyıköy on the border of Türkiye and Bulgaria. “This meeting is a place where people from different parts of the world come together, live in nature, establish unity and togetherness within certain rules, and experience being alive and living in the moment,” — Michael’s friend Gamze from Türkiye, whom they met “on Rainbow,” tells IStories. — “I can say that there were people from every country. My Russian friend and a sweet Ukrainian family had set up a pirate camp in the forest, it was like a separate section from everyone else. Many people visited our camp. Some nights we just told stories and made music until the morning. That’s where I met him.”

Gamze recalls that Michael seemed very shy to her at first, but later he made a lot of friends. “He really was a person with ideals,” — “ says Gamze. — “He told us that he wanted to help people. When we reached the village on foot, he bought all the bread in the market and distributed it to the people at the meeting place. Crazy boy! Everyone started calling him Jesus because he was dressed like Jesus and distributed bread that day.”

Michael ended up in what looked like the robes of a wandering messiah or pilgrim by accident, says Ivan [name changed at his request], a Russian attendee of the Balkan Rainbow Gathering: “After his backpack with all his things was confiscated [in Israel], he went to some kind of pirate-style shop and bought that tunic with a floor-length skirt. At Rainbow, he carried a staff he never let go of. He crafted something like a backpack out of sticks and rope and stuffed all his things into it — he didn’t have much. He looked kind of medieval. Most travelers carry full backpacks, but he was completely minimalist. That’s what brought us together — his simplicity was the key to our friendship.”

Shortly after Rainbow, Michael traveled to Hatay, a province in southern Türkiye that was devastated after massive earthquakes in 2023. Michael sent a picture of his traveling companion to the Rainbow chat, “Y’all this bus station dog tried to follow me onto the bus to Hatay. Because we became friends.” As Michael himself wrote in one of the chats, in Hatay he was mixing cement and removing damaged buildings.

In Hatay, Michael gave himself the nickname Hamza, Gamze recalls. “He is the person with the most names I have ever met. Everyone calls him how they feel about him. He really had a wonderful heart. And he never gave off any bad vibe around him, he was really like an angel.”

Running away from home: “He was very angry at the USA”

On his VK page, Michael wrote: “I ran away from home. Traveled around the world.” As the interviewees of IStories recall, he did not directly say why he decided to leave the United States. “He felt, like, that there are much more interesting places to travel to and to be than in the US and that he was very aware about how up is the system there and he was also very aware of how privileged he is,” — his friend Carl reasoned. — “He told me that his family was like, I don’t know, they had, like, a special position in the U.S. Parents just loved him and they were very afraid that something could happen to him and, and which is like normal parents relationship to be scared for their son that is living wild experience in different corner of the globe rather than choosing to have a career and to be like the good student and find the right job and all of that.”

According to Carl, Michael was captivated by the idea of experiencing the world through traveling: “He needed to escape and to travel the world and to see by himself. And I think like many of us, like Rainbow is also kind of a refuge from, like, outsiders that may have a different opinion or different lifestyle. And so I think for him it was also like a place to be welcome and to feel home and where he could be really himself and grow around the right people.”

In one of the chats, when asked, “Are you the guy from States?” Michael replied, “Unfortunately, yes. I was born there.” Even before that, in April 2022, he posted a video of an American flag burning.

“He didn’t fit with American ideology at all,” says Ivan, Michael’s Russian friend from the “Rainbow family.” “The U.S. is one of the most capitalist countries in the world. When someone lives simply, travels, and feels empathy for the world, America isn’t the place to pursue their dreams — it’s all about making money there. He just understood that America wasn’t for him.”

“By the time I figured out the U.S. political system I realized violence is an intrinsic part. <...> There are too many types of violence that war has spread to now. Financial violence, institutional, emotional, and of course physical. My point being America teaches financial warfare in the army now. The modern soldier is a business person,” — Michael wrote in one of the Telegram chats. 

In the status of his page in VK he wrote: “A supporter of a multipolar world. I hate fascism.” In one May video from Türkiye, Michael shows his middle finger: “Fuck Nazis!” and adds: “Peace and love.” 

“Last time I saw him, he was constantly talking about negative stuff like poverty and the collapse of civilizations,” — recalls an acquaintance of Gloss’s who sheltered him for a night in Istanbul. — “He was convinced that hegemony of the West was fading and BRICS [informal cooperative institution of Russia, Brazil, India, China and South Africa. The BRICS countries’ undermining of Western hegemony is one of the narratives of Russian propaganda. — Ed’s note] would take over it soon.”

Another acquaintance of Michael’s, who he stayed overnight with while traveling in Türkiye, said: “He was usually watching videos about Palestine and was so angry at America. He started thinking about going to Russia. He wanted to war with the USA. But I think he was very influenced by the conspiracy theory videos.”

“A traveler who wants to learn Russian” and ”defeat the military-industrial complex”

After dealing with the aftermath of the earthquake, Michael wanted to go to Russia and find a job there, says his Rainbow Family friend Gamze. In early July 2023, Michael learned that the next Rainbow Family Gathering would be held in Crimea, so he began planning the trip and doing the paperwork. “Having been born in America I’m required to have a letter of invitation. I’m asking each of you, kindly please offer me sources of paid invitation websites for the visa. Basically, Russia соnnection,” — he wrote in one of the chats.

The intention to travel to Crimea immediately led to arguments about the safety of traveling to the peninsula, the status of the region and the war in Ukraine in the Rainbow chat room. “I wanna see everybody eat. But I’ve seen enough history to know that in nation state conflicts, the bigger, more imperial nation is the one that brings peace through military victory,” — Michael texted.

Gloss explained the purpose of his trip to Russia in various ways. In one chat, he introduced himself as “a traveler who wants to learn Russian by language immersion”. On the same day, he wrote that he wanted to move to Russia and obtain citizenship, and later in another chat that he was going there to develop his environmental project: “I am an ecologist. I want to help create an infrastructure in Russia and related countries that grows food year round. This will help stabilize food prices throughout the year. And in general, reduce food price inflation.” That same summer in Istanbul, Michael applied for a Russian visa.

Even before that, his parents had asked Michael to come home: “My mom was telling me I could just come back anytime. She was trying to make me collapse and call her for a ticket home. I started feeling sick <...>,” — Michael wrote in a chat in May 2023. He said he was “getting a little stressed” about traveling to Hatay, Türkiye, for debris removal, but after Rainbow Family members helped him find a place to stay, his confidence returned: “And after I realized just who I am exactly. Bushwhacking stealth camping for a week for me is no problem. Whatsoever.”

In the same message, Michael vaguely described his future in which he would “defeat mortality and the military-industrial complex:” “I find myself more and more alive by the minute. Hungry for blood and glory. And basking in the pleasure of knowing that it all is still to be done. It will be a sad day for Itthobaal indeed when the club must be passed on to the next incarnation. But as of now. I might have just incarnated in time to defeat mortality AND the military industrial complex.”

When asked exactly how he plans to defeat the military-industrial complex, Michael replied: “If I told you my real plan you wouldn’t believe me anyway.”

The Russian tour: The Motherland Calls and stolen cheese

On August 13, 2023, Gloss brought the Rainbow chat to life with a short message: “Y’all I’m in Russia rn. How did I get here?” To confirm his words, he posted selfies from the center of Vladikavkaz against the backdrop of a local hotel. The day before, Michael had crossed the border between Georgia and Russia, according to the data of the Border Service, which IStories has analyzed.

Michael arrived in Russia without a clear plan. In Vladikavkaz, he turned to his “family” for help finding housing, then set off to travel across the country. In Rainbow Family chats, he shared photos from his trip — sitting by a campfire in Taganrog, hiking up to the Motherland Calls monument in Volgograd. In his hands was a handmade walking stick that every source for IStories would later mention; on his head, a keffiyeh — the traditional Arab headscarf. He would wear it in photos taken on Red Square, and later at a military training center.

After a week of traveling to different cities, Michael asked Rainbow chat to find an overnight stay in Moscow. He wrote that he was looking for a place to stay while he went to the visa center, probably to extend his expiring documents.

Michael spent the last weekend of summer at a music festival in the Moscow Oblast. Andrey [name changed] met him on the way there: the American was sitting at the same bus stop, and when the bus arrived, he could not communicate with the driver. “He spoke maybe three or four words, could understand and say some basic phrases in Russian, but not much more. We decided to help,” Andrey told IStories. On the way, they started talking — Michael said he was “on an ecological mission” and tried to live a zero-waste lifestyle.

According to Andrey, Michael arrived at the festival without a tent and built himself a hut out of branches. He raised a Soviet flag someone had given him over the shelter, though he never actually spent the night in it. “I think he stayed in someone else’s tent and just stored his things there,” said Andrey.

After returning to Moscow, Gloss spent the night at Andrey’s place. Here is how Andrey described their dinner: “We made soup, served it up for him and ourselves. He pulled two cheeses out of his backpack — one was a block of Rossiysky, the other a round Hochland with triangle wedges inside. My friend asked, ’Can I take one?’ And he handed it to her, saying, ’Everything I’ve stolen, I’ve stolen to share.’”

Michael had financial problems in Russia — he could not transfer money from foreign accounts, so he was let into the festival “almost for free.” “Because he was a foreigner,” Andrey explained.

On September 1, Gloss wrote in one of the Rainbow chats that his visa would expire in a week: “I’m in Moscow during the final week of my visa. I humbly ask if someone can host me this week — so I can reach the end of my journey.”

Two days later, he started looking in chats for accommodation in Vienna and Bratislava. Michael did not share his plans with Andrey: according to him, the morning after the overnight stay, Gloss borrowed his shoes to go to the city center, and in the afternoon he packed his things and moved out. 

A day later, on September 5, a record with the data of Michael Alexander Gloss appeared in the EMIAS database. His address was listed as a contract recruitment center on Yablochkova Street, and his “apartment” was a medical examination room with the number 302. This was the address given to foreigners who came to Moscow to sign a contract with the Russian Defense Ministry and left to fight in Ukraine.

Army life: fellows from Nepal and a letter to the institute

For the next two weeks, Gloss did not appear in any of the Rainbow Family chats. During this time, he was already living at the Avangard training center near Moscow. His bright red keffiyeh can be spotted in a photo of a Nepalese volunteer with men sitting in the front rows of the Avangard auditorium.

There, in Avangard, a Nepali made a video of shaved-head Michael. The author of the video, Nabaraj Adhikari, passed the recruitment center at Yablochkova the day before Michael. In the same days, Gloss created a VK profile under the name Hamza Ali. His friends include Chinese mercenary Ruiqi Sun, who, after complaining on social media about the conditions of service in the Russian army, was able to successfully return to China.

Here are the names of several VK groups that Gloss joined at the time: “Romance of Russian Villages”, “We are from the USSR”, “USSR Lenin Stalin Marxism Communism Communists”, “Islam”, “KPRF.” On the same page, he published a video titled “Putin declared the need for an independent Palestine” and a video from Israel, which he commented, “How the Israel Defense Forces shelled Israeli civilians in Kibbutz Be’eri with tanks!”. This is the closest picture we have to the truth about the victims of October 7 🇷🇺🤝🇵🇸.”

After two weeks of training at the Avangard center — no later than September 23 — Michael’s group, composed mostly of Nepali citizens, was taken by bus to a military unit. One of his Nepali fellow soldiers posted a video from inside the bus on TikTok. This is standard practice: based on other mercenaries’ experiences, IStories found out that about 14 days typically passed between a recruit’s visit to the enlistment office and their formal inclusion in a unit’s roster. After that, foreign contractors were sent to various Russian regions for training at military ranges.

IStories also found Gloss’s profile on a dating app — according to a cached version of the page, he created the profile no later than October 31, 2023. He appears to have filled out the questionnaire honestly: education — incomplete higher; field of work — armed forces; religion — Islam. He also listed his current city as Ryazan.

In his first days at the military unit, he also created a profile on Odnoklassniki. The same type of bunk beds seen in his profile photo appear in other videos posted by Nepali soldiers. IStories determined that these videos were filmed at the base of the 137th Guards Airborne Regiment (military unit No. 41450) in Ryazan.

We spoke with a Russian man who completed his mandatory military service in the 137th Airborne Regiment in Ryazan and knew Michael well. Pyotr [name changed at his request] said that Gloss had “his own vision of how he could be useful at the front.” According to Pyotr, the two of them drafted a “letter to an institute” containing Michael’s sketches and ideas. “In college, he studied construction and engineering, so all his thoughts were related to inventions and innovations,” his fellow serviceman said. He could not recall which institute Michael sent the letter to or what specific ideas it contained.

After two months of silence in Rainbow Family chats, on December 19, Gloss recorded a voice message: “Hey fam, I’m in Russia. Yeah, I’m working here. I’m trying to get a passport and money, you know, so I can travel across Africa because I also like the warm weather. It’s like negative 10 here. It’s crazy. There’s so much snow. It’s, like, as tall as I am. But yeah, things are good. Despite the cold and the fact that I don’t see the sun for like a month. but it’s fun. I have lots of friends that I’m learning Russian things are good.”

The last time Pyotr saw Michael was in December 2023, after which, he said, Gloss was sent to the front. “If I’m not mistaken, after his training he was assigned to an assault unit,” Pyotr said. At that time, the 137th Regiment’s units were stationed northwest of Soledar in the Donetsk Oblast.

Gloss last accessed Telegram on March 14, 2024. Two weeks later, the 137th Airborne Regiment began advancing on Ukrainian positions.

Michael was killed on April 4, 2024 — his family reported the news in an obituary. That same day, according to the Telegram channel of the 106th Airborne Division, which includes the Ryazan regiment, paratroopers continued their offensive in the Donetsk Oblast near Rozdolivka and Vesele, “despite difficult terrain and unfavorable positions.” “They sneak into enemy lines in small assault groups, relay coordinates to the artillery, and strike the Ukro-fascists. Then they clear the fortifications,” the Russian military wrote. The exact circumstances of Michael’s death remain unknown.

Michael’s funeral was held in the United States on December 21, 2024 — eight months after his death. Judging by messages in Rainbow Family chats, his family learned about his passing roughly two months earlier. “His family was contacted by the Russian government,” — Michael’s Balkan Rainbow Gathering friend, who spoke to his sister, wrote. — “It was announced that he died within the borders of Ukraine. We do not know whether he participated in the war. They did not provide any other detailed information.”

The obituary does not mention that Michael fought against Ukraine on Russia’s side: “With his noble heart and warrior spirit Michael was forging his own hero’s journey when he was tragically killed in Eastern Europe on April 4, 2024.”

Reactions to Michael’s death: environmental mission or love for Russia?

Friends and acquaintances of Michael Gloss reacted differently to the news of his death in the war. One participant in a Rainbow Family chat condemned his decision: “In this situation I cannot even feel sorry for him. By your own will jump into the meat grinder to prolong the dictatorship. What could go wrong… I’m sad that people continue to become victims of stupid ideas. I talked with him more than a year ago... I didn’t realise that he was infected with these ideas that badly. I thought that it was just youthful maximalism. And now he is no more.”

Most members of the community did not share this view. Yevgeny (name changed), who met Michael in Turkey, said he kept in touch with him occasionally after Gloss signed the contract: “He joined the Russian army and didn’t tell his family. Also Russian people there respected him a lot. And I respect him a lot. Such a good brother. A little crazy but smart enough. He was following his strong way.”

A fellow serviceman from the Ryazan unit said Michael’s motivation for going to war was “easy to understand:” “He was a passionate supporter of Russia and loved the country. Once in Moscow, he decided for himself that he wanted to be useful in this special operation, but he didn’t intend to take up arms.”

Michael himself told Mert, a member of the Balkan Rainbow Gathering, that he joined the army in order to get a Russian passport — not to fight. Russian citizenship, he said, was supposed to help him fulfill his “life’s purpose.” Gloss described it as follows: “My life’s purpose is to build supercritical water oxidization infrastructure. In order to end ecological pollution and pollution related illness and death i.e: cancer, lymphoma, and all the hormonal problems related to microplastics and estrogenics in the water.”

Two other sources told IStories that Michael intended to obtain Russian citizenship and seek investors in the country for his ecological projects. Not everyone understood that reasoning. “Ending ecological pollution by going to war, which causes so much toxic waste, from production of the weapons to their usage seems to me like masturbating in front of the mirror,” — wrote one of the chat members.

“People said this to me but I didn’t believe that. Because he was against war,” — Gamze, Michael’s friend, said — “And he loved all people in the world. He was friends with Palestinians, Israeli, Ukrainian, Russian, Turks. I saw in him only love, sharing, and giving from him.”

Michael’s friend Ivan said he couldn’t believe someone like Gloss would go to war. “They showed me a photo of him in uniform, clean-shaven, and it just shattered my expectations,” — he said. — “But at that moment I thought — this really matters to him, he really wants this, he must have some greater goal. I figured he was doing it to get a passport faster, so he could go forward with his plans. He was a very kind person — he even went to help out in Türkiye after the earthquake. So he really did care, in a global sense, about what’s happening to the planet.”

Gloss’s family did not respond to IStories’ request for an interview.

Editor: Katya Bonch-Osmolovskaya