WORLD
the irst Ukrainian checkpoint.
Since 2014, Viktor’s unit has taken
part in joint military exercises with
NATO troops. The training has come
in handy, he says, as have the weapons
shipments from the U.S., especially the
shoulder- mounted rockets capable of
downing a plane or piercing the armor
of a tank.
But their own vehicles, Viktor
noted, had no armor. We were driv-
ing in a dented minivan, its back seat
loaded with boxes of aid: a power gen-
erator, some clothes, and food. “We’ve
lost a lot of our men already,” he told
me. “We’re ighting well. But we’re
under supplied. If you could get a mes-
sage out there to the world, tell them
we need a lot more armor.”
FOR ABOUT EIGHT YEARS, David Plas-
ter, a former medic in the U.S. Army,
has worked as a coordinator for for-
eign ighters in Ukraine. Local veter-
ans’ groups took a liking to his irst-
aid seminars, usually delivered with
a stream of of-color jokes. He made
friends in Kyiv, learned the language,
and started helping foreigners ind
suitable units to join. Those with-
out combat training, he says, are bet-
ter of heading home. “Nobody needs
Americans roaming around in the war
zone unsupervised,” he told me. “But if
they’re capable, if they have the skills,
they’re welcome to help.”
The tide of ighters from abroad has
swelled considerably in the weeks since
the Russian onslaught began. Within
a week of the invasion, President
Zelensky announced that 16,000
foreigners had volunteered to join
what he called the new International
Legion. Zelensky’s oice launched a
website with step-by-step instructions
for enlistment, starting with an
interview at a local Ukrainian embassy
or consulate anywhere in the world.
Working in coordination with
Ukraine’s armed forces, Plaster ar-
ranges for some of these foreign vol-
unteers to teach locals the basic skills
they need to defend themselves and
stay alive, whether it’s applying a tour-
niquet or handling a weapon. One af-
ternoon in early March, he was at a
giant wholesale market in Lviv, loading
up a basket with bottles of shampoo,
deodorant, and hygiene wipes to dis-
tribute among the new arrivals from
abroad. With him were a group of the
foreign ighters. Three of them had just
arrived, and in their rush to join the
war they had neglected to bring some
basics. An Australian sniper searched
the aisles for nail clippers; they were
sold out. On his way to the register,
Plaster overheard two strangers with
American accents and a shopping cart.
“You here to join up?” he asked them.
They looked us over, smiled, and con-
irmed that they had just arrived in
Ukraine with plans to ight the Rus-
sians. Plaster gave them his number.
Some European leaders have tried
to stop their citizens from going to the
war zone to ight, especially if they are
already actively serving in the mili-
tary at home. “You should not go to
Ukraine,” U.K. Prime Minister Boris
Johnson said in response to reports
that dozens of elite British troops and
veterans, including the son of a British
parliamentarian, were taking up Zel-
ensky’s call to arms.
But most of the volunteers are or-
dinary civilians moved to help. Igor
Gavrylko, who was working at a car
dealership in western London when the
invasion started, drove his Mitsu bishi
from there to Ukraine, linking up with
Plaster on arrival. “I’ll go wherever I’m
needed here,” Gavrylko told me.
We were at a well-appointed dormi-
tory of a university near the city center.
Plaster had arranged for a few dozen
beds to be made available to new ar-
rivals. His own room was already lit-
tered with pizza boxes, the mini fridge
stocked with beer. Many of the for-
eign ighters, he said, were being sent
to a base in western Ukraine, about 10
miles from the border with Poland, for
orientation. From there they would be
deployed to the front. “You should go
check it out,” Plaster told me.I never got the chance. A few days
later, a barrage of Russian cruise mis-
siles struck that base, killing dozens.
A Ukrainian soldier I had met sent me
photos from the scene, showing a col-
lapsed building and massive craters in
the ground. One foreign ighter who
survived, a British citizen named Jer-
emy, told me that he had helped pull
the bodies of his dead and wounded
comrades from the rubble. The clear
message was that no one was of-limits.
The town closest to the base was full
of checkpoints when I passed through
on the way back to Poland. They were
manned by local volunteers, young men
in civilian clothes standing among piles
of sandbags, lying Ukrainian lags. One
of them stepped forward with a red and
white baton and signaled for me to stop.
A few of his friends, unarmed, stood
behind him with nervous smiles. He
asked where I was from and where I was
headed. The U.S., I said, going to Po-
land. The young man pondered this for
a long moment. “Carry on,” he said in
Ukrainian. “And send them our thanks.”
Two days later my light out of Po-
land departed from the airport in
Rzeszow, taxiing near the U.S. military
planes that had come to deliver weap-
ons for Ukraine. Even from the high-
way, the planes were visible through
a barbed-wire fence, maneuver-
ing around the tarmac like big green
whales. On a ield nearby stood a few
surface-to-air missile batteries, point-
ing toward the sky to defend against a
Russian attack.
The morning of my light, several
friends and strangers had written to
me, asking whether we were on the
brink of war between the U.S. and
Russia. One asked via email for the
probability of World War III breaking
out within a month. I didn’t know
how to answer. If the U.S. is standing
on such a precipice, it would look a lot
like this airield and the nearby border.
No one can predict how Russia will
respond to the lifeline the U.S. and its
allies have created for Ukraine. But
for the diplomats and convoy runners,
the soldiers and volunteers who have
kept the supplies lowing, the mission
appears to be worth the risk. —With
reporting by SIMMONE SHAH and
JULIA ZORTHIAN/NEW YORK ‘I’ll go wherever
I’m needed.’
—Igor Gavrylko,
a British car salesman who traveled to
Ukraine to join the ght as a volunteer36 TIME April 11/April 18, 2022