Harrison Jozefowicz quit his job as a Chicago police officer and headed overseas soon after Russia invaded Ukraine. An Army veteran, he said he couldn’t help but join American volunteers seeking to help Ukrainians in their fight.
Jozefowicz now heads a group called Task Force Yankee, which he said has placed more than 190 volunteers in combat slots and other roles while delivering nearly 15,000 first aid kits, helping relocate more than 80 families and helping deliver dozens of pallets of food and medical supplies to the southern and eastern fronts of the war.
It’s difficult, dangerous work. But Jozefowicz said he felt helpless watching from the United States last year during the U.S. pullout from Afghanistan, particularly after a close friend, Staff Sgt. Ryan Knauss, died in a suicide bombing at Kabul.
“So, I’m just trying to do everything I can to make sure I can help others not go through what I went through,” he said Saturday during an interview conducted through a messaging platform.
A former U.S. Marine who died last week was believed to be the first American citizen killed while fighting in Ukraine. Willy Joseph Cancel, 22, died Monday while working for a military contracting company that sent him to Ukraine, his mother, Rebecca Cabrera, told CNN.
An undetermined number of other Americans — many with military backgrounds — are thought to be in the country battling Russian forces beside both Ukrainians and volunteers from other countries even though U.S. forces aren’t directly involved in fighting aside from sending military materiel, humanitarian aid and money.
Russia’s invasion has given Ukraine’s embassy in Washington the task of fielding inquiries from thousands of Americans who want to help in the fight, and Ukraine is using the internet to recruit volunteers for a foreign force, the International Legion of Defense of Ukraine.
“Anyone who wants to join the defense of security in Europe and the world can come and stand side by side with the Ukrainians against the invaders of the 21st century,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a recruitment pitch.
Texan Anja Osmon, who did tours in Iraq and Afghanistan while serving in the U.S. Army from 2009 through 2015, said she went to Ukraine on her own. A medic, she said she arrived in Ukraine on March 20 and lived in the woods with other members of the International Legion before a new commander sent her away because he didn’t want female fighters.
Osmon, 30, said her mother wants her home before September. But for now she’s anxious to get out of the hotel where she is staying in Lviv and catch on with another fighting force nearer the action.
“I can’t turn away from injustice,” she said. “No one should be scared.”
U.S. Marine veteran Eddy Etue said he quit his job in the gig economy, found a friend in Colorado to watch his cat and gave up his home four blocks from the beach in San Diego, California, to help out in Ukraine, where he’s been about two weeks. He first worked with an aid organization but now is training with the International Legion.
Etue, 36, said he simply couldn’t stay home. “It’s just the right thing to do,” said Etue, who financed the journey through an online fundraising campaign.
Etue’s family history pulled him toward Ukraine. He said his grandparents left Hungary with nothing but their four children and clothes after the 1956 revolution, which was put down by Soviet forces that killed or wounded thousands.
“What’s happening here will affect not only the people who are experiencing it but their children and grandchildren as well,” he said. “I know that from personal experience.”
Jozefowicz, the former Chicago cop, says thousands of American and other volunteers are in Ukraine. Multiple organizations are operating in the country, and Jozefowicz said his group alone has placed scores of volunteers in positions all over the country, with about 40 of those being combat jobs.
“We do not facilitate a civilian going into any direct-action role. We only guide and connect prior military volunteers,” he said.
But there’s plenty of other work to do. Groups of volunteers are getting medical and food supplies to people in the nation of 44 million people, he said, and others are working with refugees and others who’ve had to flee their homes.
“The closer I got into Ukraine and the more time I spent in Ukraine, the more voids I found that needed to be filled to maximize my group’s volunteer efforts,” he said.
Osmon, who said she’s been in contact with Jozefowicz’s group, said she supplied troops with antibiotics and anti-inflammatory medications after days in the woods.
“Most everyone had air raid fever from hiding in the trenches in the snow and cold air,” she said. “Bronchitis was ravaging us.”
Etue said he got a feel for the country after making a 24-hour round trip with another volunteer to pick up a vehicle in Odesa. He said he’s been impressed with the quality of people serving in the International Legion since Ukrainians have done a good job of weeding out the inexperienced and “war tourists” who don’t have much to offer a military unit.
“I think they’re doing amazingly well given that they’re at war with one of the largest standing armies in the world,” he said.
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Elena Trofimchuk fled Ukraine to Romania more than a month ago. She now sees Bucharest’s North Railway Station as a second home.
She doesn’t live there, but it’s where she spends most of her day welcoming fellow Ukrainian refugees escaping from Russia’s war and helping them sort out tickets, accommodation and onward destinations.
The 26-year-old said that keeping herself busy and useful keeps her from dwelling on Russia’s shelling of her hometown, Odesa, where many of her friends remain.
“If you sit and do nothing, you can just become crazy because you’re always searching for news. It’s very hard. So here I can help people buy tickets and find accommodations. I even help Romanians in the kitchen,” Trofimchuk said.
Before the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, she worked as a photographer.
Trofimchuk is just one of many orange-vested Ukrainian volunteers working at the station.
Ukrainian volunteer Vitalii Ivanchuk flew all the way from Sri Lanka where he lived with his Ukrainian girlfriend to help refugees coming into Romania.
The 29-year-old IT developer said that many Ukrainians have a tough time communicating with Romanians, and volunteers who can speak both Ukrainian and English are in high demand.
His girlfriend, Anastasiia Haiduk, quit her investment job shortly after the war started and decided to volunteer at the station until the war ends and she can be reunited with her family in Ukraine.
The Romanian government is currently giving away free train tickets to Ukrainian refugees arriving in Romania that they can use to travel on to Hungary, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Slovakia and Bulgaria.
Trofimchuk said she was moved by the warm welcome and the Romanians’ show of solidarity with Ukraine.
“Every Romanian person wants to help. They’re very friendly. And I was shocked about this. I’m so happy that everyone wants to help,” Trofimchuk said.
Nearly 5.5 million people have fled Ukraine since the start of Russia’s war on Feb. 24, according to data from the U.N. refugee agency.
Most have entered countries on Ukraine’s western border: more than 3 million people have fled to Poland, while more than 817,000 others have fled to Romania and around 520,000 have crossed into Hungary, UNHCR statistics show.
For some Ukrainian volunteers, their Saturday evening ritual is to join a weekly demonstration at the Russian embassy in Bucharest along with Ukrainian residents and Romanians.
Station volunteers in Bucharest say they are now seeing an increasing number of arrivals from Odesa following Russian missile attacks on the southern Ukrainian port city on the Black Sea.
But Trofimchuk skipped a recent protest, saying she expected people to arrive from her hometown.
“I will stay at the station as late as I can, because there might be people who need my help,” Trofimchuk said.
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У березні президент США назвав Володимира Путіна «воєнним злочинцем»
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«Роботи вже ведуться, зв’язок буде відновлено»
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Байден згадав про загибель журналістки Радіо Свобода у своїй промові перед працівниками медіа, які висвітлюють роботу Білого дому
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У Росії заявляють, що це була диверсія.
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Citizens and trade unions in cities around Europe were taking to the streets on Sunday for May Day marches, and to put out protest messages to their governments, notably in France where the holiday to honor workers was being used as a rallying cry against newly reelected President Emmanuel Macron.
May Day is a time of high emotion for participants and their causes, with police on the ready. Turkish police moved in quickly in Istanbul and encircled protesters near the barred-off Taksim Square — where 34 people were killed In 1977 during a May Day event when shots were fired into the crowd from a nearby building.
On Sunday, police detained 164 people for demonstrating without permits and resisting police at the square, the Istanbul governor’s office said. At a site on the Asian side of Istanbul, a May Day gathering drew thousands, singing, chanting and waving banners, a demonstration organized by the Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions of Turkey.
In Italy, after a two-year pandemic lull, an outdoor mega-concert was set for Rome with rallies and protests in cities across the country. Besides work, peace was an underlying theme with calls for an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Italy’s three main labor unions were focusing their main rally in the hilltop town of Assisi, a frequent destination for peace protests. This year’s slogan is “Working for peace.”
“It’s a May Day of social and civil commitment for peace and labor,” said the head of Italy’s CISL union, Daniela Fumarola.
Other protests were planned far and wide in Europe, including in Slovakia and the Czech Republic, where students and others planned to rally in support of Ukraine as Communists, anarchists and anti-European Union groups held their own gatherings.
In France, the May Day rallies — a week after the presidential election — are aimed at showing Macron the opposition he could face in his second five-year term and to power up against his centrists before June legislative elections. Opposition parties, notably the far left and far right, are looking to break his government’s majority.
Protests were planned across France with a focus on Paris where the Communist-backed CGT union was leading the main march through eastern Paris, joined by a handful of other unions. All are pressing Macron for policies that put the people first and condemning his plan to raise the retirement age from 62 to 65.
In a first, far-right leader Marine Le Pen was absent from her party’s traditional wreath-laying at the foot of a statue of Joan of Arc, replaced by the interim president of her National Rally party. Le Pen was defeated by Macron in last Sunday’s runoff of the presidential election, and plans to campaign to keep her seat as a lawmaker.
“I’ve come to tell the French that the voting isn’t over. There is a third round, the legislative elections,” said Jordan Bardella, “and it would be unbelievable to leave full power to Emmanuel Macron.”
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Germany said Sunday it has made progress in sharply reducing its reliance on Russian energy, a strategic shift Europe’s biggest economy has embarked on since Russia invaded Ukraine.
Russian supplies now make up 12 percent of Germany’s oil imports compared to 35 percent previously, the economy ministry said in a statement.
Coal from Russia has also been slashed to eight percent compared to 45 percent of Germany’s purchases previously.
Dependence on gas remains substantial, but Europe’s biggest economy had also reduced its Russian sources to 35 percent of the total compared to 55 percent before Russia’s aggression in Ukraine.
The government had in March laid out plans to halve oil imports from Russia by June and to end coal deliveries by the autumn.
Germany is also expected to be able to largely wean itself off Russian gas in mid-2024.
“All these steps that we have taken require an enormous effect from all players and they also mean costs that are being felt by the economy and consumers,” said Economy Minister Robert Habeck.
“But they are necessary if we no longer want to be blackmailed by Russia,” he stressed.
The reliance of Europe’s biggest economy on Russian energy has been exposed as an Achilles’ heel as Western allies scramble to penalize Vladimir Putin for his attack on Ukraine.
The export giant has since been racing to find alternative energy suppliers to replace Russian contracts.
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«Ваша боротьба – це боротьба за всіх. І ми готові залишатися поруч, доки ця боротьба не буде завершена», – сказала Пелосі під час зустрічі з президентом
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