Rosemary, a retired teacher and artist, has supported Mriya Aid for several years. In early 2025, she joined more than 50 donors worldwide to fund 100 drone detection devices for deminers working in Ukraine’s most dangerous, UXO-contaminated areas. Moved to do more, she later organized an art exhibition of her work and generously donated the proceeds to support Ukrainian women working in demining.

Through our partners at the National Police of Ukraine (NPU)’s EOD and pyrotechnic (bomb disposal) teams, we learned that over 40 women are engaged by the NPU in this demanding field. Oksana is the only woman on a mobile EOD unit of eight specialists operating daily near Kherson in Southern Ukraine - often within 20 kilometres of Russian positions. The area has been described by journalists as a “kill zone,” where Russian drones target civilians, defenders, and responders alike. Yet people continue to live there, facing both aerial attacks, drone “safaris” through which Russians target anyone moving in the area, and deadly explosive remnants of war.

Before the full-scale invasion, Oksana worked as a police investigator in Skadovsk. After Russian occupation forced her evacuation in March 2022, she retrained as an explosives technician, completing EOD training in Zhytomyr and qualifying as an FPV drone operator. Since 2023, she has served in the Kherson police pyrotechnic unit, responding to 250–300 calls annually - many in active combat conditions.

‘My work gives me a deep sense of purpose, although it is extremely exhausting,” Oksana says. “Every deployment means someone’s life has been saved.”

She says the most difficult time in her work came during the early days of Kherson’s liberation in November 2022. Russian forces had mined administrative and residential buildings. People returning home would discover mines and tripwires hidden in refrigerators or disguised as toys. “We constantly heard about local residents being blown up. The most painful cases were those involving children,” she recalls.

Her work continues to be relentless and dangerous as Russian forces continue to deploy evolving weapons. Over the past year, Oksana has dealt with a wide range of explosive threats, including unexploded aerial bombs, North Korean cluster munitions, Smerch rockets, PFM ‘butterfly’ mines, and drone-dropped explosives - over 30% of which fail to detonate immediately. In February 2026, one of her colleagues lost several fingers after approaching a booby-trapped drone payload. Since 2023, 10 members of her 19-person unit have been killed on the job, and three members, including the unit commander, have suffered amputations.

“In 2023 we were mostly dealing with the remnants of heavy weapons such as S-300 missiles and Grad rockets. But Russian tactics are changing rapidly. New types of weapons appear, and their configurations are constantly evolving,” Oksana explains. Although as a police officer she operates according to humanitarian demining protocols, the situation often requires her team to apply all available expertise. In some cases, explosive devices must be destroyed immediately on site. It is dangerous work.

Despite this, Oksana remains committed and dreams of one day returning to her home. “There are many things in life worth fighting for and living for,” she says.

On March 13, she travelled to Florida to participate in an international EOD competition. Oksana is confident that Ukraine will liberate territories and citizens occupied, mined, and terrorized by Russia.

Rosemary’s initiative reminds us that individual action matters. As Edmund Burke wrote centuries ago, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Canadians like Rosemary are choosing to act.

Canada continues to support Ukraine, having provided nearly $90 million to mine action since 2022. Mriya Aid has contributed close to $5 million toward demining efforts, including training nearly 300 Ukrainian EOD specialists to international standards and equipping over 200 sappers. Since 2024, we have also supported National Police pyrotechnic units with advanced training and material support - and are now working to equip all 40 women deminers across Ukraine.

We invite our partners and supporters to continue to support Ukraine and those who risk their lives daily to save others, protect civilians, and defend our shared values.

Life prevails over death. Light wins over darkness.

At Mriya Aid, we express unity and solidarity through action - by helping defenders and sappers save lives every day. We are proud of our work in 2025 and are committed to expanding support for Ukraine in 2026.

Training Sappers, Saving Lives

In 2025, Mriya Aid continued to support Ukrainian deminer training and certification in accordance with International Mine Action Standards, working directly with Ukrainian sapper networks and state agencies to ensure training reflects real operational conditions and current needs on the ground. Frontline defenders and emergency services consistently report an acute shortage of trained sappers. Clearing mines and explosive ordnance is essential to protecting civilians, enabling military movement, and allowing emergency responders to do their work safely.

Our key partners - PCM Mine Action Training Centre, the Ukrainian mine action community, and international donors - respond rapidly to emerging training needs, expanding training materials and practical modules that help sappers work more safely and effectively with the most dangerous munitions Russia deploys daily. Surveys, interviews and post-deployment feedback from sappers we support concretely demonstrated that the training provides them with critical hands-on experience in all explosive remnants of war such as such as anti-tank or anti-personnel mines, projectiles of all types and calibres, grenades, missiles be they air-to-air, surface-to-air, air-to-surface, surface-to-surface, increasingly devious and deadly improvised explosive devices, and complex munitions that are extremely sensitive and pose life threatening risks to sappers and civilians alike. The graduates of our programs report an increased ability to work confidently, safely, and effectively.

Mriya Aid is the only Canadian organisation dedicated exclusively to strengthening Ukraine’s humanitarian and operational demining capacity, making it a uniquely positioned partner able to translate frontline needs into effective, life-saving support.

Evidence-Based Impact

In 2025, Mriya Aid produced several comprehensive analytical reports for institutional donors and Ukrainian partners, including the International Demining Capability Coalition, documenting our support for training and equipping over 200 Ukrainian deminers in 2024 and 2025. Using qualitative and quantitative data from surveys and interviews, we transformed frontline experience into structured knowledge to inform the design, relevance, and effectiveness of future training programmes.

This work was made possible through extensive volunteer effort - applying for funding and managing complex projects. Individual donations remain essential. While 100% of public donations made to Mriya Aid go directly to the front, they also unlock institutional funding by demonstrating public trust and community support. The generosity of individual donors from across the globe multiplies impact and turns global solidarity with Ukraine into tangible life-saving results.

“Mriya Aid’s EOD Train and Equip project is a significant contribution to building Ukraine’s national mine action capabilities and demining capacity.”
Colonel Ruslan Berehulia, Head, Ministry of Defence of Ukraine, Main Directorate of Mine Action, Civilian Protection and Environmental Safety, March 2025

Tools, Trainers, and Long-Term Capacity

In 2025, we partnered with an institutional donor to support the publication and distribution of 3,000 copies of Miny (Mines) - Ukraine’s key practitioner-driven technical manual for operational and humanitarian deminers. The manual systematizes up-to-date information on Russian-used mines and explosive devices, deployment methods, and safe detection and neutralization practices. NATO EOD specialists and international trainers have since requested an English edition aligned with NATO terminology and doctrine - an effort Mriya Aid is now advancing with Ukrainian and international partners.

Thanks to individual donors across the globe, Mriya Aid delivered 100 Tsukorok drone detectors to frontline AFU sapper teams in June 2025. Sappers are one of the primary targets of enemy first-person-view drones equipped with explosives that hunt and kill Ukrainian sappers, soldiers, and even civilians. Read about our efforts to provide these life-saving devices that give sappers a chance to take cover or activate electronic countermeasures in Eyes and Ears on the Battlefield.

Another major outcome was the impact of IMAS EOD training funded by Mriya Aid for five National Police of Ukraine instructors. These specialists from the Lviv State University of Internal Affairs and the Kyiv Academy of Internal Affairs train 2,000–3,000 police officers annually in bomb disposal and UXO handling in civilian areas. This train-the-trainer approach - funded by individual donations in this case - creates long-term, systemic impact, improving safety standards and saving lives.

Advocacy and Global Engagement

Throughout 2025, Mriya Aid remained active in international advocacy and professional forums focused on Ukraine’s recovery. On May 31, together with the NATO Association of Canada, the Canada-Ukraine Chamber of Commerce, the Munk School of Global Affairs, and the Embassy of Ukraine in Canada, we co-organized Safeguarding Ukraine’s Future: Security Guarantees and Demining for Recovery and Reconstruction. The conference brought together over 150 participants from government, diplomacy, defence, civil society, and academia, elevating mine action on Canada’s policy agenda.

Mriya Aid Chair and CEO Lesya Granger moderated a panel on demining Ukraine, while Vice-President Mark Paine organized an exhibit with our longtime partner Med-Eng. Participants were invited to hold shrapnel from Ukrainian frontlines - an unforgettable reminder of the real human cost of mines and UXO.

Our advocacy continued at the 28th International Meeting of National Mine Action Directors, Mine Action Conference in Tokyo and the Rebuild Ukraine Conferences in Warsaw and in Toronto, strengthening dialogue around security, recovery, and reconstruction - and reinforcing the central role of mine action in economic renewal. This work reinforced the importance of our mission and our role in the broader ecosystem of Ukraine’s recovery.

“Mriya Aid is widely respected in the field, and they are one of very few international private-sector non-profit organisations at the table when Ukrainian mine-action and EOD issues are at stake at the national level.” – PCM leadership

On the Ground in Ukraine

Two team visits to Ukraine in 2025 allowed Mriya Aid to deepen partnerships, secure new international funding, observe evolving training and field operations firsthand, and better understand current needs. Our directors gave interviews to Ukrainian media and influencers. This English-language interview between Lesya Granger and Canada’s Ambassador to Ukraine, Natalka Cmoc, aired on the Ambassador’s Off the Record podcast and explains Mriya Aid’s mission and commitment.

One of the most meaningful moments was a three-day visit with women sappers in northern Ukraine. Having left civilian careers in 2022, they told us how training Mriya Aid supported has made them safer and more confident. Kateryna’s story stands out: since 2023, she has completed IMAS EOD Levels 1–3+ and is now training to become an underwater deminer - responding to the growing challenge of clearing mines and explosives from rivers, reservoirs, and critical infrastructure.

“When I returned to Ukraine with my IMAS L3 training, for three days I studied the materials for the Ukrainian sapper-deminer qualifications required to do this work professionally, and I passed those qualification exams immediately. Demining is an area of work that gives me great satisfaction and sense of purpose.”
Kateryna, sapper, State Special Transport Service of Ukraine, May 2025

Veterans and the Future

Mriya Aid also continued efforts to integrate veterans into humanitarian mine action through meaningful employment. In Vancouver, we supported a veterans rehabilitation program and Team Ukraine at the Invictus Games, engaged with Ukraine’s Ministry of Veterans Affairs and Ministry of Interior, and engaged with Prince Harry’s team to encourage him to visit Ukraine to show personal support for veterans - which he did in the summer later that year. We are now working with the Unconquered Foundation and Mines Advisory Group to launch a veteran-focused humanitarian mine action project in 2026.

Looking Ahead

We concluded 2025 with a clear understanding of our role and the work ahead. In 2026, Mriya Aid will continue its commitment to humanitarian demining, training, international standards, and - above all - consistent communication, encouragement, and support for those who carry out this dangerous but essential work every day.

We are deeply grateful to our partners, volunteers, and donors.

Without this shared commitment, the impact of our work for Ukraine and Ukrainians would not be possible.

Thank you for standing with us and for standing united with Ukraine.

Recognizing this need early in the full-scale invasion, Ukraine’s Ministry of Internal Affairs set out to create its own center for specialized sapper training. In 2025, the Government of Japan and the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) joined the effort to help build the demining capability of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. While the initiative takes shape, Mriya Aid responded to an urgent request from the ministry, arranging IMAS EOD training at MAT Kosovo for five experienced lecturers from two of the country’s largest police academies.

Two instructors from the Lviv State University of Internal Affairs and three from the Kyiv Police Academy, Primary Professional Training Centre completed IMAS EOD Levels 1 and 2 in August 2025, and are already teaching their own cadets and officers. All five instructors teach disciplines focused on identifying explosive hazards, securing a safe perimeter for the public, and safely destroying explosive hazards. Each instructor will train roughly 1000 national police cadets each year in identifying and securing UXO threats. The instructors also provide UXO safety information sessions to community leaders and the public at large.

“When we say that mine action training saves lives, it’s no exaggeration. That’s the reality Ukrainians live with,” said Andriy Krasnoshchok, a lecturer at the Lviv State University of Internal Affairs. “My colleagues, friends and former students have been killed by russian ordnance.”

Andriy Krasnoshchok has taught within the Ministry for 25 years, specializing in the identification and neutralization of explosives. He defended a dissertation on police training methodology, and continually updates his courses to match the rapidly evolving realities of war and innovations in explosive threats. During his program at MAT Kosovo, he says the most eye-opening exercise involved moving a live explosive without specialized equipment. “These are situations we actually face. Now I know the reasoning I must pass on to students who may find themselves in that position. The IMAS course provided invaluable exercises for skills, knowledge and experience that are indispensable to our work.”

His Kyiv colleague and 20-year police veteran who has taught for seven years, Andriy Leonenko, found it equally important to learn when and how an officer can safely destroy an explosive device on site.

“A police officer is someone who makes critical decisions, and those decisions affect not only their own life and health, but those around them,” added Volodymyr Moroz, who has taught explosives engineering in Lviv for eight years. “Watching the MAT Kosovo instructors and their decision-making process was crucial. The intensive integration of theory and practice is something I’m already bringing into my own courses.”

“Ukraine faces a level of explosive contamination unseen anywhere else in the world,” notes Lesya Granger, CEO and Chair of Mriya Aid. “Even now russia attacks in real time, dropping sub-munitions and worse on densely populated cities. We were eager to answer the Interior Ministry’s call to help train seasoned instructors.”

Since November 2022, Mriya Aid has trained 285 Ukrainian sappers to International Mine Action Standards at the MAT Kosovo training centre. The organization also represents Canada in the international Demining Capability Coalition, led by Lithuania and Iceland, and has worked with the Ministry of Defence’s Main Directorate of Mine Action as well as the Ministry of Economy’s Demine Ukraine team.

Since Mriya Aid launched its “EOD Train & Equip” program in 2022 for Ukrainian units, the organization has supplied hundreds of Ukrainian state agency deminers and EOD professionals with IMAS EOD training to the highest levels and critical equipment and protective gear. Since 2024, Mriya Aid has also led international advocacy and public education through thought leadership campaigns to accelerate humanitarian demining across Ukraine.

In cities across Ukraine, daily barrages of Russian missiles and Iranian-made drones are leaving residential streets littered with unexploded ordnance. What was once a safe sidewalk can now conceal the shrapnel of a downed drone, cluster munitions that it disbursed, or a live warhead primed to detonate hours after impact.

Ukrainians know not to approach these objects: instead, they call the police. But since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, police officers are no longer just securing the perimeter. Increasingly, they are the first to arrive and to identify and assess the threat and to make critical decisions, sometimes without sufficient training that such responsibility demands.

Police officers are often the first to arrive at the scene of an explosion, drone strike, or missile impact.

“Before the war, we had bomb disposal units for this work. Regular officers weren’t expected to intervene,” explains Vadym Fursa, a 37-year-old officer from the front-line city of Dnipro. “Now, we are first on the scene. And we must act.”

Dnipro is shelled regularly. On some nights, the air raid alarms last six to eight hours. Fursa and his team respond to nearly every strike site, knowing that what lies there might kill them or civilians if any miscalculation or unexpected situation takes place. Trained in law enforcement since age 19, Fursa embodies the archetype of the career officer. As a child, he dreamed of protecting his city. Today, that dream includes understanding the anatomy of a bomb.

Unable to wait for specialized training to catch up with demand, Fursa began educating himself, seeking out courses and reading manuals. His efforts led him to Mriya Aid’s EOD Program, through which he completed IMAS Levels 1, 2 and 3 at MAT Kosovo in 2024.

He wasn’t the first Ukrainian police officer to train there nor the only officer supported by Mriya Aid, but his dedication stood out. After weeks of rigorous training, Fursa graduated as one of two highest-performing students in the centre’s 25-year history.

“The safety of my city depends on the people I train,” he says. Fursa now is a head of the Department of Tactical and Special Training at Dnipro State University of Internal Affairs, where he instructs new police recruits. He has integrated the methods, materials and practical focus learnt at MAT Kosovo into his own curriculum.

“Our training materials are now much better,” he notes. “We’ve emphasized hands-on, scenario-based exercises, just like we did at MAT Kosovo. But there is still enormous demand. We need many more officers trained and certified to international standards.”

Although no official statistics exist on the number of Ukrainian police officers killed by explosive hazards, Fursa says the losses are significant. Many died simply because they lacked the proper knowledge. Mriya Aid hears about such indicents from every NGO, state agency, EOD professional and deminer working in Ukraine. The scale of the threat is staggering since the start of the full-scale invasion. Ukrainian police have disposed over 898,000 explosive devices, according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

Fursa is pragmatic: “The more officers we train, the more lives we save.”

He believes that international standards and training like MAT Kosovo’s cannot be fully replaced by national programs. “There are skills you can only practice at MAT Kosovo, like how to safely neutralize aerial bombs or the remains of cruise missiles in urban environments where transportation is impossible,” he says.

One such skill involves “partial destruction” or the “low order” technique - the controlled elimination of explosives in place, without moving them. “In real conditions, you don’t always have time, tools or opportunity to evacuate a munition. You must make the right call on the spot,” Fursa says. This is especially the case in urban environments, in areas proximate to critical infrastructure, and near buildings that can still be cleared and rendered safe.

At MAT Kosovo, Vadym also learned to handle explosive traps and improvised devices planted by Russian troops in areas frequented by civilians. These are often disguised, delayed, or triggered by movement, magnetic fields, or simple human curiosity. Russian forces use children’s toys, musical instruments, food and pets as lures and traps that explode upon contact.

“The hardest part is that you can never memorize it all. Russia constantly invents new ways to hide explosives, like drones rigged with time-delayed bombs that detonate 20 hours later,” he says.

“It’s not enough to see the threat. You have to recognize it early and stop it in time.”

Vadym Fursa and his colleagues express deep gratitude to Mriya Aid and their donors who made this training possible. The knowledge police officers bring back from MAT Kosovo will be immediately put to use. These skills don’t just make their work safer- they literally save lives.

Please consider donating here for EOD training and equipment for Ukrainian sappers and deminers working in the AFU, the State Special Transport Services, the National Police of Ukraine and emergency services.

Ukraine’s sappers, the engineers tasked with clearing landmines and unexploded ordnance to make way for logistics or to secure liberated territory, are often the first to enter an area, operating in open fields with no cover.

“Sappers are one of the primary targets for FPV-drones, first-person-view models equipped with explosives, flown manually by enemy operators,” says Serhii Bilevych, commander of the engineering and sapper unit at Ukraine’s 8th Training Centre of the State Special Transport Service (SSTS). “They work where no one else can.”

In such hostile conditions, the chance to detect a drone even a few seconds earlier can mean the difference between life and death. That is why Ukrainian sappers use drone detectors, small handheld electronic reconnaissance devices that pick up signals of approaching UAVs long before they become visible or audible to the human ear.

“These detectors give us a chance to react, to stop, to take cover, even to activate electronic countermeasures if we have them nearby,” Bilevych explains. “They are our extra eyes and ears. We don’t see them as gadgets. We see them as life-saving tools.”

Earlier this year, one of his fellow commanders was killed by a Russian FPV drone. “One detector can protect not just a soldier but an entire crew,” he says.

Thanks to donor support, in June Mriya Aid delivered 100 drone detectors called Tsukorok (“Candy”) to frontline AFU sapper teams. The generosity of each donor who contributed to the fundraising campaign that ran from April 28 to late June is being acknowledged by a certificate of appreciation from Mriya Aid.

We want our donors and friends to know that their donations result in actual lives saved, and that this support for Ukrainian sappers is deeply appreciated.

Each life-saving unit costs just over $100 USD - a small sum for the incredible value of protecting lives!

In November 2024, Mriya Aid delivered 80 of these devices to Armed Forces of Ukraine and National Guard sapper teams. In June, we delivered another 100 thanks to our first fundraising campaign, and currently, we’re launching a second campaign to purchase 30 devices for SSTS sapper units. Please help us improve sapper and deminer safety and survivability!

We bought one of the most widely used and affordable models, nicknamed Tsukorok, meaning “Candy” or “Sugar Cube”. It is a compact passive drone detector developed by Dmytro Selin, a Ukrainian IT engineer, who said that when he went to look for available casings while designing the detector, the best option was a small plastic sugar container. Mriya Aid purchased them from a local Ukrainian manufacturer, who we visited in Ukraine earlier this year to discuss key tools that sappers need today.

Originally from Dnipro, Selin began designing the device in his home workshop after Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. Drawing on his background in radio technologies, he built a pocket-sized detector that picks up a range of different UAV signals up to 10 miles away. For over a year, there have constantly been waiting lists to purchase these Tsukoroks. Mriya Aid is lucky to have a local Ukrainian supplier who ensures not only availability, but safe and reliable delivery and distribution.

These drone detection devices are passive - they emit no signal, thereby reducing the risk of detection, and alert users through vibration and a loud beep when a drone is nearby. It is much smaller and easier to use than more complex units - some costing well over $1M. The portable devices capture signals from all types of small drones used by Russians - and are designed to lock onto the changing frequencies of signals Russians program to evade detection or jamming by electronic warfare.

The realities on the ground have become more complex since the “Tsukorok” was invented and mass produced. Russians send hundreds of fibre optic drones each day that don’t emit an electronic signal, but Ukrainians on the frontlines shoot down the fibre optic drones and rely on drone detectors to alert them of the thousands of FPV and other detectable drones sent each day. While the fibre optic drones fly lower to the ground, they typically rely on reconnaissance FPV drones flying at a higher altitude and emitting a signal. Drone detectors warn sappers that they are being observed and that they should take measures against the killer kamikaze drones coming in swiftly soon afterwards.

For sappers, who work in silence and under intense concentration, the pocket drone detection device is reliable and essential.

Today, more than 50,000 Tsukoroks are in use across Ukraine’s frontlines. Their users range from engineers to medics, drivers, and artillery detachments. Sappers and sapper units value them tremendously, as each small and personal or pocket-sized detector is shared by a team and is passed to the next team as sappers are rotated out.

Although our 180 detectors represent less than 1% of the devices at the frontlines, the impact of this support is great: the more sappers and soldiers we save today, the more civilians they can save immediately and in the future by surviving in the field and removing mines and explosive ordnance from the ground.

For sappers, the detectors offer the gift of time - a precious and life-saving commodity in war. When the sky turns quiet and every second counts, that simple beep might be the thing that saves their lives.

Mriya Aid is continuing its fundraising efforts to supply 30 more of these detectors to the sapper units who need them most. If you would like to help, your donation could provide a tool that protects those who risk everything to make Ukraine’s land safe again.

Please visit our website to donate, and join us in supporting Ukraine on LinkedIn, Facebook and X.

Share Mriya Aid

Both expeditions and his book When War Becomes Personal were dedicated to his fallen Ukrainian friends - soldiers with the call signs Alpinist, Finn, The Quiet One, Compass, and Godfather, who died fighting on the front lines.

During a recent visit to Canada, Juris met with a few of us at Mriya Aid to share his experience and learn about our work in Ukraine. His story touched us deeply. We share it here, with his permission.

“When I went to help the Ukrainians, I became a witness.”

Juris was born in New York to Latvian parents who fled Soviet occupation during World War II. He grew up in a diaspora community, constantly hearing about the Latvia his parents lost. "We never really believed it would become free again," he says. "To us kids, it felt like a dream."

But the dream came true. When Latvia regained independence in the early 1990s, Juris was working for Motorola in Chicago. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, he asked to be transferred to Europe, closer to the Baltics. The company agreed. He eventually moved to Riga and in 2005 decided to make Latvia his permanent home. He married, raised a family, became a professor of marketing, and dove into civic life.

Then came 2014 and with it the war in Ukraine. "It woke something within me," he says. In 2016, he traveled to Ukraine as a volunteer, delivering aid to children who had lost parents in the war. That was just the beginning.

“My moral compass says - if my neighbour’s house is on fire, I go and help to put it out.”

When Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022, Juris decided to join the International Legion to support Ukraine in the fight on the frontlines. Although he was turned away for “being too old” and having no combat experience, he didn’t give up. "We share an enemy," he says simply.

In April 2022, Juris traveled to Ukraine with Gundars Kalve, a fellow Latvian known for dismantling part of a Soviet war monument when authorities wouldn’t do so. The pair ended up on the frontline near Izium, one of the most dangerous places in the Kharkiv region. "We were under drone fire. A missile hit the building we had just slept in. We didn’t understand everything the Ukrainians were saying, and that’s when I realized I could help more from behind the lines."

He put his experience and strengths to work: bearing witness, raising awareness, fundraising, and getting supplies to where they were needed.

Juris focused on two front-line units, raising funds and delivering medical kits, drones, night vision goggles, and generators. But when donations slowed down in 2023, Juris did something bold and symbolic: he carried the Ukrainian flag to the top of the world. And 18-months later, he planted this flag of freedom and courage in the snow at the bottom of the Earth.

"These flags are for my fallen friends," he says quietly. "When you know their names, when you’ve looked into their eyes, the war becomes personal."

Today, Juris visits schools, libraries, and diaspora communities, telling the story of Ukraine through the stories of those who defend freedom. He speaks of seeing the photo of his late commander Godfather in Kyiv on a wall of fallen heroes. "I came closer. I bowed my head. And for a second, I could swear there was a tear in his eye."

He does not plan to stop.

“The Ukrainians are doing the hard part. The least we can do is not look away.”

Juris has spent years supporting Ukraine in any way he can. For him, these soldiers are not statistics or strangers. They are brothers. Telling their stories and conveying Ukraine’s struggle to the world challenges the invaders’ lies, evil and criminality.

“In war, thre are no half-tones. There is only an aggressor and a victim who defends their country.”

The Mriya Aid team is deeply honoured to call Juris Ulmanis a friend. His courage, commitment and quiet determination reflect the very spirit of solidarity and connection we work to support. Like us, he stands with Ukrainians - to the end, to Victory.

We are sincerely grateful to the Latvian community in Canada for introducing us to Juris and for generously supporting Mriya Aid’s 2025 Spring Campaign which supplied 100 Armed Forces of Ukraine deminers with anti-drone detection devices that warn them of approaching Russian drones sent to drop deadly munitions on their units. The solidarity and support of good people like Juris. his community, and our donors has a direct impact on saving lives!

Every gesture of solidarity, every story told, and every life saved helps Ukraine survive and keep standing up to the brutality and devastation brought by Russian invasion, occupation and subjugation. Every contribution counts. Mriya Aid is fundraising again for the next batch of life-saving equipment for those defending Ukraine.

“The secret to happiness is freedom… and the secret to freedom is courage.” Juris Ulmanis

“Ukraine will not just be a beneficiary, but a powerful contributor to the security of the Alliance. Ukraine will make NATO stronger.”

Oleksandra Matviichuk, 2022 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate

With this message, Oleksandra Matviichuk opened the international conference "Safeguarding Ukraine’s Future: Security Guarantees and Demining for Recovery and Reconstruction", held in Toronto on May 31, 2025.

The conference brought together over 150 participants - a broad coalition of voices from the diplomatic, political, business, academic, defence and civil society sectors. Ambassadors Kovaliv (UA) and Meilūnas (Lithuania) and their colleagues from other Embassies & Consulates, military leaders including LTG (Ret’d) Ben Hodges, senior public servants and business leaders like Zenon Potichny (Canada-Ukraine Chamber of Commerce), Roman Shimonov (Roshel Inc.), Roman Kachur (World Bank Group) academics and SMEs such as Dr. Alexander Lanoszka and Dr. Balkan Devlen, Canadian and international NGOs & Ukrainian community organizations including the Temerty Foundation, Kathryn E. Langley Hope, the Peterson Literary Fund, Ukrainian Credit Union, BCU Financial and the Canada-Ukraine Foundation, journalists and students joined the conversation, united in their commitment in supporting Ukraine and strengthening transatlantic security.

Mriya Aid was proud to co-organize this successful event with the NATO Association of Canada in partnership with the Canada-Ukraine Chamber of Commerce, the Embassy and Consulate General of Ukraine in Canada, and the Munk School of Global Affairs.

Renowned journalist and best-selling author Diane Francis delivered the keynote speech, reminding participants that Ukraine is not simply a recipient of international aid but a driver of security, innovation, and democratic renewal. Francis was the first Western journalist in Ukraine after independence, launching an English-language newspaper there in the early 1990s. She recognized Ukraine’s potential early on, calling it the “Silicon Valley of the Soviet Union” for its concentration of scientists, engineers, and technological talent.

The first panel of the conference discussed Ukraine’s prospects for NATO membership and explored additional security guarantees as well as increased investment in Ukraine’s defence capabilities. The second panel focused on the important interrelationship of investment, innovation, and security policy.

The third panel, moderated by Mriya Aid’s Lesya Granger (CEO and Chair) highlighted why mine action is essential for Ukraine’s recovery - not after the war, but right now. Links to video recordings for each panel and a link to a longer summary of the conference can be found at the end of this article.

Our demining panel brought together diverse perspectives: Ambassador Egidijus Meilūnas (Lithuania), Yulia Koba (Global Affairs Canada), Alexander Landry (former CAF & NATO), Tymur Pistriuha (Ukrainian Deminers Association), and Markian Kchik (UNOPS).

Speakers stressed that Ukrainians are not just clearing mines - they’re developing new approaches and gaining unsurpassed levels of expertise. From drones to AI-triggered devices, modern explosive threats are changing fast, and Ukraine is adapting in real time. Lesya Granger has shared insights from her recent three-week visit to Ukraine in April–May 2025 with the Mriya Aid team to work alongside national agencies building support and an ecosystem for fast, safe, and scalable demining.

Ambassador Meilūnas spoke about growing international support through the International Demining Capability Coalition, which now includes 23 countries and has already delivered over €473 million in aid. Lithuania alone has contributed more than 1.5 percent of its GDP to support Ukraine. Mriya Aid was invited to partner with the Coalition in October 2024.

Yulia Koba from GAC (Canada’s department of foreign affairs) reaffirmed Canada’s long-term commitment: over 88 million dollars has already been invested in mine action in Ukraine since 2022 - from humanitarian clearance and risk education to frontline equipment and training. Mriya Aid’s projects supporting mine action in Ukraine were acknowledged, as we have organized and provided funding to train over 250 Ukrainian sappers to IMAS in EOD, to equip over 150 of them, to provide 3000 mine identification manuals and almost 200 personal drone detector devices.

Alexander Landry who in 2018 was deployed to Ukraine as an OpUNIFIER Engineer Team Leader to deliver explosive threat awareness training warned that today's mines are smarter, more precise, and harder to detect - but Ukraine is rising to the challenge. Markian Kchik and Tymur Pistriuha who both work on the ground in Ukraine shared how Ukraine has scaled up its certified demining capacity, building a system that includes both state agencies and independent operators.

Our speakers’ message was clear: demining creates conditions for Ukrainians to rebuild their lives, their homes, and their futures.

A key element of the conference was a hands-on exhibit organized by Mriya Aid Director Mark Paine and Med-Eng, a Canadian company and leading global manufacturer of specialized protective equipment and demining tools. Due to the company’s focus on the highest engineering standards, Med-Eng products are known across the globe as the gold standard and top quality EOD gear available.

Participants had the rare opportunity to touch and feel pieces shrapnel of the explosive remnants of war from sites in Ukraine, and to hear directly from Mark Paine about just how complex and dangerous mine clearance is. Mark, our in-house EOD SME with IMAS EOD Level 3 completed, helped participants interpret the shrapnel they were seeing and holding in their hands: sharp, heavy fragments of metal that go flying in all directions at massive speeds when an explosive device detonates either in the field or above Ukrainian cities. Holding the shrapnel in your hands really brings home the devastating injuries and death that mines and munitions cause.

At Mriya Aid, we remain committed to supporting Ukraine’s brave deminers - to people clearing paths to safety, recovery, and peace. We continue to seek every opportunity to raise funds and advocate for the needs of Ukraine’s defenders who risk their lives every day to protect others - especially sappers with whom we work each day and who work to make Ukraine safe today and for generations to come.

Thank you for standing with them and with us. Your trust, generosity, and engagement power everything we do!

Together, we’re helping Ukraine to not only survive, but to rebuild stronger than ever.

In the coming weeks, we will share with our supporters the excellent news that, thanks to your generosity, in May we’ve supplied 100 Armed Forces of Ukraine frontline sappers and soldiers with personal drone detectors that save their lives. We are currently raising funds for the next batch of 100 of these life-saving detectors!

Panel 1: Securing the Foundation: NATO Membership and Intermediary Security Guarantees

Panel 2: Security Guarantees in Aciton: What Strong Security Agreements Means For Business in Ukraine and Canadian Investors

Panel 3: Securing the Ground: Demining Ukraine for Recovery and Reconstruction

Full report on Safeguarding Ukraine’s Future: Security Guarantees & Demining for Ukraine’s Recovery and Reconstruction: https://natoassociation.ca/safeguarding-ukraines-future-security-guarantees-demining-for-ukraines-recovery-reconstruction-conference/

Tragically, on May 6, 2025, Chris Garrett was killed by a Russian mine while doing what he had always done - working to help others. Just weeks earlier, a Russian court had sentenced him in absentia to 14.5 years in prison - a hollow and absurd attempt to criminalize a man whose only crime was saving lives.

Having worked in explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) in Ukraine for over a decade, Chris was a rare source of knowledge and dedication. He generously shared his time, know-how, and field-tested methods with Ukrainian defenders and first responders to help them survive the life-threatening tasks in clearing mines, disposing ordnance, and dealing with the brutal realities of russian aggression against Ukraine.

Chris first came to Ukraine in 2014. By that time, he had already gained hands-on experience working in Myanmar, where he helped communities to clear landmines along the country’s volatile southern border. In Ukraine, he operated in front-line areas like Mariupol, Shyrokyne, and Pisky until 2018. When Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022, Chris returned - arriving on February 27, just days after the first missiles struck, and staying to help where he was needed most.

Since 2022, Chris worked side by side with Ukraine’s Military, Police and Emergency Services. His training complemented the training that state agencies provided during the war to new soldiers and sappers. Chris also worked with Ukrainian specialists on detecting and neutralizing improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and navigating complex, heavily mined and contaminated terrain. Through his guidance and training, Chris Garrett helped equip hundreds of Ukrainian sappers with life-saving knowledge. Chris’s contribution was transformational. It is estimated that his teams of volunteer EOD technicians have removed hundreds of thousands of munitions and unexploded items from Ukrainian soil, saving thousands of potential future victims.

Chris did it all as a volunteer, without compensation. In July 2023, Chris and his partner, paramedic Courtney Pollock, co-founded Prevail Together - a humanitarian organization dedicated to:

• mine clearance for civilian use, including critical infrastructure;

• training to enhance the skills of local personnel and capacity building for local authorities;

• casualty evacuations and frontline medical care; and

• providing humanitarian aid and technical support to Ukrainian units.

Chris never limited himself to a job description. When missiles rained down on Ukrainian cities, he and his team rushed in to help. Recently, while operating near Kharkiv, they responded to a drone strike that set a building ablaze. As Chris later wrote, they arrived at the scene only to find themselves caught in a second strike - a deliberate Russian “double tap” intended to kill first responders:

“We were only 30 meters from the building when the second drone hit. If it had landed a few meters to the north, the outcome would have been very different. But when someone needs help - we show up.”

That spirit defined Chris. He lived by a simple but powerful code - selfless dedication to saving lives and countering brutal and senseless aggression.

Although we never had the chance to work more directly with Chris, we at Mriya Aid are grateful for his heroic contribution to Ukraine and to humanity. If more people gave just a fraction of what Chris gave to Ukraine, there would be less suffering in this world. Everyone who worked with Chris felt this, and for this reason, he was so widely loved and respected.

Chris is gone, but his impact will never be forgotten.

Printed on her bullet proof vest are the words “Broniuyemo Ukrainske” which means, “Protecting what is Ukrainian”. The Ukrainian phrase, however, conjugates as “we” (though omitting the pronoun), conveying the meaning of “protecting Ukraine together”.

Protecting Ukraine together is the common goal and joint commitment of the men and women, both military and civilian, working for the defence of Ukraine, as well as those across the globe working to support them.

Olha of Kyiv in this bullet proof vest is an apt symbol of Ukraine today: a resourceful and strong nation defending its sovereignty, identity, and future in the face of aggression of a barbaric and lawless neighbour. Protecting Ukraine, all things Ukrainian, and those defending Ukraine in the line of duty and in the line of fire is a noble but difficult mission.

The brave men and women removing mines and unexploded ordnance near the front lines and farther back where demining machines or robots cannot reach or go also need to be protected. Individual sappers who work near the frontlines are targeted by Russian drones carrying grenades and other munitions.

Demining teams and NGOs working in Ukraine have also been targeted, such as the FSD (Fondation Suisse de Déminage) that was deliberately bombed by Russia in Kharkiv last July, and more recently, a group of State Special Transport Services (SSTS) sappers killed in a Russian terrorist attack that targeted men and women in uniform. In that attack Vadym Yeliseev, who was supported by Mriya Aid to train to IMAS EOD Level 3, died along with two colleagues. Their friends, colleagues and supporters mourn and continue protecting Ukraine as Russia continues its aggression.

Russian forces work to injure or kill Ukrainian humanitarian deminers and sappers (military deminers) to prevent Ukrainian progress in liberating territories and to undermine safety and stability for all Ukrainians.

We cannot stop larger or more complex Russian attacks like those that killed Vadym and those that targeted FSD’s offices, but we can help prevent sapper deaths on the frontlines, inlcuding deaths caused by enemy drones targeting individual deminers.

To help protect sappers and deminers, since 2022 Mriya Aid has worked to:

• provide IMAS training with rigorous individual and team safety protocols;

• train and certify Ukrainians to the highest levels for team management;

• make accessible tools that help deminers identify the increasingly wide variety of mines and UXO being found in Ukraine;

• provide PPE, metal detectors, toolkits and other equipment for safe operations.

Mriya Aid has provided over 220 Ukrainians with life-saving IMAS training and has equipped over 200 sappers and deminers with life-saving tools.

Mriya Aid is currently fundraising to protect Ukrainian sappers’ lives with:

• Personal drone detection devices for sappers that warn deminers of small, munition-carrying Russian drones sent to injure or kill them.

• “Miny” - a mine and UXO identification manual that Ukrainian sappers and deminers say helps them tremendously as they clear and dispose of mines & UXO.

Please visit our website to donate to this important campaign.

Please donate any amount you can. Every $100 buys a kit consisting of a personal drone detection device and a mine identification manual.

So far, we’ve raised $2500 for 25 kits!
We hope to raise $25 000 to equip 250 Ukrainian sappers.

How is it that we, thousands of kilometers away from the front line, are able to save the lives of injured Ukrainian soldiers?

The answer to this question is both complicated and simple. When a soldier sustains a severe injury, there is a limited window to get them to a military hospital. This time is referred to as the "golden hour" because, if a high-quality tourniquet is applied to stop the bleeding, it significantly increases the chances of survival and it can sometimes save an injured limb as well. A tourniquet is used to wrap tightly around a limb to prevent the critically injured person from bleeding to death while they are transported to a hospital.

To save lives and increase survivability of Ukrainian soldiers, since 2022 Mriya Aid has provided over 6,000 US-manufactured CAT Gen 7 Tourniquets to multiple Ukrainian military units and medics. 

Generation 7 Combat Application Tourniquets (CAT) are the gold standard across the world, the official tourniquet of the US Army, and regularly procured by other NATO defence forces, including the Canadian Armed Forces. According to the US Army’s Institute of Surgical Research, CAT 7s are the only tourniquets in the world to be proven 100% effective in occluding blood flow in both upper and lower extremities. 

The CAT 7 one-handed design enables it to be self-applied by the injured individual, and it has visual clues to help guide the user when they are in shock or in distress. Adopted by military and emergency services around the world, the CAT Gen 7 is most requested by Ukrainians on the front lines.

Without reliable, high quality tourniquets, the injured die needlessly. Cheap, poorly made or self-made make-shift tourniquets result in nerve and soft tissue damage, and expedite death, rather than buy time and prevent death and further injury. Too often, poorly quality tourniquets break apart during application or simply can’t be tightened to do the job they’re designed to do, causing the patient to bleed to death while being stabilized and transported to an operating room. 

In Ukraine, the Mriya Aid team was shown a collection of poor quality or self-made tourniquets that are, unfortunately, found in abundance in Ukraine.

This week 1700 CAT 7s purchased and shipped by Mriya Aid arrived in Ukraine.  One thousand of these went to Initiative E+ or distribution to the front. We chose this partner because they have supplied the frontline military since 2014, and this organization was the first to start publicly fighting against poor tourniquets in 2022. They have made a significant difference on the front and we’re proud to be working with them.

We also sent 700 of these CATs to our longtime partnering organization Help Ukraine 22 Operation Palyanytsya, who distributed them today to the State Emergency Services of Ukraine and to a number of Armed Forces of Ukraine units.

Since July 2022, Mriya Aid has sent 6370 tourniquets to Ukraine. That translates to approximately a thousand tourniquets every 6 months - but we can do better. 

To answer the plea of Ukrainians on the front and to increase their survivability, Mriya Aid continues to send the safest and most reliable tourniquets, the very best, the top-quality worldwide and the golden standard, CATs Generation 7. 

As Ukrainians defend human life, we work to save their lives and preserve their limbs and health with quality tourniquets, and with everything else that saves lives. 

Join us in this critical mission!

This week in Canada, we honoured all the brave men and women who faithfully served and defended our fundamental rights and freedoms. Our friends across the globe also commemorated fallen soldiers this week. 

At Mriya Aid we also honour, remember and take action to support the men and women bravely defending freedom, values, and Ukraine’s right to exist as a sovereign nation, and dying today so that others may live freely and in safety.

Read more: On September 3rd, russia struck a large educational institution in Poltava. Many of the injured there died because of a lack of quality tourniquets. Ihor Tkachov, a medic with the Hospitalliers wrote about this problem in Ukrainska Pravda.

We will share the results of these visits in this and subsequent Substack articles. As has always been done in the past at Mriya Aid, individual private donor funds collected through our website were not used to pay for these visits. The Mriya Aid team will continue to work to find resources to train Ukrainian sappers and mine action professionals to the highest standards. To help you support this training, we’ll be sharing their stories with you.

Since 2022, Mriya Aid has organized and found funding to train deminers and sappers from the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the Special State Transport Service, the National Guard of Ukraine, the State Emergency Services of Ukraine, and the National Police of Ukraine. This training is a game changer, as it significantly improves professional skills, instils protocols for various contingencies, and provides graduates with the competence and self-confidence needed to work safely and efficiently in the field.

Last week a fifth group of Ukrainian defence personnel completed their 5-week training course in International Mine Action Standards (IMAS) in explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) at MAT Kosovo, bringing the total number of Ukrainians trained in Mriya Aid's 2024 EOD program to 138.  

The international gold standard of certification in humanitarian demining, IMAS ensures consistent practices for safety and efficiency in mine action across contexts. 

Nine Ukrainian sappers funded by Mriya Aid returned to Ukraine last week with 15 other Ukrainian demining professionals for deployment across Ukraine to safely and securely locate and remove unexploded ordnance from infrastructure, buildings, fields, forests and communities. This is the fifth group this year whose IMAS training and certification at MAT Kosovo was organized and paid for by Mriya Aid. They were preceded by 46 Ukrainian sappers who graduated in mid-September, 33 who completed the program in July, with another 31 graduates in May and 19 in April. 

This last group of nine completed IMAS Level 3 certification. The previous four groups trained in 2024 completed IMAS EOD Level 2 training and certification. 

Certification to IMAS Level 2 provides the knowledge and skills needed to identify, mark and help transport munitions together with a team of deminers. Level 3 provides graduates with the ability to work safely with a greater range of explosive remnants of war, and to work as an EOD team leader and site supervisor. 

In total, 138 personnel from the Armed Forces of Ukraine and state services working in EOD completed Mriya Aid's 2024 IMAS demining certification program.  Of these graduates, 11 are women. The support and close cooperation of the Main Department of Mine Action, Civilian Protection and Environmental Safety of the National Mine Action Authority of the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine was indispensable to this demining train and equip program. 

“We work to make sure that Ukrainian mine action professionals come home to their families alive and without injury at the end of each work day or at the end of their deployment,” said Mriya Aid Chair Lesya Granger. 

The IMAS-compliant bespoke training courses are developed and delivered by Praedium Consulting Malta, a key player in providing humanitarian mine action and EOD training to deminers across the globe since 1999, and most recently, close to four hundred Ukrainians.  

The 2024 EOD program is the largest humanitarian mine action training program organized by Mriya Aid in the last three years. As part of this train and equip program, Ukrainian graduates who successfully completed the courses and passed the IMAS EOD Level 2 certification assessments and examinations are being equipped with demining PPE, detectors, toolkits, tripwire illuminators and other specialized gear for demining operations to be performed across Ukraine. Over half of the equipment was sourced locally in Ukraine. 

Recent estimates suggest that 10,000 deminers working for at least one decade are needed to release over 139,000 sq kms of land across Ukraine, which is potentially contaminated by explosives threats, with 6 million civilians at risk or unable to return to their homes. Drones, AI, and mechanical means can quickly survey larger tracts and confirm the absence of contamination. However, the remainder has to be cleared, most often by slow, methodical manual means. 

There is a world-wide shortage of certified mine action professionals with both military and humanitarian demining expertise. Since 2022, close to 400 Ukrainian men and women have been trained and certified at MAT Kosovo, with a significant portion of these being trained through Mriya Aid's EOD program.

Along with other areas of aid to Ukraine, Mriya Aid  advocates, finds funding, and implements mine action and humanitarian demining training programs to the highest levels of IMAS standards for Ukrainian men and women demining professionals.

Watch for our updated website in early November!

For the time being, here is our original website https://www.mriyaaid.ca/

In order to tackle these difficulties, we connect with others both in Ukraine and across the globe doing this important work. Connecting with others helps to share best practices and build up networks of support. 

Our outreach and work with trusted individuals and organisations is a real blessing for which we are truly grateful individually and as a team.   

Those of you who know our board members personally or work with us on a regular basis, know that Mriya Aid consists of a Board of Directors and a circle of volunteers in Canada and Ukraine working to provide Ukrainian defenders with non-lethal aid and training in humanitarian demining and explosive ordnance disposal (EOD). Although Mriya Aid governance, project planning, and activities are run out of Ottawa, Canada, we’re privileged and honoured to work together with Ukrainians and diverse supporters of Ukraine from around the world. 

Mriya Aid volunteers on the ground in Ukraine use the contacts that they’ve built up over the past decades to help us get training and equipment to Ukrainian defenders and frontline workers. In 2023, our team in Canada set a goal to streamline and solidify our global networks of partners. Since May 2023, we have engaged in an “outreach and advocacy for Ukraine” campaign without expending a single dollar of donated funds.  

We will continue to update you about our aid to Ukraine. 

This year, we’ll also tell you about some of the incredible individuals and organisations we work with. 

Today, we’ll tell you about one of them. 

As part of our outreach and advocacy work, a few of us from the Mriya Aid Board of Directors - Lesya, Lubomyr, and Mark - had the pleasure and privilege of giving a number of talks to the student community at the University of Oxford - and of meeting up with some pretty great people in London! (Note: Absolutely no Mriya Aid funds were used for this trip). In both cities, we met our dear friends, alumni of the Canada-Ukraine Parliamentary Program, and we made new friends in the Oxford University Ukrainian Society and at a UK-based NGO working in the sphere of humanitarian demining.    

Interacting face to face with dynamic, like-minded people brings so many benefits for volunteers supporting Ukraine! Each meeting is a re-affirmation of support and encouragement of one another to stay strong to continue supporting Ukraine’s existential challenge and its historic chance to tear itself away from the oppression of the russian empire and the encroachment of the vacuous “russkyy mir”. For many of us, keeping connected motivates one to focus on the task at hand to uphold defence, justice, and recovery for a free, open, inclusive, and prosperous Ukraine. 

Due to Mriya Aid’s focused work on supporting Ukrainian defenders and frontline workers, we have made very few public appearances and we’ve only given a handful of interviews since 2022. We vowed to start speaking more publicly in 2024 about what we do and about the need for the world to increase support for Ukraine. At the University of Oxford, we participated in two panel discussions and a podcast recording, and we met with students from the school of Public Policy, Diplomatic Studies, and Strategic Studies, as well as members of the wider community to discuss Mriya Aid and issues affecting Western volunteer-based NGOs providing humanitarian and non-lethal military aid to Ukraine.

You can listen to the podcast here.

Our podcast host Erik Kucherenko, a policy and legal adviser to a member of the Parliament of Ukraine and an adviser to the Ukrainian delegation to the Inter-Parliamentary Union, is currently completing his Masters in Public Policy at Oxford. 

Erik is a remarkable person - not only has he contributed to the Ukrainian Parliament's work within the Council of Europe and completed internships with members of the European Parliament and the Parliament of Canada, he works towards fulfilling his ambition to maximise his contribution to Ukraine's recovery through his hard work and activism to become a member of the Parliament of Ukraine. With numerous published articles, last spring Erik provided Ukrainian Canadians with his perspective during his time at the Canada-Ukraine Parliamentary Program. 

Stay tuned to find out about other dedicated and remarkable supporters of Ukraine we work with across the globe. Visiting and connecting provided us all with an opportunity to share experiences, best practices and words of encouragement and support.

Meaningful connections help each of us across the globe draw the strength needed to work to support Ukraine.

By adding outreach and research, grant writing, awareness raising and advocacy for Ukraine to the work we do, we’re able to work innovatively and outside of the boundaries of our pre-war lives and regular jobs with diverse and other like-minded people supporting Ukraine. 

It is an honour and deepening relationships and connections to support Ukraine is the most precious reward we could ask for.

Let us all, across the globe, commit to double down our efforts. Stronger together. 

Разом до Перемоги! Together for a victorious and strong Ukraine!  

For further information about Mriya Aid or to donate, visit www.mriyaaid.ca and sign up for our newsletter about Ukrainian courage, valour, and ingenuity at news.mriyaaid.ca

A web search will show various organisations called “Mriya” - but there is only one “Mriya Aid”! Our supporters know that MriyaAid.ca is our only domain and website.

We are witnessing one of moscow’s long string of imperialist campaigns of genocide unleashed to subjugate Ukraine and its people to moscovy’s will and to eradicate those who do not submit willingly. Moscovia also invaded and subjugated many other nations and peoples over the centuries and even after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, but Ukrainians were particularly unfortunate in terms of their geographical proximity, in the richness of their resources, and in their history that was so attractive to russian imperialist appropriation and their search for an origin myth. It is not the Ukrainian people who are confused about their identity, but rather the russians who are desperate to eradicate Ukraine’s rich and vibrant history, and can’t admit that there’s something seriously wrong with attacking, pillaging, oppressing, and murdering their neighbours. 

To see this happening again in the 21st century is shocking no matter how well we know history and no matter how familiar we are with the brutal russian “sylovyk” (“strongman” might-is-right) culture. It is a long standing, oppressive, brutal, bloody history and culture based on the glorification of a czar and an ingrained belief in moscovian cultural superiority and the right to political supremacy over other nations and peoples. 

How many tens of thousands of Ukraine’s best and brightest have been murdered by russia these past two years? These past 10 years? Throughout the 20th century? For three centuries before that? 

How many of them could have been saved if each one of us did more when russia levelled Georgian and Chechen cities and went on to do the same to Mariupol, Bucha, Irpen and other cities and towns in Ukraine? If our governments acted faster in 2022 and 2023, more decisively, more robustly? 

Has each one of us contributed constructively and consistently to Ukrainian Victory? Hopefully we can answer “yes” and commit to doing more. 

Together we can make a difference. It is never too late and our united efforts will and are making a difference! 

1

Our “Mriya” (hopeful dream) of a Victory for Ukraine, for democracy and for freedom is possible. In February 2022, we named our NGO Mriya Aid to reflect this2.

Almost two years ago when russia destroyed the Mriya, Ukraine’s Antonov 225 aircraft that delivered humanitarian aid to those in need around the world, Dmytro Kuleba wrote that “Russia may have destroyed our “Mriya”. But they will never be able to destroy our dream of a strong, free and democratic European state. We shall prevail!” 

This morning, our team was greeted by an encouraging note from a friend and supporter, Mr. Alexander Tkachenko, who worked in Hostomel together with his father, a test pilot who had worked there his entire life. He wrote: 

Good morning!

Today, on February 24, 2024, as we Ukrainians mark the tragic second anniversary of a war that has tested our resilience and unity, a symbolic event took place in Hostomel. It was here, amidst the fierce battlegrounds where Ukrainian bravery stood tall against overwhelming russian forces on that fateful first day of the war, that the echoes of history reverberated. Once graced by Mryia's wings, this very sky now serves as a poignant reminder of the tragic days of war and sacrifices made to defend freedom.

Amidst the occasion's sincerity, a beacon of solid support emerged. Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau's presence amongst top representatives of different countries, his impassioned words echoing through the air over the airfield, stirred something profound within our hearts. His visit to Hostomel, his tribute to the courage of the Ukrainian people, is a testament to the enduring spirit of solidarity that transcends borders.

In this moment of reflection, as we honour the past and look towards the future, the significance of your mission with Mryia Aid resonates more deeply than ever. It's a symbol of compassion and support for those whose lives have been forever altered by the ravages of war.

Together, we can make a difference.

With gratitude and hope,

Alexander Tkachenko

PS: My father, a test pilot, wrote the book “Крылья Антонова” in memory of Oleg Antonov. It chronicles the history of the Antonov Test Base in Hostomel, including details about the aircraft, maiden flights, pilots, staff, and our losses during flight testing. The book is in russian, and I am seeking assistance to translate it into English and Ukrainian and publishing the translated book. If you know someone who can help, please let me know. 

The Ukrainian Mriya and the Ukrainian spirit will not be broken. 

With a great respect to each Defender on the front and to all of the good people in Ukraine and across the globe supporting those brave men and women, Mriya Aid salutes the good work that you are doing. 

Our resolve is undeterred. Слава Україні! Разом до Перемоги!

• defenders and soldiers on the Ukrainian front lines and in the rear;

• military and civilian deminers training in mine action standards and working to clear Ukrainian land of mines, unexploded munitions and ordnance;

• volunteers supporting the defenders and builders of Ukraine and democracy;

• our partners from NGOs and other contexts in Ukraine and across the world; and

• advocates for Ukraine across the globe.

Not a day goes by where we don’t speak to, coordinate with, deliver aid and support through direct interactions and personal connections with the individuals and organizations we work with for Ukrainian Victory.

At the same time, we’re keenly aware that, in the latter part of 2023, we’ve not been able to connect with our donors and our supporters as much as we’d have liked to.

In the past few months, our work has evolved into a focus on two main lines of effort in which we’ve developed a solid competency in fundraising, procuring, and delivering:

1. Shipments of Medical and Humanitarian Aid, most being in-kind contributions with shipment costs financed by donations made through our website. Financial donations were also spent on purchasing the best quality Combat Application Tourniquets (CAT Gen 7) and demining & defence support equipment.

2. Training and certification to International Mines Action Standards (IMAS) of Ukrainian men & women from the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the National Guard of Ukraine, the Special State Transport Services, the Emergency State Services of Ukraine, and others working to clear and render safe Ukrainian land. The $400,000 spent on this program so far, including Train the Trainer courses, is thanks to our donors & our online fundraiser. Those funds, combined with 1000s of our volunteer hours have resulted in 85 Ukrainians trained to IMAS Level 3, the highest explosive ordnance disposal training available for best practices and the most impactful results in the field.   

There is much to communicate to you, our donors and supporters, and there is much to thank you for! In the coming weeks and months, we hope to catch up on our communications to keep you updated and engaged with our work for and in Ukraine.

Today we wish you and your loved ones a joyful holiday season, a happy Christmas, Веселих Cвят - courage, strength, good health, good tidings and strength to keep up the fight for Ukraine, democratic values, humanity, and Victory over autocracy, expansionism, disinformation, deceit and all of the losses and horrors of war.

With your support and encouragement, we’ll keep fighting the good fight and helping those brave defenders of everything we collectively hold dear and need to protect. 

“Боріться - поборете!” Тарас Шевченко
“Fight – and you shall prevail!” Taras Shevchenko

“You will never get things perfect in a crisis, but the risks of inaction can be far greater.” Melanie Lake, July 15, 2023

In her “Dispatch From a Wartime Ambassador'' dated December 12, 2022, Larisa Galadza, Ambassador of Canada to Ukraine, wrote, “We know that the sole purpose of Russia’s disinformation is to create chaos, and to think that the truth is unknowable”. Working across contexts and platforms in the West - from mainstream news sources to social media - agents of Russian disinformation aim to disrupt Western support for Ukraine by eroding trust in organizations that help Ukraine.

Like many organizations supporting Ukraine, we at Mriya Aid have had the full gamut of harassment and abuse hurled at us, and we’ve done our best to respond appropriately.

●     Like many Canadians and colleagues around the world, we celebrated when a few of our board members were added by the Kremlin to their sanctions list! 

●     We were dismayed that a large Canadian media outlet fell victim to Russian influence and became a tool of the Kremlin, twisting and manipulating the truth, feeding into Russian disinformation, and amplifying the despicable defamation and harassment against our Ukrainian and Canadian volunteers.

●     We banded together to support those among us who were slandered across platforms - from Russian disinformation cloaked in the mantle of mainstream journalism to unrelenting social media character assassinations and threats sent to our emails. 

●     We were flabbergasted when a malicious individual purchased costly Google Ads to direct online traffic to a series of defamatory articles that attacked Mriya Aid (the ads were hastily removed from the internet when the appropriate authorities were contacted!)

We must be doing something right to draw the ire of such bad actors!

We spoke the truth, we supported one another, we reached out to our many partners, and we doubled down on our work supporting Ukraine. We did not allow them to divide, conquer, and destroy us and the aid we provide to Ukraine.

Mriya Aid co-founder Melanie Lake recently said that, “Doing nothing in the face of injustice is easy. Doing something is hard - emotional, painful, exhausting & filled with risk. There will always be those who wish to make the price of trying to help exceptionally high, but this powerful idea is important: ‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing’ ”. Melanie was speaking generally, but her words came from firsthand experience.

Through her professionalism, integrity, empathy, and strong leadership skills, Melanie Lake has earned a great level of respect and credibility in Canada, Ukraine, and across the world. When Ursula Von Der Leyen, President of the European Commission, addressed the Canadian Parliament on March 7, 2023, she turned to Melanie Lake’s words for inspiration “Let me quote Lieutenant-Colonel Melanie Lake of the Canadian Armed Forces, who led Operation UNIFIER. She said: ‘Ukrainian women did not wait for doors to be open for them to serve in all capacities. They broke the doors down.' These women also smashed a glass ceiling, right over the head of the Russian invaders.”

The Russian agents lost no time in retaliating for Melanie’s good work in Ukraine. The Kremlin placed her on their sanctions lists and published her personal information in their “Foreign Combatants” blacklist, and then provoked a full-scale campaign of slander and harassment against her across multiple platforms and contexts. Melanie Lake’s photo was published alongside claims of mismanagement and wrongdoing. These were attacks on Lt Col Melanie Lake - a woman leader and supporter of Ukraine who is very much in the public eye - but also attacks on those helping Ukraine, including Mriya Aid, the organization that Melanie co-founded in 2022, and through which she worked selflessly to channel significant amounts of impactful aid to the the Ukrainian front.

Mriya Aid is one of many organizations around the world that provides support to the Ukrainian front. To date, Mriya Aid has sent over 6M$ to Ukraine. As a Not-for-Profit organization with no salaries or overhead, the five members of the Board of Directors also manage the day to day operations on a volunteer basis with a handful of like-minded core team volunteers. Mriya Aid directs donor funds to the needs of over 40 units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the State Emergency Service of Ukraine, and to others on the frontlines.

In the first year of operations, we experienced a few minor unexpected situations and setbacks common to NGOs. It was a year fraught with additional complexities due to the urgent, challenging, and evolving situation of Russia’s genocidal war against Ukrainians. Communicating with units on the front lines isn’t always easy during a war, but we developed processes and protocols to take the time to hear the needs of the units directly, to work with them to ensure their safety, and to share lessons learned and best practices with stakeholders and partners.

Some projects are ongoing and take months of working with units to tweak and improve, while others are quick with almost immediate impact, such as getting the golden standard of military-grade tactical medical and non-lethal tactical equipment into the hands of those on the front - like the 4000 Gen 7 CAT tourniquets we’ve already delivered and 1000 more currently in the works.

This summer, the Mriya Aid team provided:

●     Numerous specialized electronic devices of the Defence Intelligence of Ukraine.

●     Several pieces of non-lethal technical equipment for a sniper training centre working with civilians and Territorial Defence Forces.

●     1000 military-grade tourniquets purchased and being delivered to the frontline.

●     A large sea container of medical aid and equipment for frontline hospitals and clinics.

●     Train the Trainer demining instructor training and certification for 12 personnel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the State Emergency Services of Ukraine.

The demining training was requested of Mriya Aid directly by the Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, General Valerii Zaluzhnyi.

●     Over the winter and spring Mriya Aid Funded the training and international standards certification in explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) for 22 Ukrainian men and women.

●     Mriya Aid is currently funding 12 to become international standards EOD trainers.

●     The organization continues to fundraise to send hundreds of Ukrainians to be trained in international demining standards and to provide demining equipment to those heroes who save Ukrainian lives, limbs, and livelihoods.

For further information about Mriya Aid or to donate, visit www.mriyaaid.ca and sign up for our newsletter about Ukrainian courage, valour, and ingenuity at news.mriyaaid.ca

Слава Україні! Героям Слава!

Разом до Перемоги!

Yours in service,

Mriya Aid Board of Directors

The last three months have been very difficult for us at Mriya Aid. Our hard working volunteers and the good name of our organization have been targeted by bullies and detractors, including individuals known to the authorities as agents of Russian disinformation. For months now, these individuals and groups have not relented in their work and efforts to undermine Mriya Aid and to divert our attention from our efforts to help Ukraine. They have caused us grief but have not broken us, as they set out to do. Haters gonna hate1 but we’ll keep fighting the good fight!

We stand strong and we stand united - with each other, with our partners, and most importantly, with Ukraine. We have resolve, we have a backbone, we have motivation, and we have wonderfully committed people on our team!

To protect the well-being of our volunteers and our ability to provide aid , we retreated to the supportive spaces of our volunteer circles where we focused 100% of our energy on our aid projects and on partnership development. Here is what we’ve been up to during this period of time away from our usual public presence.

• 1000 CAT tourniquets delivered to several frontline units - US$ 27K

• 10 mine detectors for humanitarian demining - US$ 24K

• 1000 CAT tourniquets to Hosptiallers Medical Battalion - US$ 26K

• Drone Program - equipment, operator and pilot training - US$ 600K

• Drone detection system - US$ 25K

• 6 battlefield radios and equipment to complement our drone program - US$ 6K

• Delete Mines, Save Lives campaign - Phase 1: Train 6 trainers - US$ 30K

• Medical and surgical equipment : sea container #7 arrived in Ukraine US$ 100K and sea container #8 is about to leave Canada US$ 200K

• Reaching out to past, current and future partners to share best practices and to continue to plan together for 2023, as the realites on the ground evolve.

Please know that every small donation helps.

The 1M$ of aid we’ve delivered over the last few months might make us doubt the impact of our modest, individual contributions. But the 1M$ is in fact a testament to the great impact that each one of us makes when we work together toward the great goal of Ukrainian Victory over the death, genocide, and suffering that Russia continues to unleash on civilians across Ukraine.

Check out our new fundraising campaign Delete Mines, Save Lives aiming to raise 30K$ to certify 6 Armed Forces of Ukraine personnel as demining trainers by summer, enabling them to train hundreds more in life-saving mine removal.

Let's make Ukraine a safer place for everyone!

We are so very grateful and humbled by our donors and partners who make it possible for us to continue to work with and across frontline units of Ukraine’s Armed Forces. We stay in touch with these units and we learn from them through co-creation and collaborative innovation.

Our equipment, gear and aid is hand delivered to our partners and end users by a network of trusted Mriya Aid volunteers and partnering organizations. A few bad experiences in the early months of the 2022 full-scale invasion have helped us grow and develop practices and processes for optimal quality, delivery, and security. Remaining united and unified helps us avoid pitfalls, act with certainty, and optimize our efforts and resources.

Respect. Partnerships. Perseverance. Unity.

We take our volunteer work very seriously because it is done on behalf of our donors, with the help of our partners, and for the good of the men and women who put their lives at risk everyday to withstand, counter, deter and defeat Russia’s onslaught of aggression against Ukraine.

Mriya Aid’s work is impactful, and it is through your ongoing support that together we can make this difference. Watch this space over the coming weeks as we launch new initiatives in partnership with the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Mriya Aid continues to be 100% volunteer-run. To keep costs down, no one in the organization receives a salary or benefits, we do not have offices or other overhead, and we remain a registered Not-for-Profit. On one hand, being a Not-for-Profit means that we cannot provide our donors with tax receipts, but on the other hand, our donors know that 100% of their donations goes to equip and train Ukrainian soldiers, sappers (deminers), and medics on the front. Mriya Aid volunteers contribute their own financial resources to ensure that projects we promise to our beneficiaries get delivered and put into action!

You can donate directly to Mriya Aid here & subscribe here to or share this article:

Share

Visit us on Twitter https://twitter.com/MriyaAid

Visit our friends @MriyaReport for great discussions #Live about #Ukraine. Listen in, come speak. Share your thoughts or ask a question. 24/7 #MriyaReport is there!

Thanks for reading Mriya Aid! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Subscribe now

Today we remember the innumerable losses and heart wrenching suffering Ukrainians have had to endure this past year and the hell they are living today. Now is the time for us to double down on our support of Ukraine and to continue to work with Ukrainians towards a speedy victory.

Actions speak louder than words:

The Ukrainian equivalent of Less talk, more action is Більше діла — менше слів (“More action - fewer words”) ring true on the battlefield and in aid spaces where training and laying the groundwork for what matters most allows Ukraine’s defenders, and everyone supporting them, to act quickly, decisively, and effectively.

Action is leadership: words matter but action leads. In this way, Ukraine leads by example with a steely determination to defend and to defeat its enemy. Mriya Aid encourages its volunteers to embrace leadership and to choose action. The lessons we have learned over this past year were derived from thoughtful, considered and decisive actions. Sharing lessons learned and best practices with a wider network of aid organizations has optimized and significantly increased our impact, developed stronger and more positive relationships, and boosted our motivation.

Taking action often involves risks, but the greatest risk is to do nothing. It would be impossible for Ukrainians to resist and to defend without risk. It would be impossible to do the aid work we do without overcoming obstacles which stand in our path or those that are deliberately thrown into it. When we receive words of thanks from the units on the frontlines that we help, or from supporters and volunteers, we know that the benefits of our actions clearly outweigh the risks & the discomfort that come with them. We will persevere just as all Ukrainians are persevering against their occupiers. 

While the world has soundly denounced Russia and its continual efforts to promulgate and magnify its disinformation efforts, Russia continues in its nonsensical campaign of reinventing history. Centuries of Moscovy distortions and lies have been challenged and soundly discredited in many debates and articles. The pen may be mightier than the sword, but actions speak louder than words, and the international aid community synergy and calls to action allow us as concerned individuals to raise our heads and our voices to say, “We stand with Ukraine and we are mobilised to help!”

Mriya Aid and all volunteers helping Ukraine are encouraged by and grateful for the supportive words and actions of the wonderful individuals and collectives from all over the world. The fundraising campaign Pushing Boundaries launched at the beginning of February by our supporters at the Blindflug Game Studio and the film production company Dschoint Ventschr has been extended to the end of March. The film Pushing Boundaries can be rented or purchased on the video platform Vimeo with 80% of the proceeds to be donated to Mriya Aid and to the National Sport Committee for the Disabled of Ukraine. Watch the film trailer here.

We’d also like to share another wonderful artistic morale booster with our supporters and partners. Our friends Richard Lowenstein and Lynn-Maree Milburn have created a second video - this time to help Mriya Aid mark the grim milestone of February 24th. The video is a compilation of images1 showing the pain and plight of the children of Ukraine. The moving images are accompanied by a song that has motifs reminiscent of Ukrainian folk tunes. Sung by Joan Baez, the song "Dona Dona" is about a calf being led to slaughter (it was written by Sholom Secunda and Aaron Zeitlin). Putin learned the hard way that Ukraine is not a calf and it will not be slaughtered!

Joan Baez famously said: “Action is the antidote to despair.” A Ukrainian proverb asserts that “Through actions we each travel our own road” (Від діла до діла у кожного своя дорога). The choices we make and the actions we take are individual, but when our values are common and when we act in unity, we can multiply each other’s efforts. 

SPRING INTO ACTION: Please join us in springing into action in the coming weeks, as we work with our Ukrainian and global partners to provide EOD training, EW-hardened drones with training, CAT tourniquets, NVGs, first responder, demining and medical clinical equipment. 

As we mark the one year anniversary of the horrific invasion of Ukraine, let us take time to grieve and to remember the ultimate sacrifices made to protect and defend Ukraine from an evil and barbaric occupier who has no regard for human life or any other free thinking society. Let us now, together, in unity and solidarity, double our efforts to help Ukraine regain its sovereign territory, throw the enemy out, and rebuild for its future and for the future of all of Europe.

The support and equipment provided by Mriya Aid helps Ukrainians, who are under a constant threat of attack, to save lives and to defend themselves against the Russian aggressors. Sacrificing for democracy and freedom, Ukrainians not only need, but deserve our ongoing help and unwavering support. 

You can donate directly to Mriya Aid here & subscribe here to or share this article:

Share

Visit our friends @MriyaReport for great discussions #Live about #Ukraine. Listen in, come speak. Share your thoughts or ask a question. 24/7 #MriyaReport is there!

Visit us on Twitter https://twitter.com/MriyaAid

The documentary film, now available on video through Vimeo, follows athletes from Ukraine’s Paralympic National Team after their training base in Crimea was annexed by Russia in 2014. The film looks at how the athletes’ personal and professional lives have been overturned by the annexation, and how the loss of their training centre affects their ability to qualify for the upcoming 2024 Paralympics in Paris.

PUSHING BOUNDARIES is now available online and you can help Mriya Aid and Ukrainian athletes by renting or purchasing the film and making a donation !

The dynamic Blindflug Game Studio, an ongoing supporter of Mriya Aid, joins the Swiss film production company Dschoint Ventschr in promoting Lesia Kordonets’ film PUSHING BOUNDARIES while helping raise funds for Mriya Aid and The National Sport Committee for the Disabled of Ukraine.

The fundraising campaign was launched on Wed 8 Feb and will run until Wed 22 Feb 2023.

PUSHING BOUNDARIES can be rented or purchased on the video platform Vimeo with a donation option for those who wish to support the two organisations.

Watch the film trailer here. 80% of the proceeds of the first two weeks will be donated to Mriya Aid and to the National Sport Committee for the Disabled of Ukraine.

This campaign is where sport, art & aid intersect.

Mriya Aid friends can support Mriya Aid, the National Sports Committee for the Disabled of Ukraine, and the work of filmmaker Lesia Kordonets, and learn more about the human tragedy and the impact of geopolitics and the Russian invasion of Ukraine on athletes.

When Moscow invaded & annexed Ukrainian Crimea & Donbas in 2014, the world felt powerless. The human tragedy of occupied and annexed Ukrainian lands was hidden from view by the Kremlin. Most people in the West knew nothing of the lives of those affected by the annexation and knew as little about Ukraine as they had about Chechnya, Moldova, Georgia, & Syria. PUSHING BOUNDARIES “shows people who grow beyond their physical limits on a daily basis while political boundaries around them are pushed back and forth and the country they represent at international competitions is rendered invalid by the amputation of its territories.”1

Mriya Aid supporters will not allow the world to forget about and turn away from Ukraine’s monumental struggle. Annexation is not only illegal and not only about stealing land. It is also robbing the people of that land of their lives, their livelihood, and peace. It is the forced amputation of Ukraine.

Helping Ukraine means being informed & active in defending it against all aggression and speaking out against the destruction and genocide being perpetrated by Russia. As the 2024 Olympics and Paralympics are being planned, Ukrainian athletes accuse the International Olympic Committee (IOC) of “rewarding Putin’s aggression while the death and destruction of his victims are being ignored” and they criticise the claim that the games unite the world through peaceful competition when is in actual fact it is “ ‘a utopian view that disregards the way sport is routinely used as a tool of authoritarian states’ ”.2

See video message of Ukrainian athlete O. Usyk to the IOC

3

PUSHING BOUNDARIES can be rented or purchased on the video platform Vimeo with a donation option for those who wish to support Mriya Aid & the National Sport Committee for the Disabled of Ukraine

The fundraising campaign will run until Wed Feb 22.

The campaign was organised by Blindflug Studios - an award-winning Swiss, Polish & Ukrainian game studio known for its games such as First Strike, played by over 11M players, and its business through gaming programs. See Blindflug’s projects supporting Ukraine here.

You can also donate directly to Mriya Aid here.

Share

Thanks for your time! Subscribe for free to receive new articles about our work.

Visit our friends @MriyaReport for great discussions #Live about #Ukraine. Listen in, come speak. Share your thoughts or ask a question. 24/7 #MriyaReport is there!

Visit us on Twitter https://twitter.com/MriyaAid

Feels like we're drowning in tragedies,
Feels like we're stuck in a world of pain,
Scary to fall asleep,
Scary to wake up and learn 
That today will be more insane.

Feels like we are somehow helpless,
Feels like we should not complain,
Afraid after you go to sleep,
Afraid after you wake up,
All these nightmares will still remain. 

Feels like it's hardly bearable, 
Feels like it's all hard to explain,
Hoping one day you go to sleep,
Hoping one day you wake up,
And peace will be back again. 

18.01.2023
Poem by Olga Spytsia, volunteer, southern Ukraine. 

In addition to almost 11 months of daily shelling, last week Ukrainians suffered two new painful blows & losses. As Ukrainians prepared to honour the memory of the defenders of the Donetsk Airport on Jan 16 and to celebrate Epiphany on Jan 19, Russia sent a X-22 missile into a high-rise in Dnipro city (45 dead, 80 injured) & their invasion caused more deaths with the Brovary helicopter tragedy (14 dead, 25 injured).

Despite the incessant pain inflicted by Russia, Ukrainians continue to take their cue from hundreds of volunteer soldiers who for 8 months (May 24, 2014 - Jan 22, 2015) defended the strategic international airport from Russian militia groups moving in to “annex” Ukrainian territory and force Ukraine into deeper submission & subservience to Moscow. Outnumbered, the Ukrainian defenders held on while the airport’s concrete around them crumbled from constant Russian-backed offensives & shelling.

In an attempt to explain why his Moscow-equipped comrades failed to swiftly take the airport, a pro-Russian militant called the Ukrainian defenders Cyborgs. The name caught on in Ukraine due to the invincibility and courage of these heroes. Ukraine’s strong will to resist continues to strike fear into the hearts of their persecutors.

Some Cyborgs continue defending Ukraine today. Centuries of living under Moscow’s boot resulted in Ukraine developing a formidable culture of resistance and becoming a modern political nation with a superhuman focus on freedom, justice & democracy.

Although the pain is not going away any time soon, our moral & material support to those on the front lines makes a world of difference. Currently, the Mriya Aid team is working hard to increase the effectiveness & scalable delivery of our drone & tactical medicine programs & EOD gear & training with our partners in the UK & Europe.

Being in touch with the units we support and seeing their determination as they receive drones and other kit is truly rewarding. Allies and supporters worldwide are also inspired by Ukrainain resilience expressed online through humour and art.

Ukrainian girl dances in front of a Banksy original in Irpin Photo: Stephan Goss

Wartime art and popular culture in Ukraine also reflect Ukrainians’ strong and ever-growing will to revive & embrace their rich cultural heritage that for centuries had been extinguished by forced russification that lasted decades after Ukraine’s 1991 Independence. Since the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukrainian territories in 2014, Ukrainians have questioned the imperialist, identity-erasing, and morally void propagandistic Soviet pseudo-culture invented by Moscow to keep Ukrainians and other minorities in check.

In his video “What TV fed us before New Years”, Ukrainian media critic Vitaliy Hordienko exposes the Kremlin-directed, post-Soviet TV entertainment that many Ukrainians (including Hordienko himself) accepted as a norm. Even for those who don’t understand Ukrainian, the video clips show how Moscow’s cultural elite distorted art and presented Ukrainians as pathetic caricatures. Hordienko describes the painful realization that much of the “shared” culture with Russia was nothing more than discrimination intended to keep Ukrainians subservient to Moscow.

Each missile strike, torture chamber, war crime, and attempted erasure of Ukraine perpetrated by Russia, as well as centuries of documented decimation of Ukrainians and other non-Russian minorities, is a painful reminder that this brutal invasion of Ukraine in the 21st century will continue for some time, and that anything short of a full Ukrainian victory will likely result in decades of pain for millions through torture & executions, hard labour camps & continued erasure of Ukrainians & anyone standing in the way of Russian insistence of its supremacy in Eastern Europe.

We can help prevent further pain and devastation by continuing to support Ukraine. In an interview, Akhtem Seitablayev, the director of the 2017 film Cyborgs: Heroes Never Die, said that he and the author of the script wanted to speak to the audience “in the language of their pain and hopes”.

The diverse volunteers & supporters of Mriya Aid put their hope into action to conquer the pain, to save lives & to bring us closer to peace.

Since we do not want to divert donations provided specifically for the front lines, we have created a separate platform for donors who wish to help Mriya Aid volunteers shoulder the considerable expenses of basic IT, legal & accounting services required to keep Mriya Aid platforms safe, our work transparent, and our 100% volunteer team accountable to you and to the Ukrainian defenders you support.

CLICK HERE to donate to help with ADMIN costs - Stripe accepts major credit cards & Apple Pay

Or you can CLICK HERE to contribute to NON-LETHAL equipment & medical & humanitarian aid to the frontlines.

If you have family, friends or neighbours who have been influenced by Kremlin propaganda, you can refer them to the Government of Canada’s webpage Countering disinformation with facts - National Defence and Global Affairs Canada and to the Canadian Armed Forces’ Twittter feed on this topic.

“You won't believe how important it is to feel that [moral & material] support.” Ukrainian volunteer & friend of Mriya Aid. Mykolaiv, Ukraine. Jan 20, 2023.

Share

Visit @MriyaReport for great discussions #Live about #Ukraine. Listen in, come speak. Share your thoughts or ask a question. 24/7 #MriyaReport is there!

Visit us on Twitter https://twitter.com/MriyaAid

Legends of Kharakternyky, sorcerers and guardians of warriors1, tell of Kozaky (Ukrainian cossacks) being helped, saved, and healed on the battlefield. With superpowers, study, commitment, and discipline, Kharakternyky could see and hear over vast distances, pass through walls and cross into parallel worlds of the animal kingdom and the spirit world. The medieval Royal Guard of Kyiv’s Grand Prince Sviatoslav the Brave was said to include female warriors with supernatural powers who were called Polyanytsi (Meadow Dwellers). In addition to supporting fellow warriors and undermining the enemy, Polyanysti and Kharakternyky also protected the sacred fires and cultural objects of the people.

Today’s heroes fighting on the Ukrainian front demonstrate the superpowers of inventiveness, innovation and resolve. The job and burden traditionally carried by the mystic guardians is shared today by soldiers, medics, IT specialists & a diverse network of volunteers & experts supporting today’s warriors defending a people, a country, and a culture oppressed & continually destroyed by a power-crazed Kremlin.

Mriya Aid helps the men and women of Ukraine to defend themselves and society by providing tools and training that Ukrainians on the front ask for and use most effectively. We help them work their magic.

New life-saving technologies in ISR, EOD & other areas are being developed with our partners on the frontlines and beyond - and Mriya Aid is assisting in a number of cutting-edge projects. Stay tuned more details on those in the coming weeks!

2

This weekend, many in Ukraine & the diaspora will celebrate Christmas according to the Julian calendar. Key Ukrainian Christmas traditions harken back to pre-Christian practices. Didukhs, elaborate sheaths of wheat placed in homes & main town squares, represent the guiding presence of ancestors. Tradition holds that ancestors help the living in the struggle for freedom. Peace & freedom in 2023 will be hard won at the cost of so many lives & with so much death & destruction. The celebratory mood is hampered, but ancient traditions still help channel both joy and pain towards Victory.

Liudmyla Horova’s poem Vrazhe (Enemy), an incantation cursing the enemy, went viral earlier in 2022 because it captured the outrage & need for retribution felt by Ukrainians against marauders, rapists & murderers of the people & animals of Ukraine. A version with additional military & folk elements was recorded by musician Ange Kreyda with covers by many groups, including women serving on the front (in the photo above).

According to modern day Ukrainian Molfars (sorcerers, both male and female) from the Carpathian Mountains, a key tenet of sorcery is to do good. While it often takes money to do good in the material world, a running theme in the folk tales, songs, and incantations of old is a warning against greed & against a love of money. Generosity, on the other hand, is lauded as a true virtue. We are so grateful to you, our Mriya Aid donors, for your generosity and for your ongoing commitment to Ukraine & to the men and women there defending democracy, freedom & justice.

As our donors know, the core team members of Mriya Aid have been paying out-of-pocket for administrative costs. This makes it possible for 100% of fundraised dollars to go directly towards purchasing, shipping & delivering aid to the front. The admin costs are kept low thanks to some IT, legal & accounting service providers who offer a degree of pro-bono work, subsidies and NGO specials to Mriya Aid.

However, as Mriya Aid grows, admin costs increase substantially. We ask for your help to support us in covering admin costs, which currently stand at 25K USD annually. Please consider contributing to the Stripe account that we set up separately to help cover invoices for our 6-month audit & other 3rd party services essential to Mriya Aid’s work.

CLICK HERE to donate to help with ADMIN costs - Stripe accepts major credit cards & Apple Pay

These and all of your generous contributions help us work magic to support the women and men in Ukraine doing their magic on the front.

Thank you for the trust you put into Mriya Aid’s unique style and mandate. Together with you, we have helped the defenders of Ukraine work wonders on the front while we all write a key chapter of the story of humanity and how the best of humanity can defeat injustice and brutal violence.

Lirnyk Sashko, a traditional storyteller who performs for listeners of all ages, uses humour and references to magic and the supernatural to address the painful realities of war and the struggle for freedom and liberation. One of the lessons of the old folk stories is that tools are nothing without the attitude, values, and spirit needed to use those tools or resources wisely and to use them for the good of humanity.

The New Year is a time to recommit and realign our actions to our values and guiding principles. Christmas - Rizdvo - is a time to reflect on how we balance outrage, fear and justified feelings of vulnerability and vengeance with helping people defend, heal, and reconstruct in a spirit of dignity, courage, faith, and good humour to use the magic in life as a source of strength in standing up for, living, and breathing FREEDOM.

In his stories Lirnyk Sashko …

…. conveys the wrath & strength needed to pin down the problem …

…. and to never give up on fighting for what’s right and just.3

Share

Thanks for your time! Subscribe for free to receive new articles about our work.

Subscribe now

Visit @MriyaReport for great discussions #Live about #Ukraine. Listen in, come speak. Share your thoughts or ask a question. 24/7 #MriyaReport is there!

Visit us on Twitter https://twitter.com/MriyaAid

“Everyday you are all doing an incredible job. The transparency of the realities that can be unavoidable took you to an even higher level of respect for me. I thank each and every one of the volunteers of Mriya Aid. With you, Ukraine will prevail!” (Twitter user, Aug 3)