Hi {{First Name | Reader}},

It’s been a heck of a year so far. I started writing this from the airport in Chisinau, Moldova, on my way for holiday visits of friends and family in Berlin and Ontario. Earlier this week, on the 14-hour bus ride from Kyiv, it was just another day of working the laptop and phone, making connections on everything from bulk deliveries of gummy bears for frontline kids to setting up a new 3D printing workshop for drone explosives parts. If you’d told me five years ago that this would be my life…

Together with my amazing Swedish volunteer partners at Operation Change and Irish volunteer pals at Misneach Ukraine, we’re equipping defenders and rescue workers with one van load after the next of winter gear. Here are some snapshots.

In November we delivered 272 gas stoves to the Donetsk frontline alone. In that direction, we have begun supporting the “Alcatraz” Battalion of the 93rd Brigade. These are several hundred prisoners who have volunteered to join the military and are very well-respected in the military for their courage and valour—they are guys who are making amends for past wrongs.

April Huggett is the battalion’s medic and a fellow Canadian. Here she is receiving one of our deliveries, in cooperation with Operation Change and Ukraine Rescue Fund. The latter organization is run by Serhiy and Alina, a Ukrainian married couple based in San Francisco. They cleared out the Alcatraz gift shop to send all the legit merchandise as a major morale booster to these troops.

We’ve been supporting this tank unit of the 92nd brigade for years now. They moved to set up a new HQ on a different front line and were promptly bombed to hell and back. Luckily nobody killed and only a couple wounded. We responded within hours to get them back online with internet, vision, and power through generators and four of these “Bluetti” power stations. I also gave them my SUV and bought a pickup truck, which is on the road to them now from England.

I was back again recently to Kherson Province with my mission collaborators Oleksii and Olivier. In the six weeks since our last trip there, the main road has been covered in anti-drone netting and the safety situation has visibly deteriorated. Here the enemy is inching forward on the frontline while, at the same time, drone ranges grow and anti-jamming technology evolves. I delivered this Mad Max-style pickup truck to an artillery unit. On the way back, we picked up an enemy drone signal on our detector and were lucky to get away from it intact.

This time of year I can’t help but go a bit “out of scope” and help the kiddos out as well. I’ve got a campaign running with my friend Goodwin, the chief medic of the 3rd Assault Corps, delivering toys and clothes to frontline kids in the Izium direction. Here are some of them saying thanks to the Irish grandmas who hand-knitted them toques and scarves.

One of the many hats I wear is as a professional pitch coach for impact and climate startups. For all of last week I made that skill available pro bono to Ukraine’s defensetech startups. I led a group session for 40 people and a series of in-depth 1:1 sessions for eight founders. It was exhausting and exhilarating and something I’ll do much more of in the year ahead.

It’s dark in Kyiv now. We have daily planned blackouts of 8-16 hours and sometimes emergency blackouts on top of that. You can forget about keeping stuff in the freezer, or baking cookies most of the time. It’s not too hard on me — I have a 5.2 kW battery backup and a camping stove, and I don’t mind walking up and down four flights of stairs. But I think about my 80-year-old neighbour upstairs who I help if I can hear him struggling in the stairway and all the people like him across the city. The elderly or disabled folks with a dog who live on the 16th floor of a high rise. Between this and the air raid alerts and explosions most nights, it’s going to be a hard winter. Yet people will survive and cope as best as they can, because that’s all they can do. Thankfully, Ukrainians are the toughest people around.

If you've ever wondered what it's like for a city to live with 12+ hours a day without electricity, here's some of how Kyiv copes.

I’ll drive the foundation’s “new” car in from Germany on January 2 with a big load of donated laptops and then it’s right back to work, with first missions already planned in January. I start “Drone School” at the end of the month, where I’ll begin training to become a combat drone pilot. Just in case.

Here’s my anti-drone practice, a few clicks behind the frontline. Just a wee bit of kick!

Thanks for sticking by my side all this time and here’s hoping this is the last Christmas until Ukraine’s victory. 🎄🎅

Yours truly,

P.S. I did an interview with Technical University of Munich talking about defensetech investing and life in Kyiv. Toss it on the radio sometime when you’re in the car.

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