CANORA - When the Russians invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Brett Drozd knew he had to help.
“It was just too wrong to just sit here and watch all of this happen from half a world away when I'm healthy and I'm able to help,” said the grandson of Canora’s Olga Drozd. “In the world we live in, I feel like if you have the ability to help than you should. It's almost like a duty.”
So Drozd decided to go to Ukraine and provide humanitarian relief.
Drozd, who lives in Saskatoon, spoke about his experiences at an April 8 gathering at the Rainbow Hall hosted by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Holy Trinity.
At the time of the invasion, he was in the middle of a term at university. He decided to finish that before going to Ukraine. In the meantime, he did research and gathered supplies.
“My thinking at the time was well, if I go there and can't help or something, that seems like a little bit of a waste, so while I'm here [in Canada], I wanted to gather as many supplies as I could that I knew would be useful there.”
He gathered items like tourniquets, body armor, helmets, solar panels, chest seals, water, purifiers and filters, burn dressings, medical and various survival gear, rations and food. Tourniquets in particular can save many of soldiers’ lives as their limbs are not protected by body armour. They cut the flow of blood so that the injured doesn’t bleed out before treatment.
“If it seemed useful, essentially I bought it,” Drozd said. “I filled three large suitcases and two medium-sized suitcases with all the aid that I purchased and brought it over with me.
By mid-May, Drozd left Canada. With the airspace over Ukraine closed shortly after the invasion started, Drozd had to fly to Krakow, Poland.
At the point in time, there were lots of volunteers from the west trying to help. They communicated over social media.
“That was how I got to the border, just a van filled with humanitarian aid with a couple of Western volunteers who had just met through a cold call on WhatsApp, and they were able to offer me a ride so I took it.”
From there, Drozd headed towards the southern front, which was around Mykolaiv. He was able to establish contact with the Ukrainian 80th Airborne Assault Brigade and handed over his supplies to the commander.
“That felt really good and felt very, very useful, which was the goal from the get go,” he said, adding that he knew the elite force would put his supplies to good use.
From there, Drozd went to the capital, Kiev. Fuel for vehicles was in short supply, so it was hard to move anywhere. He met a bunch of Western volunteers in similar circumstances.
As people left their homes to flee the incoming Russians, they left their animals behind. That resulted in animal shelters having to deal with record number of animals.
Drozd helped upgrade a shelter to deal with the influx.
“There were 1,500 dogs and 500 cats in the shelter, all being looked after by six people. In order for them to haul water to all these animals, it was like a full-time effort. Just to be able to put piping in there for them so that the animals can drink and be washed, that was huge.”
After that, Drozd pivoted to helping people. He went to the east, to the Donbas. He helped civilians evacuate in the Bakhmut and Soledar regions. Bakhmut is now the scene of heavy fighting.
With a history of deportations in the region, many of the civilians were wary of evacuating, preferring to risk their lives.
One day, Drozd and a dual British-New Zealand citizen, Andrew Bagshaw, were told there was a paralyzed mother and her family that need to be evacuated.
“When we arrived this paralyzed mother was nowhere to be found and the Ukrainians who we had followed into the town had left to where we didn't know where they had gone, but leaving Andrew and I to our own devices.”
Neither Drozd’s nor Bagshaw’s Ukrainian language skills were strong, but they ran into a local and they were able to discern from him where the people were that they needed to evacuate.
“What we did was we looked for them within this village and we came into a wide open area where there was a just a train track and a sloping hill towards more houses. That was where we found the six individuals that needed evacuation. It was three elderly women and three elderly men,” he said.
Then the Russians started bombarding the area with artillery.
“At that time, being completely inexperienced and from a civilian background like myself, I knew from instinct alone that we had to get out of there. There was no way that we would make it if we stayed so I utilized what little Ukrainian and Russian that I had, telling them we need to go.”
They made it out of there, with no injuries.
“Those people are alive today because of what we did,” Drozd said.
Those helping were not always so lucky. According to reporting by the British Broadcasting Corporation, Bagshaw, along with British national Chris Parry, died in the Soledar area in January, attempting to rescue an elderly woman when their cars were hit by a shell.
Close to the front lines, Drozd said there’s less of a line between military and civilians.
“Once you get there everybody kind of accepts that you're there to help and that everyone's accepting the same level of risk.”
The Ukrainian military does try to help out humanitarians like Drozd. He said that if he saw a lot of military around the side of the road, it was important to ask them where the fighting was happening.
Drozd left Ukraine around Christmas time, after he heard his grandmother in Saskatoon was diagnosed with cancer. With her getting better, he is now preparing to return to Ukraine at the end of the month.
He is raising money on GoFundMe for a reliable vehicle with off-road capabilities and hauling capacity to help evacuating civilians and pets from the front lines.
“I have that kind of unique ability to go and actually see these supplies given to the end user as opposed to sending it from Canada, whether it's money or supplies.”
He said that as an individual, he’s able to do some things that charity and aid organizations aren’t able to due to policies and law.
Drozd is also recording his efforts on his Instagram page.
