A 21-year-old man who died fighting for the Russian army in Ukraine has been identified as the son of a senior official in the CIA.
Michael Gloss was killed on the front line in the eastern Donetsk region in April last year, Important Stories, a Russian investigative outlet, reported.
He was the son of Juliane Gallina, the CIA deputy director for digital innovation, and Larry Gloss, a US navy veteran who took part in Operation Desert Storm during the Gulf War of the early 1990s.
Michael Gloss (second left) is pictured with his parents and two sisters
In 2021, Michael Gloss enrolled at the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine, a liberal arts college known for encouraging students to interact with nature. The following year, he was detained by police at a climate protest in Washington, DC.
On social media and in online chats with members of the Rainbow Family, a countercultural group that traces its roots to the activism of the 1970s, Gloss spoke of his disgust with America.
He wrote on Telegram: “When I finally figured out how the US political system works, I realised that violence is an integral part of it.”
On Instagram, he posted a picture of himself putting up his finger to the US Capitol. Another post showed a burning American flag.
Gloss puts his finger up to the US Capitol in an Instagram post
Acquaintances of the former boy scout and high school lacrosse player said he was enraged by Israel’s war in Gaza and had become an avid consumer of conspiracy theories.
According to Important Stories, he told one friend that Western hegemony was fading and that the future would be a “multipolar world” dominated by the Brics nations, a line familiar from Russian propaganda. Brics is an intergovernmental group comprising Russia, India, China, Iran and several other countries.
Robed wanderer earned ‘Jesus’ nickname
Before eventually joining the Russian army, the long-haired activist wandered through Europe and Turkey, sometimes dressing in a long medieval robe and carrying a wooden staff.
In April 2023, he travelled to Israel to visit “eco-villages”. Authorities confiscated his belongings and deported him.
In Turkey, now calling himself Hamza, he joined the relief effort after the earthquake in the Hatay region. He gained a reputation as a nature-loving eccentric at a gathering of the Rainbow Family in the Turkish border town of Kiyikoy, at one point being filmed shepherding abandoned chicks into a cardboard box.
Gloss bought a long, red robe in a Turkish clothing shop. A friend, Gamze, told Important Stories that Gloss bought all the bread in a bakery and handed it out to Rainbow attendees and that people started to call him “Jesus”.
‘Hungry for blood’
In May 2023, he wrote online: “Mum was telling me I could just come back any time. She was trying to make me collapse and call her for a ticket home.”
But he said he was set on his path. He said: “I find myself more and more alive by the minute. Hungry for blood and glory.
“It will be a sad day for ItthoBa’al [a name he had adopted] 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 how he planned to defeat the latter, he said people would not believe him if he said.
Gloss enters Russia
In the summer of 2023, he travelled through Russia, attending a festival and taking pictures in Red Square, wearing a red keffiyeh. In early September, he wrote on Telegram that his Russian visa would expire in a week.
By autumn 2023, he obtained a Russian visa in Istanbul and crossed into Crimea.
Gloss’s pose appears to be a nod to the hammer and sickle symbol of the Soviet Union
By Sept 5, he had enrolled in the Russian military, and an entry with Michael Alexander Gloss’s data appears in the EMIAS medical database. His address was listed as that of a medical examination room given to foreign recruits, Important Stories reported.
During training for the 137th airborne regiment in the city of Ryazan, he told fellow recruits that he wanted to gain Russian citizenship so he could pursue environmental infrastructure projects in the country, Important Stories reported.
Videos posted by Nepalese and other foreign recruits show Gloss smiling with his head shaved. He told “Mert”, a Rainbow Family friend, that he joined not to fight but to gain a passport.
Gloss (right) poses with other foreign recruits
In one message, he said: “My goal in life is to build an infrastructure for the oxidation of water in a supercritical state. To put an end to environmental pollution and the diseases and deaths associated with pollution, that is: cancer, lymphoma and all the hormonal problems associated with microplastics and estrogens in water.”
Important Stories spoke to a member of the 137th regiment who said that, after training, Gloss was sent “to the assault units”. He last logged into Telegram in March.
According to an obituary by his family, Gloss died on April 4. At the time, the 137th regiment was fighting north-west of Soledar, between the towns of Rozdolivka and Vesele.
The positions were described as “unfavourable” and the landscape “severe” in a Telegram post by the 106th division, which includes the 137th regiment. The exact circumstances of Gloss’s death are unclear.
Eight months after his death, Gloss’s family held a funeral for him in Fairfax, Virginia.
Juliane Gallina, Gloss’s mother, is the CIA deputy director for digital innovation
In the obituary, Gloss’s membership of the Russian army is not mentioned. It reads: “Michael was affectionate and curious, with a gift for building and fondness for nature and all its creatures.
“[He] had a heightened sense of fairness… [and] wanted the world to be a better place.
“He knew the names of trees and plants, loved sleeping under stars, and cooking on an open fire.
“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.”
Ms Gallina, a navy veteran, joined the CIA in 2019. On LinkedIn, her profile says her current role involves striving “to accelerate the digital transformation of my agency to maintain strategic advantage for our nation”.
The CIA was contacted for comment.
