John Vsetecka is a PhD Candidate in the Department of History at Michigan State University. With a specific focus on the Holodomor, his current work seeks to understand how people make sense of tragedies and come to terms with difficult pasts. After being evacuated from a Fulbright placement in Ukraine to Warsaw, Poland due to Russia’s war, John became involved with humanitarian work that assisted refugees who fled to Poland from Ukraine. He serves as an Academic Advisor for the Ukraine Relief Project team at forPeace.
The history of Polish Solidarność (solidarity) was on full display following Russia’s deadly escalation of war against Ukraine on February 24th, 2022. As hundreds of thousands, and eventually millions, of people crossed the border from Ukraine into Poland, local citizens were mobilized, organized, and ready to help. I found myself among those willing to help in Poland as a result of being displaced myself. On January 26th, 2022, I was evacuated, along with my Fulbright cohort, out of Ukraine due to Russian war threats. We relocated to Warsaw, Poland while we waited to see what would unfold. Unfortunately, the worst happened, and we would not return to Ukraine. I would spend the rest of my time in Poland doing humanitarian work with Poles, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Germans, Americans, and others who made up our transnational team of those working to help refugees. Despite writing about humanitarian aid and relief following the Holodomor in one of my dissertation chapters, I knew little about what it meant to be directly involved in this type of work. War makes one a quick learner.
My foray into humanitarian work started small. Before leaving Ukraine, I regularly spent lots of time with my close-knit group of friends. This consisted of my neighbor in Podil, Britta (whom I will talk about below), and my friends James and Anna, who were expecting a child together. The four of us often shared meals, held long conversations, and made plans to travel together in the future. It was Ukraine, after all, that united us in the first place. Britta, James, and I first met years ago at Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv while studying Ukrainian. That time together proved to be foundational, and we remained close friends ever since. We reunited in Kyiv this year where all of us were coincidentally living at the same time. Eventually, we would be separated again when Russia’s war threats ended up dividing us between three countries. Because James and Anna had just welcomed their daughter to the world in Kyiv in late January, it was not possible for them to travel for some time. New parenting demands, coupled with American and Ukrainian bureaucracy, made it impossible for them to get out of Ukraine for several weeks. Our first task, as a friend group, was to get them from Kyiv to Warsaw as quickly and safely as possible.
Together, we started to plan their route to Poland. They ended up making a harrowing drive across Ukraine with a newborn in tow. They navigated military checkpoints, curfews, and a seemingly never-ending supply of air raid sirens. I will never forget the picture they sent me of them in a closet with their daughter pressed between them to shield her from possible debris should a bomb strike nearby. Between them, they bravely guarded the future of Ukraine. They were new parents doing everything to protect their child. Moreso, they were ordinary citizens doing extraordinary things. And it would be the extraordinary acts of everyday people that would secure their safe arrival in Poland. On March 2nd, 2022, I finally met baby Sofia for the first time in Warsaw. She, along with her parents, were safe. They moved into my apartment, and we soon got to work helping others.
Following the safe arrival of James, Anna, and Sofia, our friend Britta joined us in Warsaw and moved into our communal apartment. Although displaced and unsure of what would come next, we were reunited once again in a different country. It was during this time that our objectives shifted from helping each other to assisting as many Ukrainians coming into Poland as we could. Before James, Anna, and Britta arrived in Poland, I worked with my fellow Fulbrighters to help colleagues and friends get out of Ukraine, and through this work I met many local Warsaw residents who assisted us with these efforts. Without question, they opened up their homes to refugees, provided them with money, donated food and clothes, and helped them find jobs. We quickly established friendships that only war could forge, and we became reliant on each other as we worked to help those in need. These relationships, or what I refer to as transnational networks of solidarity, became fundamental safety nets for many.
Our tools of communication included WhatsApp, Viber, Telegram, Facebook, and Twitter. The power of social media to link us together really cannot be overstated. Our systems of support developed rather quickly, and our transnational team implemented a type of workflow that allowed us to help others. Upon establishing a good rapport with a few Warsaw residents, I started to get a flood of WhatsApp messages every day. At first it was only a handful of requests for help, but at its peak it could easily be a hundred a day. The way it worked was that I would get a message from my Polish counterpart asking if I knew of accommodation for a set number of people. If we could not host them ourselves, then we reached out to our friends in the city and asked if they could host them. This worked for a while, but the demand for help quickly exceeded our resources.
As a result, we began to leverage wider networks across Poland, Germany, France, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and other countries. We reached out to acquaintances, strangers, colleagues, and friends in these countries asking if they could house Ukrainians who could not find a place to stay in Poland. This, too, came with its own hardships. While many good people offered their services to Ukrainians in distress, it is true that there were some iniquitous people who took advantage of those fleeing the war. On one of my visits to the Ukrainian border, I met a woman who was reluctant to accept a ride from me to Warsaw. She recounted that the first time she crossed into Poland she was picked up by a couple of men who trafficked her and her daughter to Moldova. Amazingly, they escaped and returned to Poland. While she sipped some of the free hot coffee being offered to those who crossed the border, she recounted this story to me. While she never did accept a ride from me, and understandably so, she did share her story and made me aware of the horrors that many (especially women and children) faced while crossing borders. I would end up hearing dozens of similar encounters.
I share this story because one of the most important aspects of our humanitarian work in Poland was the process of vetting. It became of the utmost importance to vet those with whom we worked. And in return, we were vetted, too. This became particularly important when we used social media to request help. Although many people offered their assistance, it was crucial that we knew where we were sending those Ukrainians who asked us to help them find a place to live. In one instance, we helped two individuals from Ukraine who belong to the LGBTQ+ community find accommodation in Poland. The contact who put me in touch with them went to great lengths to make sure I would be the right person to help them find a safe place to stay. I, too, did everything I could to find a safe and welcoming home for these two individuals. I say this because finding a place to live in Poland during one of the worst refugee crises to affect Europe was already very difficult but making sure that refugees had a safe place to live remained a top priority. Navigating these barriers in real time proved to be very challenging, but our transnational networks of solidarity made seemingly impossible requests a reality. I have eternal gratitude to colleagues near and far who friended me on Facebook and followed me on Twitter during the war so they could offer their help and assistance. My Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp messages documented in real time what was happening. They are now an archive of the war.
Something else that should not be forgotten about this war is how much of the humanitarian work fell on the shoulders of citizens. Olga Byrska’s article, “Civil Crisis Management in Poland: The First Weeks of the Relief in Russian War on Ukraine,” highlights this well. Perhaps a bit naïve to the world of humanitarian aid at first, I was stunned at the visible absence of large humanitarian aid organizations that I witnessed at the border. Tents bearing the “name brand” logos of some of the world’s largest humanitarian relief groups sat empty as visibly distraught refugees walked past them without a glance. Large entities, who command massive donations (and staff salaries) and have built reputations as global leaders in humanitarian work, were nowhere to be found in the weeks following February 24th, 2022.
Looking back, perhaps I should not have been surprised at this. In the context of Ukraine, something similar happened in the wake of the 1932-33 Holodomor. Although Russian disinformation prevented much of the outside world from learning about the genocidal famine that killed millions of Ukrainians in the span of just two years, organizations like the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and League of Nations did know what was happening. For various reasons, they were unable, or unwilling, to help. As a result, humanitarian efforts to aid the starving fell on Ukrainian émigré groups across Europe, religious groups, small NGOs, and sympathetic citizens who offered what they could. In essence, large-scale humanitarian aid organizations did not respond adequately in the 1930s to what took place in what was then Soviet Ukraine, and the parallels to what is happening today are difficult to ignore.
Working and living on the frontline of humanitarian aid in Poland allowed us to see what was working and not working. Much like a historian reads literature and makes interjections in the historiography, we read the humanitarian landscape and noticed the need for grassroots humanitarian aid that could work with already existing Ukrainian relief efforts. We were put off by organizations telling Ukrainians what they should and should not have. Instead, we wanted to partner with Ukrainians who best knew their social situations and needs so that we could facilitate better supply chains and maximize our efforts. So, in the living room of our one-bedroom communal apartment in the heart of Warsaw, the forPeace Ukraine Relief Project team was born in March 2022. Britta, who was my neighbor in Podil, facilitated the creation of our team and became the de-facto leader of our organization.
Although a grassroots initiative, forPeace has developed into a prominent, albeit small, organization in the world of humanitarian aid. We are a donation-based organization, which means that we fundraise all of the money that we spend. We do not keep a penny of any of the funds, and everything goes to Ukraine and Ukrainians. Since our creation, we have partnered with local humanitarian groups in Ukraine, territorial defense units, frontline hospitals, food relief groups, and activist organizations from Donbas to Lviv. Friends and family have supported our efforts, and even my mom is now involved! She recently facilitated the acquisition of a high volume of Katadyn water filters from REI and Backcountry, who worked with us to provide affordable water treatment for people in Ukraine who lack access to clean water. This is just one of the many examples of our people-to-people aid put into action.
Although our team is now spread out across multiple countries, our ability to work together across borders allows us to continue to provide humanitarian assistance to Ukraine. What started as a group of friends simply trying to help each other in the early stages of the war evolved into something much bigger. To this day, we rely on our transnational networks of solidarity to offer as much help as we can provide to Ukraine. These networks that were established in response to the war are the reason that we are able to regularly purchase and ship life-saving aid from all parts of the world to Ukraine in record time. Our Ukrainian colleagues, with whom we work every single day, continue to help us get the aid to where it is needed most. Razom nas bahato (Together we are many), as the saying goes.
What I’ve written here is only a brief introduction to what forPeace does on a regular basis, and in a following piece in this series, Britta will offer an on-the-ground perspective of what it’s been like to direct and manage large volumes of humanitarian aid while living and traveling regularly between Poland and Ukraine. Her knowledge and expertise of the triumphs and tribulations of humanitarian aid in Ukraine are second to none, and her insight into what it is like to work in the war zone will be of interest to many. For now, continue to keep Ukraine on your mind. We are just one of several organizations working to help Ukraine. There are many others who are doing fantastic work, and we hope that they will be recognized and supported. We hope you will consider donating to reputable humanitarian efforts that continue to support Ukraine, whether that be forPeace or another organization. For now, we get back to work.
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