Foreign Volunteers Aiding Ukraine
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"You're in the middle of a mission trying to aid people but that kind of mental triage [compulsion to giving immediate aid to victims when other, pressing duties call] was difficult to deal with.""Russian snipers were taking potshots at volunteers, they're trying to inflict as much pain and terror as they can on international volunteers or Ukrainians.""People don't understand just how bad it is how dangerous it's been for humanitarians. Well, anybody really. But the [Russians] have been targeting humanitarian workers there incessantly and it's out of hand.""I will be enlisting when I go back, transporting military casualties, while training to move into a combat role down the line.""I'm ashamed of ur government and the U.S. government ... I feel that if they aren't willing to step up, then regular people need to. Humanitarian work is necessary and helps the victims enormously, but it isn't helping actually end the war, and I want to contribute to ending it.""We were less than 30 km from the front line, watching the explosions at night. I got into the thick of it, picking people and animals out of homes, doing everything I could to help."
"If they don't have a higher priority target, [the Russians will] go after you."Cory Woods, resident of Edmonton, Ukraine volunteer
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| Volunteers and staff with the Magic Food Army spend their time ensuring Ukrainian soldiers are getting the fuel they need to fight on the front lines. (Supplied) |
This
man from Edmonton responded to his Ukrainian roots by travelling to the
east European country where his forbears were born, to do what he could
to help his ethnic compatriots suffering deadly assaults from the
Russian invasion. Cory Woods, 43, willingly immersed himself within the
corps of international volunteers committing themselves to give aid
where it was needed, and it was certainly needed. He recalled in his
first foray in the country how he and his colleagues witnessed a Russian
rocket hurl into a southern Ukraine apartment building.
Their
first impulse was to detour from their original assignment and join
rescuers on the scene. But as they neared the scene of the impact, they
had the assurance that other rescuers were responding: "As we got closer, we saw an immense response by emergency workers",
he explained, leaving his group free to continue with their mission. It
was only one ordeal of many they were exposed to, given the reality
that Russian troops stationed nearby felt no qualms about targeting
humanitarian aid workers.
He
had travelled earlier in the year to the Kherson region with the
intention of bringing help to the Ukrainians who were inundated by
flooding following the collapse of the Kakhovka Dam, which was believed
to have been deliberately destroyed by Russian forces. Much of his time
spent there was in small inflatable boats, ferrying supplies to or
rescuing stranded Ukrainian civilians,while they were vulnerable to
enemy fire. They were also under constant danger from shellfire, he
explained.
U.S. officials were quoted by the New York Times as
putting the number of Ukrainian deaths at 70,000, with 120,000 others
injured as a result of Moscow's 'special military operation'. As for the
number of civilian deaths, the UN reported 9,177. Ukraine has made it a
policy never to release the toll of its war dead, treating it as a
state secret, a state forced into a defensive conflict and hoping to
inflict serious losses on the violent belligerents intent on destroying
their country.
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| Albertan Cory Woods (second from right) with soldiers and fellow aid workers in Kherson region earlier this summer. Photo courtesy of Cory Woods. |
Russia,
on the other hand, is estimated to have lost 120,000 of its military.
However, given the size of its military and its population -- both far
larger than Ukraine's, the impact clearly is somewhat less, even though
it's an unforgivably staggering loss of human life all around. Working
along two battlefields, Woods spent four months in Ukraine before
returning home to Alberta in late July. Despite how terrifying his
experience was at times, he plans to return, this time in a military
role.
He
feels his previous experience in emergency evacuations should be put to
use and plans to continue helping to transport wounded Ukrainian troops
from the front line, at some time in late September. His intention
ultimately is to take up arms, however, frustrated over what he feels is
the slow pace of international military aid to Ukraine, driving him to
make that personal decision. Four Canadian volunteers fighting alongside
Ukrainians have been killed in action. A Russian artillery strike near
Bakhmut killed 27-year-old Calgarian Kyle Porter.
Woods'
profession is that of a chef and that was what he first brought to bear
when he travelled to Ukraine; his initial work in the war was to
prepare food for troops fighting in the Zaporizhzhia region. "We were less than 30 km from the front line, watching the explosions at night."
He had felt safer, he said on the Ukrainian army base than he had in
Kyiv where missile strikes hit randomly, anywhere, any time. Once
further west in the Kherson region, that changed.
He
and other volunteers traversed flooded areas littered with explosive
mines and dead animals along the Dnipro River, at times no more distant
than 1.5 km from Russian positions. Russian troops on the opposite bank
of the Dnipro were regularly bombarding Kherson city, liberated by
Ukrainian forces last November. More recently in the counteroffensive,
the Ukrainian military lays claim to having secured a foothold on the
Russian-occupied side of the Dnipro in their intention to push the
invaders back from Kherson.
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| Rescuers from the State Emergency Service help evacuate a local resident from a flooded area in the town of Kherson in this photo from on June 11. The flood was triggered by damage to the Kakhovka dam. Photo by GENYA SAVILOV /AFP via Getty Images |
"They [Ukrainians] were always in incredibly better spirits than I would have been in ... it impacted me how these people were thinking of everyone else, even though they'd lost everything, how resilient and grateful they are."Cory Woods, Edmonton Chef
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| An image from social media shows a large fire and billowing smoke in the Pskov region of Russia on August 29, 2023, following a Ukrainian drone raid on an airport where four military aircraft were damaged [File: Ostorozhno Novosti via AP Photo] |
Labels: Casualties of War, Humanitarian Aid, Russian Invasion of Ukraine, Ukrainian Counteroffensive, Volunteers
posted by Pieface @ Friday, September 01, 2023
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