When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, I was sitting at my dining room table in Washington DC filling out forms to apply for Social Security benefits. After more than four decades of international humanitarian work, I was finally retiring.
My overseas career began as a Peace Corps Volunteer in a small village in the rain forest of Ghana and later I worked for non-profits in many parts of the world, most of them riven by conflict. I spent years in tough Africa war zones, including Burundi, the Congo, Ethiopia and Liberia, to name but a few. I was one of a handful of Americans who worked in Rwanda during the genocide which killed at least 800,000 people, and I arrived in Iraq only ten days after Baghdad fell to US troops.
But more relevant to this story, I spent three months in Kharkiv in 2015 during the first Russian invasion of Ukraine. Managing a smart, enthusiastic team of young locals, we provided families displaced from the Donbas with cash grants to help them resettle in more peaceful parts of the country. The people and the place took firm root in my heart.
Anyway, back to my dining room table where I sat glued to my laptop watching Russian missile strikes on Kharkiv and other Ukrainian cities. I felt outrage but also a certain helplessness. After all, I was a retiree some 5,000 miles from the action. After announcing that was getting out of the rat race and would spend much more time with my long-suffering girlfriend, I couldn’t just jump on a plane to Ukraine (assuming there even were any flights). So, I sat and seethed and watched the news for many months, until in late 2022 my girlfriend walked in, stood looking at me for a long moment, her arms crossed, and then announced “You need to go to Ukraine”.
A few weeks later, in January 2023 I flew to Warsaw, took the 15-hour train trip to Kyiv, and eventually – and serendipitously – wound up in the elegant Black Sea city of Odesa. Within a week I’d rented a little apartment, found a small, scrappy Ukrainian aid group to volunteer with and was in my element. I also joined a group of Odessans and foreigners who spent their Saturday mornings buying and delivering food to patients at an Odesa psychiatric hospital.
I lived for six months in Ukraine that first year, often traveling to places in Mykolaiv and Kherson oblasts where minefields lined the back roads and mortars exploded with alarming regularity. It was good, satisfying work, but I kept thinking that perhaps a better way for me to help was not by providing humanitarian aid, necessary though that was and is, but by trying to help Ukraine win the war.
So, one cold Odessan evening I sat down at my trusty laptop and e-mailed everyone I knew a fundraising appeal entitled “In The Trenches: Ukraine”.
Its modest goal was to provide troops in small isolated military units along the southern front with things like large power banks to keep their phones, drones, and Star Link terminals charged up. Happily, within a week I had enough money to buy six.
As time went on, I developed a network of both civilians and soldiers which helped me gain a better understanding of what equipment was urgently needed, and what units could most benefit. From Odesa to Kherson to Donetsk, I began fielding calls and texts from medical officers, Special Forces members, and drone pilots. Pestering my friends and family to donate, I’ve since bought a variety of much needed items, from tourniquets and tires to binoculars, bandages and beef sausages, and more.
Some folks ask, why do lone foreigners have to provide Ukrainian soldiers with these things? Isn’t that the job of the Ministry of Defense? Yes, of course it is, but Ukraine’s economy has tanked since the invasion, and like everywhere else government bureaucracy is slow and cumbersome. And while my assistance alone isn’t going to defeat the Russian army, combined with hundreds of other similar initiatives we can make a real difference. As much as anything, I’m also doing this to “bear witness” to what Ukraine is going through. To carry home the stories of ordinary men and women struggling against a very real threat to their lives, homes, and culture.
In 2022 it was fashionable to show support for Ukraine. Yellow and blue flags flew in my Washington neighborhood, cars sported “tryzub” decals, and of course many of our politicians proudly proclaimed that they would stick with Ukraine ‘to the end’. Understandably, perseverance tends to wane after two-and-a-half years of war, and for most people Ukraine can seem so far away.
One of the most important lessons I’ve learned from my Ukrainian friends is the value of playing the long game. Divvied up by the Lithuanians, Poles and Russians, crushed by Stalin, and looted by its own oligarchs, it’s nothing short of incredible that this nation still exists. But exist it does, and arguably more strongly than at any time in its tumultuous history. For me, that’s a cause well worth supporting. I trust you feel the same way.
Chris Hennemeyer runs a one-man charity – www.inthetrenchesukraine.org – dedicated to supporting Ukraine’s defenders.
