Journeys of a Volunteer
Nellie Bly

When the second invasion came in 2022, we were ready, but we weren’t. We knew it would come. Three centuries of the “russian” imperial project, the grinding cycles of gaslight-invade-exterminate taught us about an enemy that knows only how to metastasize (spread like cancer). Conquered lands (e.g. Chechnya, Karelia, Siberia, the temporarily occupied areas of southern and eastern Ukraine) become desolate mobilisation colonies: families separated, deported, remnants herded into barracks, new armies drafted to push ever westward.

That 1991 reset? A rollback, time to rearm, sell natural resources and get rich, with useful idiots from both left and right cooperating to disarm Ukraine. The long game.

Yeah, we weren’t ready. A lot had to do with our failure in Western Europe to wake up. We’re the hobbits. And we Europeans are susceptible to a well-funded russian disinformation thrust, aimed directly at our post-Yalta smallness.

Some of us woke up. I remember exactly where I was on The Longest Day February 24th, 2022. And with whom I was in touch, and who disappeared… and who turned up, and who were lost to us over three exhausting years.

Slowing the convoys of the enemy’s military and logistics heading from russia & Belarus into northern Ukraine was worldwide the first detail of any hacker with a heart. As a team effort, we broke the firewalls around the networked petrol pumps along the roads into Ukraine, and in Ukraine itself when the border was breached. After the Battle of Kyiv, in which the invaders were kicked out of the north of Ukraine, we concentrated on keeping the Ukraine internet connected to the rest of the world.

There was everyone’s typical Grandpa in Bucha, an veteran of both the Ukrainian and Soviet armies, disqualified from the service at 65 because of a stroke. Grandpa wouldn’t be deterred, but shot footage on his phone of war crimes in real time. Then he went to his old brigade and “borrowed” several grenades. He followed groups of orcs (occupiers) and when a large group passed near a fuel truck, BOOM went one of the grenades right under the fuel truck. He documented in pictures which of the orcs shucked their uniforms, civvies underneath, ready to melt into the population, doing sabotage ops. Then he dropped a dime. I have interviewed him, and am now processing the footage.

There was Polina, an iconic young girl with stories, killed along with her siblings, as part of one of those orcish sabotage ops. A face I see when I close my eyes, though I know that Grandpa, through his bold actions, saved many other such children.

A redheaded friend, Y. – raped and tortured whilst trying to escape, turned up in The Hague and has been doing political work ever since… to wake western Europeans up from our post-Yalta, apathetic slumber.

The faces in the attack on the Children’s Hospital in Kyiv.

There was a book of verse by Lesia Ukrainka, a Queer poet from a century ago, writing in the language of the land, the kind of poet that the russians typically deported to the camps, or shot. I found this book whilst helping with cleanup in a freshly liberated place. Restored the book well enough to read and show to others. Folded within were two of the poems lovingly copied out longhand in a woman’s handwriting, and a wedding picture. These are the kinds of poems that I translate, and read in places like the Blue Angel. In both worlds.

This war takes the best of us.

So I got involved with various efforts from charity funds, building out Internet Exchange Points and hacker’s death stars. Was injured in a drone attack, but the pain is not enough, and I wake up at night wishing I could exchange my mere shrapnel scratches with the life of one of the children who died under burning rubble. I kept going on many projects, from hacking the enemy’s servers to cooking outdoor meals. Determined to help, and to build bridges of culture and understanding. Haunted, but instead of feeling powerless, I wake up the next day, pull on the boots that hold my sexagenarian feet together, and do more.

None of us fuss about what we do. I speak up about it because people need to know, we all can take action. Resistance is an act of clear, critical thinking, of embracing our Western values and fighting for them, whether helping in a clinic or hospital, or making your congressman’s life a living hell by calling and writing every day. Even small amounts to vetted charities like United24 and Dzyga’s Paw add up. The choice is yours.

Me, I now teach English to displaced Ukrainian children and adult professionals, all longing to be reunited with the West, whose values they share. If you think of Ukraine as a sister separated from you as a toddler and then rediscovered as an adult, you won’t be far off. And I shall continue searching for that woman in the wedding photo, whose handwriting I know. To return her book to her and say, “thank you”. For thanks is what we must give to Ukraine, not the other way around.

Links to charities:

United24: https://u24.gov.ua/about
Dzyga’s Paw: https://dzygaspaw.com/