An Exemplary Illustration Of How It Was Done

The myriad tributaries of aid flowing daily to Ukraine offer optimism to the world by upholding the Ukrainians’ historic illustration of indomitable resistance. Ukraine’s achievement will certainly enter the history books not just along the continuum of Thermopylae onwards as a feat of arms, but also in the tradition of Dunkirk as an example of massive volunteer mobilization. The country had to fight on several fronts while mobilizing help from outside and organizing within at breakneck speed to absorb it efficiently. Imagine the potential for chaos. The story of how that was avoided, the full scope of the logistical transportation success (both civil and military), will need to be told in time. There was certainly chaos enough in the first weeks when refugees froze on the borders, trucks and cars waited for days in lines going in and out of the country, while food and tents were in short supply. Not without tragic loss, a system evolved of aid coming in from and through neighboring countries – Poland heroically – in a sort of funnel effect. From the Baltics, Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, UK, US, and as far away as Japan and Australia, the global airlift kicked in. Along with individuals, the heroes of the story also turn out to be Ukraine’s railway and postal service. More about that later.

The story’s military angle is most loudly bruited and better known – the Bayraktar drones from Turkey, the US-supplied HIMARS missiles, and so forth. But the worldwide civilian angle, the scope, the evolution of it, and the details of the massed individual responses add up to another historic achievement, thus far scantly celebrated. This column focuses on that aspect of the story. How did and does such individualized mobilizing work? Who starts it and where and how does it flow? What are the costs? What’s the cargo? US-based volunteers contributed significantly – though overall statistics are hard to come by. In the early weeks, people literally packed suitcases, purchased air tickets to Poland, took rented vans from the airport to the Ukrainian border, and handed out goods that volunteers were already at work distributing. Often somebody knew someone Ukrainian in the US and asked how to help. Ukrainian-American cultural organizations largely pioneered the effort. Here is a riveting first-person account in Spin magazine by West Coast-based writer and musician Harper Simon of just such a contribution. The article, an extract from Harper Simon’s forthcoming book on the subject, is a joy to read – the information meticulous, fully lived and vivid, the best account you’ll find especially on the earliest days of the response.

The timeline is May 2022 and Simon with two friends checks in thirty suitcases of ‘tactical gear and medical aid’ onto a LOT flight from LAX to Warsaw. Bulletproof vests, helmets, tourniquets, burn kits, gas masks, pain medication, and much else. Aid to Ukraine falls into three broad categories: purely military, non-lethal but ostensibly for the military, and purely civilian. The first two require various degrees of draconian official oversight, not least to protect from Moscow’s spies tracking movements. Simon’s cargo frequently falls into the second category. What isn’t in the article is that red tape began to proliferate even around non-lethal cargo, anything that coalesced in military or civilian storehouses. Some two months into the invasion, Russians bombed an assembly zone not far from Lviv that served as a depot for incoming gear and where foreign volunteer soldiers gathered to train. At some point along the route a spy had attached a tracking device to the shipments, or so authorities suspected. In Warsaw at the airport, Simon clears through customs and his load is picked up by vans that do the run to the border. The whole operation is coordinated by House of Ukraine, a San Diego cultural center that once dealt in folk-dance evenings but has now become the West Coast operational heart of organizing transports to Ukraine.

For the purposes of this column, it was necessary to espouse a comparable team effort operating out of the East Coast in order to delineate exactly how such a process works step by step, render it transparent and perhaps show others how it can be done. Herewith, a history of its quick evolution and a real-time record of delivery from A to Z, US to Ukraine, which the team witnessed. The venture was originally launched solo by a highly determined Washington-based Ukrainian, Aksenia Krupenko, previously the founder of a diplomatic hospitality service in the US capital. In the end, it meant taking a red-eye flight from JFK Cargo Terminal with only two passenger seats to Poland, and then ground transport to Ukraine. The Airbus A330 was packed to the gills with humanitarian aid, its contents included hygiene products, outdoor equipment, medical supplies, clothes, and other crucial gear. At first, you could run supplies from the US in this non-military category with great freedom, which is what Krupenko proceeded to do starting in the first weeks of the war. She launched a non-profit for the purpose, the Revival Foundation, and reached out to her diaspora community. Donated materials began to pour in but her D.C. apartment quickly filled to capacity. She needed warehouse space, and quickly a well-wisher donated space on the outskirts of D.C. in Maryland. There, volunteers could sort and store goods. That too quickly overflowed, but soon another free warehouse was offered, this time in the Tri-state area.

Organizing transport to Ukraine for the goods proved to be a challenging process. Representatives from all major freight airlines in the US told Aksenia Krupenko that it would take weeks before a plane could be ready, and that was on top of the staggering estimate of $1 million to charter a plane. She stated, “I knew that if we’d have to raise that amount of money for a single plane that it was going to take us so much longer to get these supplies to those desperately in need.” Shipping by sea would take even longer. The daunting task required ingenuity, so Krupenko reached out to fellow Ukrainians asking for any leads to airline carriers operating out of Eastern Europe. Krupenko was introduced to Igor Smelyansky, the CEO of the Ukrainian Postal Service, Ukrposhta. Smelyansky informed her that due to the closure of Ukrainian airspace, the postal service was running cargo flights out of Poland. For its aerial links to the world, Ukrposhta had partnered with Windrose, a Ukrainian charter airline. Ukrposhta would pack Ukrainian mail plus export goods onto Windrose charters to the US and then on return flights to Poland, the plane would be loaded with humanitarian aid. This arrangement was set up to utilize the plane in both directions. Windrose CEO Volodymyr Kamenchuk made an agreement with Krupenko that his company could fly a plane at the cheapest not-for-profit cost of $250,000, including the preparing and flat-packing of the cargo by another Ukrainian company. Now she just had to find the money to pay for that expense.

Meanwhile, the agreement had an added benefit – with the help of Windrose, Ukrposta intentionally kept the lifeblood open of Ukraine’s trade, especially small and medium-sized businesses with no access to mass-industrial logistics. It was, in its own way, a very deliberate act of resistance to Moscow’s plan to shut down the economy. At that time Ukraine was also asking for major players in the market to keep going the flow of goods. Etsy and Ebay were the first to respond and others joined so that Ukrainian producers continued to operate successfully and still do. Whereas Warsaw was the main airport for help to refugees, another airport – Lublin – in Poland served and serves for the purposes of big cargo.

Once wheels touched down in Lublin, Ukrposhta would step in with its trucks to offload the plane and transport the aid across the border into Ukraine and onto Lviv. Due to the war, Ukrposhta had forged an even tighter bond with Ukrainian National Railways in order to assist each other with ever-changing logistics. Roman Senishin, Head at Lviv Railway Station was critical to coordination and agreed to help move Krupenko’s aid with Ukrposhta throughout the country. Ukrposhta covered the costs from Lublin airport and onwards as did the Ukrainian railways.

To fund the flight transportation plan, Krupenko immediately called everyone she knew… She understood that timely aid was a matter of life and death for Ukrainians. Miraculously, the former Georgian Deputy Prime Minister and diplomat Temuri Yakobashvili connected Krupenko to a donor. Davit Kezerashvili, an entrepreneur and the former Defense Minister of Georgia, agreed to cover the cost of flying numerous (thirteen) planes. And indeed Georgians were involved in facilitating the process at every stage. As a result, by the beginning of March, the first plane traveled from the US to Poland. Krupenko had essentially established an international supply line within a matter of days. She stated, “There was no bureaucracy, no paperwork. We simply agreed on people’s word and moved forward with the plans.” While Krupenko was soon sending off one plane after the next from New York City carrying donations to Ukraine, large organizations and international charities still hadn’t managed to get their donations across the Polish border. Evidently, smaller operations can be just as efficient as larger ones.

A word here about the strong bonds between Ukraine and Georgia. Both countries were invaded by Putin, both have struggled hard to resist Russian pressure, corruption and force against their democracies, often helping each other. When Russia invaded in 2008, (when Kezerashvili was Georgia’s defense minister) Ukraine provided weapons and help with defense. There is a formidable Georgian military contingent fighting on Ukrainian front lines against Russia, has done for some years. The same co-operation endures quietly abroad. All this is unofficial as Georgia’s current government from 2013 onwards has maintained passivity towards Moscow.

When the team lands in Lublin, pallets of aid are immediately unloaded onto Ukrposhta trucks that are waiting on the tarmac. The trucks soon thereafter drive to the Medyka border crossing. Seemingly endless lines of commercial trucks and civilian cars wait at border patrol for approval to cross into Ukraine. Due to Ukrposhta’s customs clearance, the Krupenko aid is able to travel across much faster than most. Once on Ukrainian soil, Ukrposhta trucks drive to Lviv where a portion of donations are offloaded at an Ukrposhta warehouse and distributed locally to the military, medical institutions, and volunteer organizations. The rest of the aid is then loaded onto trucks at Lviv’s train station, where it is transported by freight train to Kyiv.

Upon arrival in Kyiv at the central train station, Julia Pavlenko, the Director of International Operations at Ukrposhta personally oversees donations unloaded from Ukrzaliznytsia trains and onto postal service trucks. From there, the supplies go to a warehouse that’s managed by Krupenko’s sister Bogdana and brother-in-law Igor. The distribution center has teams of volunteers working each day to determine what items will be sent where. As boxes are unpacked, members of the military arrive. They’ve come to personally thank Krupenko and collect non-lethal supplies for the armed forces. A portion of the warehouse has shipments set aside specifically for the military. They contain medicine, yoga mats (for sleeping), large-size shoes (which are hard to find in Ukraine), and more. A group of soldiers laugh when handed some brightly colored pink sleeping bags, informing Krupenko that the appearance would undoubtedly reveal their positions to the enemy at the front line. Grateful nonetheless, they know of other outlets where the sleeping bags would prove useful.

Another desperate recipient of aid was Ohmatdyt, Ukraine’s largest children’s hospital. Krupenko travels with volunteers in vans from the warehouse to the hospital, delivering supplies. The medical staff and its patients detail their harrowing experiences and the vital work that Ohmatdyt is doing. The hospital continues to receive patients from across Ukraine that have endured combat wounds and war trauma. UNICEF has estimated that two children die in Ukraine each day and since the war began, at least 353 children have been killed. Krupenko meets with patients inside the hospital, the war’s impact on children is heartbreaking. A small child hands Krupenko a stuffed crocodile as they stand in front of a wall covered in makeshift art by patients asking for Russia’s invasion to end. Bandages from Krupenko’s earlier aid shipments had benefited countless individuals in the medical facility. Sofia, a 13-year-old girl who’d recovered from a life-threatening shrapnel wound to the head only three weeks prior now hugs Krupenko with gratitude.

As the war progresses and fatigue sets in for western nations, this is the thirteenth and final plane that has been funded. Just four days ago Krupenko was standing on the tarmac in New York City and now she’s here in Ukraine’s capital having delivered over 150 tons of humanitarian aid since the war began. Is Krupenko proud of what she has accomplished? She doesn’t take time to indulge in such notions: “When we reach victory, then we will drink champagne. Until then, we work.”

When it’s time for us to leave Krupenko, she remains in her native country. She’s committed to meeting with as many people on the ground as possible in order to assess the needs of civilians and military forces so that she can relay the information back to the American people and Congress, urging for additional support. “It will not be our last plane, it cannot be. We must find a way to raise money for more flights.”