Why One Canadian Traded Saskatchewan for Conflict-Torn Ukraine
Brett Drozd was a straight-A pupil who’d by no means been to his household’s homeland. Then the invasion occurred
Revealed 6:30, FEBRUARY 24, 2026Because the third anniversary of Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine approached, the scenario on the bottom had grow to be so unpredictable that Drozd, an impartial, volunteer support employee, ultimately needed to pause a few of his work close to the entrance strains. The chance was too nice. Simply earlier than he did, he had come to Dnipro on a self-organized mission to ship provides to a surgeon. The plan was to solely keep a number of days, however then his cellphone had rung.
It was a buddy asking if he had heard what occurred to Eddy Scott, a fellow volunteer in Ukraine and Drozd’s greatest buddy. “My coronary heart stopped,” recalled Drozd. The 2 weeks that adopted the decision had been an emotional blur, culminating on a snowy February morning final 12 months: it was time to return residence, to not Canada however to a home he, Scott, and one other volunteer had been sharing in Kramatorsk, a 250-kilometre drive east towards the Russian border, nearer to among the most war-torn areas of Ukraine.
Understanding that the forecast known as for greater than a dozen centimetres of snow, Drozd wasted no time and hit freeway E50 simply as gentle started to fill the sky.
At thirty, Drozd was a straight-A college pupil engaged on the stipulations for a physician of pharmacy program. He was lower than a 12 months from beginning when information broke that Russia had invaded Ukraine. Watching columns of tanks roll towards Kyiv was a distraction too arduous to disregard. “It turned apparent in a short time that this isn’t good for me,” he recalled whereas navigating the freeway, “to attempt to churn via the motions again at residence when my thoughts and my coronary heart have been with Ukraine.” He wanted to do one thing.
The choice, ultimately, was simple. Drozd completed the semester, and on Mom’s Day 2022, he and his household gathered on his grandmother’s entrance garden and stated their goodbyes. In a short while, the diligent pupil with no expertise in conflict zones discovered himself in Ukraine with one aim: to be helpful. What he lacked in arduous, associated abilities, he both realized by watching YouTube movies or made up for in dedication and resourcefulness.
The ragtag nature of volunteering in Ukraine usually runs counter to the generally held perception that support organizations are large, well-oiled machines that go into essentially the most harmful areas, making certain crucial provides attain those that want them most. The truth is that, though there are massive organizations just like the United Nations on the bottom, they’re understandably doing their greatest to attenuate the dangers they take, stated Drozd. Because of this, smaller villages nearer to the entrance strains are sometimes inaccessible for support deliveries and evacuations. So, a comparatively small variety of impartial volunteers, alongside smaller non-governmental organizations (NGOs), put themselves in hurt’s technique to join the crucial dots that the larger organizations can’t—or received’t. Drozd turned one in all them.
As he would study, navigating the dangers that include that work isn’t clear-cut. On one facet is a volunteer who’s injured or, worse, is unable to proceed serving to; on the opposite facet are those that need assistance. “Any person will say ‘I’ll be prepared subsequent week to evacuate, will you come and get me?’ and while you say ‘sure,’ that’s the very last thing that you just need to return on as a result of they’re relying on that, and that would imply their lives,” he stated. “It’s a fragile balancing act.”
Except for the bodily dangers, it’s a job that comes with a substantial monetary value. At first, Drozd, like many volunteers and organizations, did his greatest to be energetic on social media, sharing his work and in search of donations. However the longer the conflict went on, the tougher that turned. Information fatigue at residence ultimately translated right into a barren PayPal account, and Drozd resorted to his financial savings, which he had diligently put away for years to purchase a bit of the Canadian dream: a house. It’s a dream that has since evaporated.
His social media additionally drew the eye of these eager to know the way they may grow to be a volunteer, a request that continues to ebb and movement with the worldwide information cycle. A type of was Scott, a twenty-five-year-old from Dorset in the UK, whose eventual home within the front-line-adjacent metropolis of Kramatorsk would grow to be a hub within the volunteer neighborhood.
Even earlier than Drozd moved in, the rundown home was a second residence for a lot of, with a revolving door of like-minded volunteers from world wide. On the centre of all of it was Scott. “[He] embodied the spirit of that place, at all times eager to welcome pals there and have it’s a spot the place all of the issues that we see and expertise round right here could be mentioned in a secure atmosphere; the place we’re all on the identical web page and all sort of going via roughly the identical issues,” Drozd stated. “It’s simply sort of a testomony as to how even the shittiest of locations can grow to be one thing that you just consider with heat and fondness.”
By the time Drozd’s van handed via the town of Pavlohrad, roughly seventy-five kilometres east of Dnipro, the snow had turned to rain. His focus might shift away from the climate. “Alive or useless,” he stated, “was the factor that I used to be hanging on in that second.” He was recalling the cellphone dialog asking if he had heard what had occurred to Scott.
Scott was alleged to have been taking a break after working each day evacuation missions into the more and more treacherous metropolis of Pokrovsk, immediately within the crosshairs of the approaching Russians. He simply had another mission earlier than he was planning on flying residence to the UK to see his household. The mission was with a small NGO: to refill a generator that powered a cell tower, permitting the town’s remaining residents to attach with the skin world. With communications restored, Scott and the opposite volunteers obtained a handful of evacuation requests, which went easily till their white van emblazoned with the phrase evacuation approached a bottleneck between two units of railroad tracks on the way in which out of the town.
As they have been pressured to decelerate, an FPV drone struck the driving force’s facet of the van, a conflict crime underneath Worldwide Humanitarian Regulation. The passengers have been okay, however Scott, who had been driving, was not. Had it not been for a companion’s fast actions, he would’ve rapidly bled out.
When Drozd heard that Scott was going to be transferred to the hospital in Dnipro, he adopted up with the surgeon to whom he had simply delivered provides. Shortly after, Drozd walked into Scott’s hospital room.
“I’m all proper, I’m all proper,” Scott stated, reflecting each an unbreakable spirit and the seriousness of his accidents: the lack of his left arm and left leg.
Within the weeks that adopted, Drozd and a handful of Scott’s different pals successfully lived out of the hospitals in Dnipro after which Kyiv, organizing every part from medical care to media interviews. Drozd knew his buddy wouldn’t be returning to the home in Kramatorsk.
He additionally knew that the total actuality of that scenario would solely hit him as quickly as he received again residence, the place his higher-risk volunteer work was additionally ready.
The route meandered via a predictable sample of small forests, farm fields, and settlements, punctuated by ubiquitous Soviet-era bus stops and well-worn indicators denoting every city alongside the way in which.
The grumble of the van’s engine was interrupted by a pointy crack. After a number of expletives, Drozd calmly proclaimed, “Properly, I don’t have a mirror anymore.” The automobile’s facet mirror had been knocked off by one other automobile, probably attempting to dodge a pothole. “I’ll say that’s sort of typical of the kind of adrenaline that you just get right here in Ukraine,” he stated. “You realize, from one second to a different, you’ve received only a common previous automobile journey, and rapidly, then you definately’ve received ‘Simply, wait a second, that was actually shut.’”
It made Drozd assume again to August 10, 2022, the primary summer season after Russia’s invasion, and his first civilian evacuation mission. He had been behind the wheel of a automobile more proficient at taking a bunch of youngsters to soccer follow than navigating a conflict zone—a white Volvo V70 station wagon. Alongside him that day was Andrew Bagshaw, a British-born New Zealander in his late forties who had left behind his life as a geneticist to volunteer as an support employee. By that time, Bagshaw had been working in sizzling spots for a number of months. The one cause he occurred to be becoming a member of Drozd was as a result of his beloved automobile, additionally a station wagon, had damaged down and was ultimately destroyed by the Russians.
That day, their evacuation mission was within the gray zone, the realm between the Ukrainian and Russian entrance strains that neither managed, no-man’s land. Regardless of coming underneath Russian mortar fireplace, the pair managed to gather six evacuees. As they started to depart the realm, an explosion went off subsequent to the automobile, claiming the driving force’s facet mirror and pounding Drozd’s eardrum. Fortunately, that was the extent of the injury, and all the evacuees made it to security.
That first mission stays the closest name Drozd has had. For these within the volunteer neighborhood, slim escapes like these grow to be what they name second birthdays—“as a result of you will have a brand new lease on life after experiencing one thing like that,” he stated. Sadly, not everyone seems to be as fortunate.
In early January 2023, six months after Drozd’s shut name, he had heard that Bagshaw and Chris Parry, a twenty-eight-year-old British volunteer, hadn’t been heard from after occurring a mission. Ultimately, the information broke: it was the primary time that volunteers inside Drozd’s speedy circle had been killed. “It was a heavy realization about what we have been doing,” he stated. “All of us knew that that was a really practical chance. You realize, it was at all times form of only a query of when and the way.” Whereas their deaths stand out for Drozd, loss within the volunteer neighborhood has continued, and it takes a toll. “Getting numb to it’s one factor, however you by no means get used to it.”
More than midway via the drive, the snow had returned, and Drozd mirrored on recommendation he had given one other volunteer a day earlier: “As shitty as it’s driving on Donbas roads in fourteen centimetres of snow . . . you look on the market proper now, it’s a lot much less hospitable for drone flights at this time, and that may be the candy spot the place you are taking the chance with the climate to go in and keep away from among the threat from being focused.”
The query he mulled over was whether or not he would tackle such a threat, given how briskly issues have been altering. Missions just like the one he ran with Bagshaw at the moment are “absolute suicide” on account of the drones which have so influenced the conflict for the reason that finish of 2023. Though Drozd acknowledged that his present pause on missions received’t be perpetually, navigating that limbo is troublesome for somebody who got here to Ukraine to be helpful.
Ultimately, the van entered the small metropolis of Bilozers’ke. “[It] oddly jogs my memory slightly little bit of Canora, Saskatchewan, the place my dad’s facet of the household comes from,” he stated. “You realize, only a small, quaint city with a number of domed church buildings.”
It has been some time since Drozd was again in Canada. He was lacking his grandmother, his baba, essentially the most. As the primary male born to her facet of the household, Drozd at all times had a detailed relationship along with her as a sort of “golden boy,” however when the pandemic struck and he ultimately moved in along with her, that bond deepened. When Drozd first contemplated going to Ukraine, she expressed concern, as did most, however her assist finally didn’t waver. Had she requested him to not go, Drozd stated that he would have been much less positive. She was the one one that had that sort of sway, and leaving her was the one a part of his determination that tore at him.
Throughout one go to residence, he informed her that he’d be again, that he’d see her once more, however earlier than he returned, she handed away.
For Drozd, going residence and even speaking with folks again in Canada presents challenges. “I do know they love me. They care about me. They need nothing however my security,” he stated. “However after virtually three years now of doing this . . . it could actually put on them out emotionally and make it tougher for them to actually be tuned in.” On the similar time, Drozd acknowledged that his experiences have modified him. It’s one of many causes he hasn’t been in a position to convey himself to speak along with his household about what occurred to Scott or how he’s feeling about it. “They actually can’t perceive.”
However again in Ukraine, issues are completely different. There, Drozd is only one of roughly 40 million individuals who expertise loss of life, destruction, and sacrifice each day in a rustic that has been combating for its very existence for nearly 4 years. “Dwelling underneath this actuality, as horrible because the experiences are,” he stated, “being with different individuals who have been via comparable issues is reassuring.”
It was noon when Drozd arrived in Kramatorsk. His ideas turned as to whether anybody was on the home or if the as soon as buzzing hub would merely greet him with silence.
The ultimate stretch of the journey was on foot, strolling up a slick hill that his van couldn’t have managed. The snow that continued to fall dampened all sounds aside from the occasional rumble from a distant artillery coaching vary and Drozd’s footsteps as he handed by the snow-covered bricks of a firepit. He approached the drained home and swung open the door.
Inside was his roommate and one other volunteer. Drozd was relieved.
After a brief change, the dialog between the roommates shifted.
“You’re nonetheless doing tomorrow?” requested Drozd, referring to an evacuation mission in a close-by city the place volunteers had not too long ago been attacked.
“Yeah . . . wanna come?” his roommate requested.
“We’ll see,” replied Drozd. “If it makes a distinction.”
Dustin Patar is an award-winning freelance visible journalist who lives and works in Iqaluit, Nunavut.
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