Kherson province weekend

Hi {{First Name | Reader}},

I’ve been looking forward to this trip for ages. You may know Kherson city as possibly the most dangerous place in Ukraine; the place where the horrific term “human safari” was coined because russians, under official military policy, kill civilians with first-person drones and drop mines along city streets. We’ve been supporting defensive work there, in the surrounding province, and in the neighbouring city of Mykolaiv. This weekend, I hopped in the car with my volunteer colleague Olivier and did the six-hour drive south. Our mission: to check in on our projects in Kherson province (but not in the city itself).

Working with Oleksii, our local fixer and the head of two local humanitarian charities, we carried out a mission that we’ve been planning and funding for about six months. In a village about 5 km from the enemy contact point, we delivered a drone video signal interception system. This, together with some of the laptops that were donated to us in Berlin, allows civilian lookouts to hijack the video signals of incoming enemy drones. Once done, they can radio coordinates and direction of travel to the military to enable interception through jamming or kinetic measures, with a range of about 30km. This whole section of the front line has been vulnerable until now and closing this gap will save many lives.

The village that was our jumping off point was attacked with a barrage of glide bombs last week, causing civilian casualties and destroying many homes, shops, and vehicles. We didn’t linger in this area as there’s a risk of more glide bombs, as well as drones, landmines, and artillery, the latter of which was active while we were there. In this sector, it’s safest to keep a very low profile, dressing in civilian clothes and skipping the camo and flak vest as it makes you stand out a bit less to enemy drones.

On the way out we stopped in to see Maksim, the head of an artillery unit we’re helping, to see where we can fulfill some of their outstanding needs. For various reasons, he and his team set up a new position about once a week. They typically have to shore up about 8,000 UAH (C$265 / €165) per week to buy simple hardware like metal hinges, timber, saw blades, etc. which they pay from their own salaries. We sponsored them for the next month and a half (through one of Oleksii’s charities) to take off the pressure for a bit. It sucks that these guys who are making a grand a month salary living in impossible conditions and putting their lives on the line every day should have to pay for these materials personally, on top of it all. I also had a close look at the type of fishing net and canvas they’re using to camouflage their positions and am relaying that to our “net donors” in Ireland and Sweden. I learned a lot about fishing netting this weekend. 😂

I’ll be back with a longer update later in October with, among other things, the results of a big troop support intervention in the Pokrovsk direction, and the next big delivery from Ireland.

Thanks for sticking with me and for being the kind of person who cares about Ukraine. 💛 💙

All the best from the road back to Kyiv,

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