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Ukraine’s Foreign Fighters: An Australian Humanitarian en route to Ukraine. Photos Bohdan Warchomij April 20, 2022

Posted by bohdan.warchomij in : Metaphor Online , trackback

Antonia Hitchen’s opening words in her article for the New York Review of Books “Among Ukraine’s Foreign Fighters” stopped me in my tracks.
“At a barbecue restaurant in Lviv called Meat and Justice,…Ukrainian and Russian casualties are tallied daily on the front door…”

The perfect intro to her story  about fighters and volunteers making their way to Ukraine to fight in the foreign legion of Ukraine’s Territorial Defense Force.

“When President Zelensky announced this idea, many found this invitation compelling…”

The fist volunteer she introduces is Andrew  and Antonia has met him and many others online, dressed in camouflage and chatting to each other online

and asking for advice and swapping tips about how to get into Ukraine and discussing the concept of fighting invading Russians and questioning how to fire Stinger rockets.

“I never understood how people got so moved by the Spanish Civil War, but now I can intuit it,’ another  said to Antonia.

Propelled by a sense of solidarity and a moral cause and an unjust war they felt a need to be in Ukraine just like the volunteers in Spain.

Ironically in Spain they were fighting fascists, which is Putin’s rationale in invading Ukraine, to ‘denazify’ a country which has a Jewish President,

in fact an inspiring Jewish President who is a Ukrainian nationalist.

He is on his nation’s television screens daily

and on the screens of democratic parliament’s with a daily plea for arms comparative to Russia’s better equipped army.

With western arms he insists that the war would have been over by now.

Antonia Hitchens  has done her homework well.

She met Belarusians at the Belarusian Foundation of Warsaw who had left Lukashenko’s and their country behind

in the aftermath of repression in 2020.  So many of them, that they have their own battalion fighting in Kyiv.

Pavel, a mixed martial arts fighter interviewed by by Antonia who offered to fight in Donbas in 2016 and offered the following quote to her.

“Ukraine feels like a second home to me nw. There are the Belarusian people, and then there is Lukashenko. They are two different things.

The Belarusian people stand up for their brothers of Ukraine. I understand the same sense of what they feel there right now. We have a vendetta. We want revenge.”

After reaching the border crossing in Medyka in Southeastern Poland Antonia Hitchens reached Lviv and met with Georgian Legion Commander Mamuka Mamulashvili

which formed in Donbas in 2014  to fight the Russians there. He has fought against the Russians in Georgia before and said to her.

“Georgians  have a lot of experience of facing Russian aggression.”

I’ve just met my first Australian volunteer called Michael Robert, who is flying to Ukraine via Poland tomorrow night,

who told me. “I am not a military man. I just couldn’t watch it any more.

The invasion of a peaceful country. Targeting of  maternity hospitals and civilians.

I couldn’t just and watch. I felt the need to help. I want to volunteer. Whatever needs to be done.”

He doesn’t want to fight the Russians. He wants to contribute humanitarian aid.

He was born in Balga, a suburb of Perth, and lives nearby in Girrawheen, another suburb. On the front of his house he has a Ukrainian flag with a hand painted sign with the words WE STAND WITH UKRAINE”

He has never travelled outside Australia, and he is heading overseas for the first time for a country that is a bona fide war zone,

where he has a couple of contacts, but no knowledge of the Ukrainian language,

or even of the geography of the country. He knows of the immorality of this war,

and of the genocide that has been committed  by Russian soldiers, and of the courage

of the nation in defence of its borders. What he feels is a moral pressure to be be there to help in any way he can.

His son is old enough to understand what his father is committing to.

Michael has three children and separated from the mother of his children.

The eldest is a boy of twelve, and the younger two are girls, one eight and the younger four.
It must be a difficult decision to make and an uncertain one.

He has a new friend in his life and it must be difficult to leave her

but he has a sense of purpose and has had help with purchasing

airline tickets.

His tattoos ascribe his journey in life and he wears a cross around

his neck denoting his intense spirituality.

He will need a spiritual guide on his incredibly brave journey.

 

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