Over a Zoom link one had to strain to hear Major Ilya Bozhko, who sported a long beard flecked with gray and looks like he could have ridden with the 17th century Cossacks. The reason why it was difficult to hear was not because of artillery fire in Eastern Europe, but because of baseballs flying overhead in the Bronx. Outfielder Aaron Judge had just socked a go-ahead fly. 

That was the surreal scene on a sunny Saturday at Yankee Stadium, inside the luxury suite of the team’s president, Randy Levine. His wife, Mindy, was hosting a briefing with Junior Sergeant Sarah Ashton-Cirillo, of the 209 Battalion 113 Brigade of the Territorial Defense of Ukraine. Sergeant Ashton-Cirillo hails from Mahopac, just an hour north of the Stadium, but now calls war-ravaged Kharkiv home.

Wearing the fatigues of the Ukrainian armed forces, the sergeant told a group of journalists, Yankee brass, and one former congressman, John Sweeney, that the country she has adopted as her own is fighting “a war not for liberation, but for liberty.” She compared Ukraine’s position to those of American revolutionaries in the year 1775. Russia, she observed, “needs to absorb a crushing defeat.”

Sergeant Ashton-Cirillo is doing her part to ensure that happens by telling lawmakers and the public Ukraine’s story of “getting to freedom by the end of a rifle.” She calls Russia “not a real country,” but akin to a “mafia cabal.”

Between innings the Sun asked the sergeant about President Trump’s comments at a CNN Town Hall that he wants “everybody to stop dying” — “Russians and Ukrainians” and that he would “have that done in 24 hours.” Those remarks were widely seen as telegraphing less than total support for Ukraine’s war aims.

Sergeant Ashton-Cirillo didn’t see it that way, noting that President Trump’s first impeachment trial, over allegations that he conditioned aid to President Zelensky on the comedian-turned-politician digging up dirt on President Biden, stemmed from “fabrications designed to drive a wedge” between Messrs. Trump and Zelensky. 

The sergeant added that Mr. Zelensky is as “New York as it gets” and so intuitively understands the Queens-born Mr. Trump. She believes that a string of Ukrainian victories could convince the 2024 Republican front runner to support the country, should he regain the White House. She maintains that there is “no corruption” in the Ukrainian government.

How Sergeant Ashton-Cirillo, one of the first transgender war correspondents, ended up huddled in a trench in the Donbas region that she told the Sun resembled the hellscapes of “World War I” is itself now part of the war’s lore. In Ukraine as a journalist, she was moved by the shelling of Kyiv to become a combat medic for that country’s armed forces.

Sergeant Ashton-Cirillo tells the Sun that “Ukraine’s inevitable victory over Russia will be the clearest sign yet to despots and neo-Marxists across the globe that liberty always prevails.” She adds that “countries such as Taiwan and Israel will be able to look to the Ukrainian triumph and breathe easy knowing that America is still committed to guaranteeing liberty and freedom across the globe.” 

While Sergeant Ashton-Cirillo spoke, the Yankees completed a comeback against the mighty Tampa Bay Rays, rallying from a six to zero deficit to triumph nine to eight behind two home runs from Mr. Judge. Over desserts festooned with the Ukrainian flag, the hope was expressed that the win on the diamond would foretell one on the battlefield.