Why I am going to Ukraine
A Commentary Coming from
An American in Ukraine
A personal testimony by Dr. E. C. Olson, Mission Director
As I sit here in front of my computer for one of the last times before embarking for Ukraine, I’m beginning to see that as my missionary trip has become more and more “real” it has brought with it a renewal of the questioning I get from not just family, friends, business colleagues and mission supporters, but everyone it seems, from news reporters to the waitress at my morning coffee stop. Each one of them poses one variation or another on the basic question of “so WHY are you going to Ukraine?”
First, that’s an entirely reasonable thing to ask me because to begin with, as they say in my neck of the woods, I’m not exactly a spring chicken – I’m a grandfather of five who is supposed to be retiring this year when my ranch and business sells, and while throughout my life and my career I have worked for charitable organizations, donated my time and money to numerous causes, and led several missions and scientific expditions, I’m not exactly a humanitarian aid worker by training or by vocation.
Further, I am not Ukrainian or even of partial Ukrainian descent, I don’t even know one single Ukrainian person living here in the U.S., and I knew very little about this Eastern European country before I created the Mission. But answering this question with these admissions would inevitably result in my interrogators doubling-down with their restated question of, “So then WHY are you going?”
For the first couple weeks of being asked this I just lead with “Because I care about what’s happening to the Ukrainian people, just as I would anyone who is facing the horrific abuse and violent crimes that the Ukrainians are.”
But in nearly every instance where I am questioned, that doesn’t suffice either, as almost immediately I hear back something like, “Okay, but why do you care so much that you are leaving what should otherwise be your carefree retirement where you can enjoy the fruits of your labor, play with your grandchildren and fish and surf as much as you want?”
By the time the questions got this persistent and this deep, it became clear to me that maybe the consensus was right and my correct answer should have been, “I have lost my mind and I am about to make the biggest mistake of my life” – but that was even worse because it simply wasn’t true. Not even close.
So in all fairness to those who are actually concerned about my welfare – and also to be totally honest for the benefit of others who might be themselves contemplating traveling to Ukraine to help these beleaguered people, I need to be clear and convincing in explaining why I have uprooted everything to risk my life and undertake what has alternatingly been called “a noble, life-changing opportunity” and “an utter fool’s mission”
Seeing that within a few weeks of the Russian’s late-February invasion I had announced my formation of the Mission with me leading the first few trips to Ukraine, I have had a lot of opportunities to really think this through, yet as I look back at some of the very first communications I had with others in sharing my decision, I am somewhat surprised that my reasoning has not changed at all from that first explanation.
In answering the elemental question of “Why are you going to Ukraine?” – one that has been literally posed to me so many times that I’ve lost count – I keep coming back to how surprisingly personal this is for me even though I have absolutely no personal connection to any Ukrainian.
Instead, what makes this so personal is that it strikes at the very core of who I am, and how I was raised, and therefore how I approached life over these past sixty-plus years.
First, on the most basic level I have always been guided by the basic principle of “good-versus-evil”, and currently there could be no greater example in the world of “evil” than what the Russians are doing, and no greater “good” than the amazingly resilient Ukrainian people. So while it’s easy to say that you want to stand on the side of good, in today’s divisive world it’s pretty easy to find any number of good-versus-evil dichotomies, so I had to look further to determine why this one particular good-versus-evil was a conflict that I wanted to go as far as I have in not just supporting, but actually joining the Ukrainian cause on-the-ground.
In searching for that deeper motivation, I discovered another binary ethical motivation in the form of my lifelong contempt for bullies while at the same time feeling empathy for those being bullied. While I was neither a bully or a victim of a bully in my youth, I still find it hard to not step-in and come to the aid of anyone who is getting bullied. In every way, Russia is a bully – a bigger, stronger oppressor so full of himself that he thinks that his size alone gives him a free pass to use it to intimidate and bend those less-than-he to submission.
But here, especially when recognizing the horrific genocide being committed by this global bully, we must not lose sight of exactly that, that this situation is far, far ghastlier than just a little kid being stuffed into his school locker. In this hideous real world that the Ukrainians face every single day, this bully is engaging in murder, rape, kidnapping, and countless other crimes against humanity, while usurping a freely-held democratic election and taking an entire nation away from its rightful citizenry.
Many great people have spoken quite eloquently about reasons that people draw upon for motivation when it comes to undertaking the often very dangerous defense of freedom and liberty. A few that resonated for me include the following:
Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than
one generation away from extinction.
It is not ours by inheritance;
it must be fought for and defended constantly
by each generation, for it comes only once to a people.
Next for me in the reasons I’m going to Ukraine comes the somewhat expected “guilt trip” reason: I simply could not continue to enjoy my very comfortable life here in America even one more day while knowing that at the same time Ukrainians were suffering so much. As the war pressed-onward into the months of March and April I started encountering quite a few of those “see-yourself-in-the-mirror” moments, where whatever I was planning for the day – surfing with my grandsons, working at the ranch or going to the Smokies for a weeklong fly-fishing trip – those options became one-half of what became a daily ritual of muttering to no one but myself, “…or I could be saving the lives of Ukrainian children.”
In looking back on these past few months, I repeatedly found my heart aching especially for the most innocent of the Ukrainian victims, the children of Ukraine. The numbers that are being used to characterize the breadth and depth of the suffering of Ukrainian children are staggering: currently, 5.9 million Ukrainian children are in dire need of humanitarian aid, 211,140 of them have been kidnapped and taken to Russia against their will, 33,500 of them on average are fleeing Ukraine each day – and last but certainly not least, among those “each day” statistics are two numbers that I taped on my refrigerator (as if I needed a reminder): the numbers “2” and “4”, which are the present-day numbers of Ukrainian children who are killed and injured each and every day, without any end in sight.
What first had seemed like a bitter coincidence during the first weeks of the war rapidly became far more apparent and purposeful – that the Russian forces (and not just their own military but also their state-sponsored terrorist cohorts) are intentionally committing a wide range of the worst examples possible of child abuse in terrorizing Ukraine’s children.
It is in those Ukrainian children that I see my own children and grandchildren, in their Ukrainian Mothers I see my own Mother or any other Mother from our country’s “Greatest Generation” and, and in the Ukrainian men I see my courageous Father and my other male ancestors.
Being a child of parents from The Greatest Generation meant that I spent my entire childhood dealing with the inherent consequences of The Cold War – diving under my school desk during nuclear attack air-raid warnings or burrowing myself in my neighbor’s well-stocked nuclear fallout shelter they had fashioned in their basement, and above all else, “the Soviets” went from being a reluctant America’s ally during WWII to our bitter enemy during the Cold War – all in less than ten years.
That Cold War consequence was one of the most impactful take-aways from my youth – “the Soviet Union is bad and they are our enemies”. As my youth gave way to my teenage years this disdain for the Soviets became further cemented in my consciousness every time my father – a highly-decorated Navy pilot – would turn up the television whenever the news was covering yet another lawless invasion of another Eastern European country by the Soviets. In that respect, it is hard for me to believe that now, nearly six decades later, we are once again being called upon to counter yet another case of now-Russian brutal expansionism.
It is this inherited familial disdain for the brutality that characterizes the bully of Eurasia that brought me into alignment with those who see this war, this invasion, this genocide as being yet another example of the importance of democracies around the world collectively pushing back against and hopefully one day eliminating this persistent communist aggressor.
I too believe, as most Europeans do, that if Russia wins even a partial victory in Ukraine (defined by, for example, Russia gaining control of a southern swath of Ukraine that would connect Russia westernmost territorial border to include Ukraine’s Black Sea ports) that they will not be satisfied with just that. Instead, they would set their sights on the next former-Soviet state or neighboring country to conquer – and if those targeted countries include even one member of NATO, then the U.S. would have no other option but to send American men and women into battle against Russia.
So yes, one of the reasons why I’m going to Ukraine takes me back to an America from my childhood, because apparently America had it right then – we knew that the Soviets (which Putin is by birth and by indoctrination) and their flawed brand of communism led by their brutal oppressive dictatorship knows no bounds to its violence, except those that lay beyond the reach of their military weapons, which in this modern age basically doesn’t exist. That if we – the strongest nation in the West – do not do everything we can to stop the spread of brutality and genocide in this Ukrainian war, we will soon have to fight that same battle in Finland, Lithuania, Moldova, Romania or even Poland in the not-too-distant future.
But all of this talk about global politics, and in particular this talk about me and my singular role in delivering aid to Ukraine, inevitably tees up another ancestral belief, that being a steadfast belief in “The Power of One”. While that is true, I am just one person while Ukraine is a country of 45-million people, and Russia is a country of 145 million, so in many ways mine is merely a symbolic stand, but that is fine with me because after all, the only life I have any control over is my own, and I chose to stand with Ukraine.
In answering this calling, I will be following in my father’s footsteps, who walked into a U.S. Navy Recruiting Station two weeks after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and joined the ranks of the Allied Nations’ fighting force. And he too undoubtedly heard the same “but you’re just one person, and what really can just one person do to change the outcome of this war” – as I did – but likewise, he too never once let that intimidate or dissuade him from courageously volunteering.
Granted, in his case the personal stakes were much, much higher than mine – he was joining the military as a combatant, I am just choosing to deliver aid during a war. But his talk about the power of just one person applies today as well, so in asking him about that when I was old enough to understand the concept, he said that America has for the most part has always been defined by its central belief in “The Power of One”, which has been successfully used in many other applicable variations where the odds are so uneven, not just in warfare.
In fact, my father kept a few of his favorite inspirational quotes not-so-ironically positioned where I as much as he would see them, and one in particular written by the Nineteenth Century American political and religious figure Edward Everett Hale struck a chord with me in this current context.
I am only one person, but still, I am one more than none.
I cannot do everything, but I can do something,
And something is better than nothing.
I can’t possibly be everywhere in the world where there is need,
but at this moment I am somewhere there is many more than just one person in need
So I know I am in the right place.
It is obvious I cannot reach the whole world,
but I know I can reach one person at a time.
I am not just one man;
I am a man that is self-empowered to make a difference in my world.
Next, in gravitating towards a more military context in defending my decision to risk my life to stand alongside the Ukrainian people, I began to find even more relevancy. In many ways the bloody sacrificial crisis in Ukraine reminds me of the history lessons where I learned about the birth of our own nation, how everyday citizens had shed their blood for their newfound democracy and the freedom and liberties that came with it. This reminded me of the stories that circulated through generations of my own family, leading back to the courageous actions of one of our ancestors, Captain Johnathon Parker, who as one of the key leaders of the Massachusetts state militia during the birth of America.
There the spawn of our new nation stood starkly similar to Ukraine’s situation now – both were new fledgling nations fighting for their independence from huge, powerful autocratic regimes. The military of both colonial America and Ukraine today were principally represented by individual civilian citizen-soldiers who fought against much larger, much better trained and better armed institutional militaries, and both faced long, overwhelming odds. And hitting even closer to home, both pioneering nations could not survive long in war without the aid of other foreign nations and without individual foreign nationals who helped the defenders of liberty and freedom.
So just as my ancestor, Captain Johnathon Parker did – himself a farmer during peacetime who answered the calling during wartime as a minuteman – I stepped out of my similar civilian life as a rancher and answered the calling for humanitarian aid workers to provide Ukraine with the necessary relief and rescue needed to support those who the Ukrainians soldiers left behind to tend to their families, homes and farms. Here’s another quote from my past that is equally relevant today:
Today, we need a nation of Minutemen,
citizens who are not only prepared to take arms,
but citizens who regard the preservation of freedom
as the basic purpose of their daily life and who are willing
to consciously work and sacrifice for that freedom.
That same sense of pride and patriotism that fueled colonial America’s citizenry is seen today embodied in the Ukrainian people, so I am proud that I too answered the calling so that I can stand alongside these Ukrainian patriots and freedom fighters in defending their newfound democracy and the liberties that come with it.
But none of these lofty patriotic goals will ever take the place of what really matters most to me in making this decision to go to Ukraine on a humanitarian aid mission. That reward will come one at a time in small vignettes witnessed by few people – and that is the love and hope however, small and temporary, that my efforts will bring to Ukrainian children, their families and others there. That one moment, and whatever the lasting effects of that will be over time, is all the justification that is ever needed for making the effort to come to Ukraine on a humanitarian mission.
In closing, I’ll direct my final thoughts to those of you who are contemplating coming to Ukraine on one of our future Missions. Without question you will be presented with an almost unending list of reasons not to go; all might have merit, especially those associated with your personal safety and the risks of being injured or killed. You clearly will be facing a dangerous situation…
…but so too did those who volunteered during the Revolutionary War as Minutemen, or those that enlisted right after Pearl Harbor or right after 9/11, in fact they faced even greater threat than we – and yet they still stood tall and accepted the risk, recognizing that defending freedoms and liberties during war-time is dangerous work (by we must also remind ourselves that we are not joining the International Legion or serving in other military roles – instead we will not be on the front lines or in the active combat zones, and we’re taking other exceptional steps and standards to not put ourselves in direct danger).
In countering those reasons not to go to Ukraine begins with a list of reason TO GO that is nearly as long. Without question, you will be doing something quite noble and you will be on the right side in defending Good versus Evil, in standing-up to the Bully, in backing David in his fight with Goliath – and you will be helping to hold Russia responsible for their war crimes and crimes against humanity, and think about this: you will have separated yourself from the masses who simply voice their concern about the genocide being inflicted on the Ukrainian people – instead of talking about that, you will be doing something about that.
And for the final reason to go to Ukraine, the one reason that in a perfect world would solely justify making this profound commitment, is the effect you will have on each and every Ukrainian that you serve. For many of them, the demonstrated love and compassion that will accompany the aid you’re giving them may well be the first and only act of compassion that they will get during this war, and the hope that results from your efforts will materially change their lives. Those are things worth honoring…and doing.