Full Photo Album: IRPIN, BUCHA, AND HOSTOMEL
One of my objectives for returning to Ukraine during wartime was to embed with U.S. Marine turned humanitarian, Mark Cary, from Arizona. I met Mark through a mutual friend’s social media, and we’d spoken several times coordinating our separate trips, but we’d never met in person. I reunited with Kyiv local and Raw Travel videographer Anastasia, whom I’d not seen since she was refugeed in Paris, and we’d road-tripped and filmed from Paris through Poland to L’viv in the summer of 2022. It was so good to see my old pal Anastasia, cheerful, silly, driven, and hardworking as ever.
We made our way to the towns of Irpin, Bucha, and Hostomel on the outskirts of Kyiv to meet and film with Mark and his partner in humanitarian aid, UK resident Hymie Dunn. Mark and Hymie have remarkable stories of heroism, having volunteered in Ukraine since the early days of 2022, just after the full invasion. When 99% of the people were leaving, Mark and Hymie rushed into the unknown to help, which is how they met. This trip was their fifth and fourth, respectively, and their third time working together.
I was honored at the opportunity to tag along on a few of their missions. We began with a get-to-know-you lunch at a Georgian restaurant. Then we took off on a short but powerful visit to “Dead Car Park,” an unofficial memorial and display of the vehicles of Ukrainian civilians murdered by the Russian military regime as they tried to escape in March and April of 2022. It was a sobering sight when one considers each vehicle represented at least one (or likely more) lives wholly snuffed out by this illegal invasion.
But as we drove through Irpin and Hostomel, Hymie and Mark soon expressed amazement as they had just been to this area six months earlier and were amazed at the rebuilding progress from the utter devastation they’d seen on their previous trip here. Of course, there were plenty more reminders of the damage.
As we made our way to the Bucha Airport, where the Ukrainians repelled Russian forces and, at that moment, saved their country, we were all kind of in awe at how easily the war could have gone the other way. We couldn’t get near the airport runway, which appeared pretty much deserted. Still, this early in my trip, just seeing the vehicles, damaged buildings, and the historic airport was a surreal peek at the incredibly moving experiences to come.