December 9th, 2022

Hey all,

Quick update. Things have been moving fast as usual. A friend on Instagram said I looked tired. I suppose that is true, but I am only here a short time, and I am not in flooded trenches in sub 0 temps under 24/7 artillery fire and close quarters battle. So I can’t complain.

It is common for volunteer groups to help each other out every day, so when we got a request to pick up a van from Dnipro and drive it 7 hours to Bucha, it was a no-brainer. Of course like all volunteer vehicles it had issues and after a long drive, the oil leak finally caused me some issues on a Google directed one way street that turned out to be Zelensky’s driveway. In very broken Ukrainian I explained to the guard, “I am not supposed to be here.” To which his reply was something to the effect, “no kidding dumbass.” A few quarts of oil and a couple turns of a bolt and I was back on the road.

After a marginal night’s sleep, we repacked the van and headed 8 hours east to Kharkiv with a stop in Poltava for a meeting with the people from the Visible Women Group. The snow was and still is relentless and driving was rough. Marina and Elena accompanied us on aid dropoffs at a shelter and then later we accompanied them to a volunteer appreciation event at a restaurant in Kharkiv. It was the last place I wanted to be, but we saw some friends and made additional contacts.

Then we dropped of warm weather gear at the warehouse of our friend Roman and began prepping for the aid runs to the east villages.

I also made contact with an American named Jake Knotts who is procuring military grade mine detectors. A group of EOD techs has developed a curriculum and is training volunteers in mine clearing techniques. My British friend Ed Scott began this training yesterday. It is estimated that it will take 10 years to remove all the mines and booby traps in the country. With your donations I was able to help procure two of these devices known as the VMR2 for Jake and the mine teams. Just a few hours later my friend Oleg observed a vehicle on the road in Kherson pull over to the shoulder and hit a mine. Despite his efforts he could not save the driver. We don’t pull onto the shoulder in liberated areas.

Finally last night we went to the famous LF Club in Kharkiv. The owner, Icey started an underground bar, restaurant, music venue that is only available to volunteers, soldiers and police. Icey is on 24 hour duty and will open the club after hours to feed anyone coming back from the field. We met volunteers Rosie and Gregg from the UK and then later our old friend Larz from Germany and his partner Lea, a paramedic, came in after a supply run to the front in Bakhmut.

They have been here since March. Larz was visibility shaken by the drive back and what he had witnessed in Bakhmut. If you aren’t following the news from here this battle for a city in Donbas has been raging for several months but the Russians have now committed many of their new conscripts, weapons and redirected forces to the area. The assault is led by the Wagner Group PMC, Putin’s private and barbaric army. I have heard numerous independent stories that the Russians attack in waves and are cut down to the point that bodies pile up in the fields and are not retrieved.

While we were at the LF the air raid sirens went off and the city took six missile strikes which is still a daily occurrence here. But at least unlike like last time I was here, we are no longer in artillery range.