Foreign Volunteers Aiding Ukraine

"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

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.

 

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.

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

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]