Staff report
As Ben Dusing and John Gardner prepare to join the humanitarian effort in Ukraine next week, the news from their colleagues already on the ground there is that the situation is increasingly dire and the need for basic medicines and supplies is urgent.
Dusing, who is waiting out his suspension from the bar by making his fourth trip to Ukraine, is part of an informal international volunteer network that is in touch via the internet. He and his colleague Gardner plan to leave September 12 for a six-week mission to newly-liberated Ukrainian villages in the area of Kharkiv. His contacts there — and international news reports — are now describing the terrible scope of Russian military atrocities and war crimes in that area.
A photo of the Ukrainian flag flying in the town square of newly-liberated Balaklia, sent by a fellow volunteer.
Dusing hopes to collect donations of basic medicines of all kinds — Advil, Tylenol, basic antiseptics — in addition to the tourniquets he orginally asked for. His friends there describe the situation as “dire.”
Donations can be dropped off at his office at 809 Wright Summit Parkway, Suite 120, in Fort Wright, or monetary donations can be made to his organization, Ben for Ukraine, through GoFundMe at https://gofund.me/bf3bc679.
“These populations have been decimated. They literally have nothing, and there are going to be a lot of deaths and unspeakable suffering if the basics don’t get to these places right away,” Dusing says. “I’m getting firsthand accounts from my fellow volunteers who’ve just arrived there, and they are painting a truly ghastly scene.”
The informal network of volunteers has been recognized as a key component of the humanitarian relief effort in Ukraine. They have stepped into the vaccuum left by such organizations as the Red Cross and UNICEF, which have been unable to do much given the unique nature of the conflict.
“It’s a patchwork quilt of smaller organizations and individuals working together, basically nonstop, all day every day to do what we can. It’s not ‘next man up.’ It’s ‘if not us, then no one.’”
Kharkiv is Ukraine’s second-largest city and a metropolis in the far east, 25 miles from the Russian border. The city has been under siege daily by the Russian military since the war broke out in February and has been the region hit hardest by the conflict.
Many of the volunteers are those he met at the Polish-Ukrainian border in Medyka, Poland, in March and April when they were assisting the Ukrainian refugees fleeing their war-torn country.
Dusing with fellow volunteers in Poland. They are reconvening in Ukraine
His fellow volunteers in Kharkiv made local lodging and other arrangements for him and Gardner. Since then, the Ukrainian armed forces unleashed a surprise offensive in the Kharkiv region and have pushed the Russian lines back 50 km and liberated 20 Ukrainian villages, including Balaklia, a small city near Kharkiv of roughly 60,000.
This is the first ground retaken by the Ukrainians since the Russians invaded, and the volunteers are now scrambling to deal with the darker humanitarian side of it: populations that have been subjected to egregious human rights abuses and who literally have nothing, not even the basic necessities, and who are looking for missing relatives and comprehending the living hell they just lived through. Early reports of the abuses are reminiscent of those discovered earlier in places like Bucha and Irpin.
Once there, Dusing and Gardner will link up with other foreign volunteers and head for Balaklia. They plan to stay in the field in Balaklia until the humanitarian situation can be stabilized.
He and his team can buy most of the humanitarian aid that is needed locally in Ukraine, but a big exception is basic medicines, which can and are counterfeited in the region and therefore can’t be locally sourced. So Dusing is scrambling to get his hands on as many as he can to take with him for the people of Balaklia and its surrounding villages.
The airlines are working with him so he can take as much as he can collect before he leaves.
“Please help,” Dusing says. “This is really, really bad. If my friends in Kharkiv – which has been a living hell for a while – are saying that Balaklia is ‘true hell,’ I know what that means.”
See earlier story about the Ukraine trip here.
