#7: Ukraine Trip Report
Supporting the work of charity groups 12 Vartovykh and Zgraya.
The Situation in Ukraine
This visit to Ukraine has been a lot to process. The last 16 months is the longest I have been away from the country in a decade – there are people and places that I have missed dearly. But these reunions have been difficult too, and I have seen and heard things that fill me with horror.
During this trip, in addition to Kyiv, I made visits to Bucha, Irpin, Borodyanka, Chernihiv, Slavutych, and Yahidne. There is evidence everywhere of the most awful cruelty and barbarism. I don’t think I’m ready to talk about all of that yet, but in time, I will have more to say.
One of the most pressing reasons for my visit though, was attempting to raise funds to support some crucial aid projects being undertaken in areas affected by the conflict. So for now I just wanted to share a report on how that went.
The Fundraiser
At the beginning of July I started a fundraiser on GoFundMe. I have since received several dozen donations there, and some private ones sent to me directly too. Altogether this came to €4,722.
Thank you so much to everyone who contributed to this.
I appreciate it was a bit of an unconventional fundraiser – rather than specifying a single cause that the money would support, instead I told you that I would go to Kyiv in person, find out who was doing what, and then decide how best this money could be used.
There is an element of trust involved in that, and I am genuinely touched that so many people have been happy to trust my judgement on this. And now as promised, here is a breakdown of how I distributed the funds.
Front Line Support: €511
Not everybody feels comfortable donating towards weapons, ammunition, drones, and other military funds. I understand and absolutely respect that (although, as an aside, I think there is also an argument to be made that the more military support Ukraine gets, the less humanitarian aid it will need in the long run).
However, many of the people who donated to this campaign have been on Ukraine tours with me in the past. And in that case, you probably realise that there are Ukrainian guides that you have met who are now serving on the front lines in places like Bakhmut, or along the Ukraine-Belarus border.
Although foreign governments are now sending significant consignments of weapons and other military tech to Ukraine, one thing I’ve been told these front line troops are often lacking, is good quality, well-fitting boots. Sizes don’t matter quite so much with other clothes, but shoe sizes vary more, and engaging in trench warfare in boots that don’t fit you properly is not ideal.
So while I wanted to avoid sending too much of this money to military causes, I believed that you would be glad to know €511 of it went on comfortable all-terrain boots for some of my contacts currently serving on the front lines.
12 Vartovykh – Animal Rescue Charity: €1211
On the fundraiser page, I did mention one charity organisation that I thought would be worth supporting. 12 Vartovykh is a community project whose work involves rescuing homeless animals from conflict zones.
It is deeply upsetting to think how many animals have been abandoned since this invasion began.
The UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) reports that more than 6 million Ukrainians have left the country as refugees since Russia began its full-scale invasion. It is estimated that around 8 million more have been displaced within the country. This is Europe’s largest refugee crisis since WWII, and the fourth largest in history. While various nations around the world have been offering official support for Ukrainian refugees (some doing more, some doing less), not so much has been done to support the animals left behind.
Not all refugees were able to take their animals with them, leaving many thousands of cats, dogs, and other pets homeless and ownerless. A lot of these animals have been left to roam the streets, hungry, afraid, and sometimes also injured. It’s absolutely heartbreaking. There are a number of Ukrainian animal sanctuaries who are working hard to help, but they are now struggling to keep up with the numbers. As the New York Times wrote in February, “For Ukraine’s animals, a home is getting harder to find.”
12 Vartovykh is a Kyiv-based organisation who, since the war began, have already done a huge amount of work rescuing animals from conflict zones all over the country. They have funded medical treatments and surgery, provided personal love and care, as well as campaigning to find new permanent homes for them.
I talked with Lala Tarapakina at 12 Vartovykh, who told me that they currently have 29 animals in their care: “All of them are in the process of treatment or looking for a family. It’s harder than ever for us now,” she said. The group conduct rescues, evacuations, and also humane neutering of abandoned animals. “Although our sterilisation missions are still needed, every trip is a lot of money. We are trying hard, but at this point I don't know how we will raise the money for the next trip.”
Most recently, Lala told me, they had taken on five sick and injured dogs. Greta is a sheepdog in rehabilitation, currently only able to get around with wheels supporting her back end, though 12 Vartovykh are trying to raise money for her surgery. They have a deaf puppy rescued from Kherson, and a concussed spaniel who came to them with a litter of seven little pups. Ben is a three-legged dog who needs treatment for an infection. Another three-legged dog, Gemma, was rescued from Avdiivka – just outside Donetsk – and is now recovering well after a successfully funded operation.
While it’s great to be able to support 12 Vartovykh, the work ahead of them is vast and they’re going to need much more help as time goes on. So if anyone is interested in supporting them directly, or even potentially adopting an animal, please do have a look at their website and get in touch.
Zgraya – Humanitarian Volunteer Association: €3000
As much as I love animals, ultimately I felt that the bulk of this money should go to human causes. And I really like the work that Zgraya are doing in particular.
Zgraya (meaning Wolf Pack) is a large volunteer association that started delivering aid in the east of Ukraine in 2014-2015, in the wake of conflict there – and more recently, following the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022, Zgraya was granted NGO status and now works in some of the places that have suffered the most under Russia’s brutal occupation last year.
As of July 2023, Zgraya has delivered more than 18,100 food packages to citizens and refugees in the regions of Kyiv, Chernihiv, Mykolayiv, Donetsk and Zaporizhia. They have provided humanitarian support packages (including items like clothes, utensils, hygiene products and children’s toys) to 4,288 families.
The group provide support to hospitals and paramedics (funding vehicles, equipment, medicines and hot meals), and they operate logistics networks getting deliveries safely from the western borders of Ukraine to wherever they’re needed across the country. Another major focus of their work has been the evacuation of civilians – often families with small children – out of active conflict zones.
Zgraya also works closely with the Armed Forces of Ukraine to equip the territorial defence in the field. They have funded more than a dozen cars, ambulances and minivans to be sent to the front lines, in addition to equipping front line troops with first aid kits and tourniquets, body armour, thermal imagers, metal detectors, communication systems, power banks, shower kits, portable heating systems, and more.
The group is headquartered in Kyiv, where they have five warehouses, and cater to hundreds of aid requests per day. In one single day, they can deliver aid to thousands of civilians – but only so long as they have the funds.
I spoke with Eugenia Talinovskaya at Zgraya, who said that these donations I’ve sent them will go to support the work being done at civilian hospitals situated in front-line areas, where the need is currently most critical – including in the Donetsk, Kharkiv and Kherson regions. She explained: “the focus of our efforts is to provide essential medical supplies and hygiene products to these hospitals.”
(For the sake of transparency, she also added that she plans to share a detailed photo report demonstrating the impact made by these donations – so I’ll add that here as a postscript in due course.)
Thank You.
Your donations have made a real impact and helped to facilitate some truly important work. But please also consider that your donations don’t need to go through me. You can support either 12 Vartovykh or Zgraya directly (and there are plenty of other groups doing crucial work in Ukraine right now too).
I do also want to thank the team at Contamination Zone. Before last year, they were operating tours in the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone. I first became aware of them in April 2020, when they were sharing dedicated hour-by-hour updates about the forest fires then raging through the Zone. (Remember when that seemed like the worst of Ukraine’s problems?)
Now, their guides are providing transport and logistics for press and media trips to places that have been affected by this conflict. On this trip they arranged my travel, and meetings with various interviewees, in towns and cities to the north of Kyiv. They’ve been truly excellent, and I hope some day we can meet again to celebrate when all this is over.
Mate, this is a heroic undertaking, very great respect for all your efforts, glad to donate what little I can afford. Good work, dude, keep it up.