CIA official's son killed fighting with Russian army in Ukraine

Washington Post

25-04-2025

He was a Dylan-loving peacenik who wanted to save the environment, a young man, his father said, who 'would not hurt a flea.' Last April he was killed in Donetsk — one of the few Americans to have fought with Moscow's forces in the war against Ukraine.
How Michael Gloss found himself on a Ukrainian battlefield is even more unusual. The 21-year-old was the son of a senior CIA official and an Iraq War veteran, raised in a comfortable Washington D.C. suburb. His father, Larry Gloss, says that Michael struggled for most of his life with mental illness.
'If you knew our son, he was the ultimate antiestablishment, anti-authority young man the minute he came into the world,' said Larry Gloss, who heads a company that provides physical security technologies, in an interview. At around age 17, he began to rebel against the 'shared values' of his parents, who were national security professionals.
It was with 'disbelief and devastation' that his parents, Juliane Gallina — a CIA deputy director for digital innovation — and Larry Gloss, received the tragic news last June delivered in person by State Department consular affairs official that their son had been killed in Donetsk province in eastern Ukraine, where Russia backed a separatist insurgency in 2014 and invaded outright in 2022, escalating its direct control of the territory.
Until that point they had no inkling he was in Ukraine, much less fighting with the Russian Army. 'It was absolutely news to us that he was involved in any military relationship with Russia,' Larry Gloss said.
Michael died on April 4, 2024, of 'massive blood loss' in an artillery barrage, he said, citing the Russian death certificate. 'He died running to aid a wounded comrade, trying to protect him. That was classic Michael.'
The CIA issued a short statement Friday. 'CIA considers Michael's passing to be a private family matter — and not a national security issue. The entire CIA family is heartbroken for their loss.'
Though the family held a funeral for Michael in December, the fact that he was killed in Ukraine fighting with the Russian army was not publicly revealed until Friday in an article published in iStories, an independent Russian investigative journalism website based outside Russia.
Michael's spiral began several years ago, when he stopped taking his medications and his behavior grew more erratic. He started talking about taking a break and 'getting off the grid,' and working with an organization dedicated to organic farming around the world, Larry Gloss recalled. The idea was to take about six months and travel. He left his home in Fairfax, Virginia, in January 2023 and went to Italy, where he worked on farms, and then eventually to Turkey, where he helped restore buildings damaged by the earthquake earlier that year.
In June, he went to the former Soviet republic of Georgia, where he attended a 'Rainbow Family' gathering, a counterculture movement inspired by Woodstock, Larry Gloss said. The following month, he texted his parents on WhatsApp that he had crossed into Russia, saying he was going to meet friends from the group.
'We were on guard, skeptical, suspicious,' his father said. 'At no point did he suggest or did we suspect he would join the military. Never.'
In September 2023, Michael told his parents he wanted to stay in Russia for a while. Unbeknownst to them, that month, he enlisted in the Russian military, according to iStories, which found a record of his recruitment in a Russian database that had leaked online.
Tracking his iPhone, they saw he was in a northern Moscow suburb called Avangard, which hosts a military training center. When his parents spoke with him, he denied being at the military training center.
During that period, it was becoming clear that Kyiv's counteroffensive in the south of Ukraine, backed by U.S. advice and weapons, was failing to make a substantial dent in Russian defenses.
In December 2023, Michael was sent to the Ukraine front, according to iStories, which interviewed a Russian soldier in the 137th Airborne Regiment who said he knew Michael and told the news site that the American was assigned to an assault unit. At that time, the 137th Regiment's units were stationed northwest of the city of Soledar in Donetsk Oblast.
Months later, with exhausted Ukrainian forces on their back foot, Russian forces pressed the initiative, moving to capture the besieged citadel of Bakhmut.
On the day Michael was killed, his division said on Telegram it advanced in the area, backed by small assault groups and artillery, despite the 'severity of the landscape and unfavorable positions.'
It was only later, in trying to contact people who may have been in touch with Michael, that his older sister reached a Rainbow friend who shared their text message exchanges, Larry Gloss said. In one, Michael told the friend, 'I won't be in combat' and that he would be in a 'support unit in the back,' his father said. He texted his friend that in six months, he would have Russian citizenship.
Michael, his father said, apparently wanted to become a citizen, believing that only in Russia could he realize his dream of building a water purifier to help people who didn't have access to clean water.
'I can only attribute it to his mental illness,' he said. 'It clearly defies logic.'
Gloss said he and his wife were devastated to learn he had fought with the Russians. 'I pray he didn't hurt anyone,' he said.
'For the parents, it's just a great tragedy,' said Ralph Goff, a former senior CIA official in charge of operations in Europe and Eurasia who has traveled extensively in Ukraine.
Several thousand Americans have gone to the battlefield seeking to fight for Ukraine, said Goff. 'Some are war tourists who leave quickly after their first encounter with modern artillery and drones. Others are determined warriors who stay and fight.' He estimated that two to three thousand fall into the latter category, though there are no public official numbers.
At least 75 Americans have died fighting on the Ukrainian side, said Meaghan Mobbs, the president of the R.T. Weatherman Foundation, a U.S. nonprofit that helps repatriate the remains of U.S. citizens there.
By contrast only a small number have fought with the Russians, according to U.S. intelligence officials and Goff. 'It's onesies and twosies,' Goff said. 'It's so rare it makes news.'
The Russians tend to use foreign volunteers in assault units and they're considered expendable, Goff said. 'They just take all these guys and send them to the front as cannon fodder.'
Michael's family learned on Dec. 4, the day he would have turned 22, that his remains would be repatriated from Moscow.
'Our biggest fear while we were waiting for him to be repatriated was that someone over there [in Moscow] would put two and two together and figure out who his mother was, and use him as a prop,' said Larry Gloss.
He was cremated the week his body was returned.
The obituary published in November did not mention the war or Russia. It said simply: 'With his noble heart and warrior spirit Michael was forging his own hero's journey when he was tragically killed in Eastern Europe.'
Aaron Schaffer and Warren Strobel contributed to this report.