@bwarzy
Lawyer, United Methodist, Polish-American, Radical for the cause of comprehensive immigration reform, Unapologetic Ukrainophile. Degenerate sports and Eurovision fan. Za naszą i waszą wolność. @Bwarzy on that other site. #coys
Day 15 — Yustyna
She showed up at hospitals and orphanages with paints and paper. She asked nothing. She just watched what came out. "It's hard not to start crying," Yustyna said. "But they continue living." Day 15 of 40. Donate: www.razomforukraine.org/donate/ #Ukraine #Razom
Hosted to Medium for maximum readability: medium.com/@brandon.war...
Day 14 — Maksym
"Fear can influence people in various ways. Some are paralyzed. Some are liberated." Two months later Russia invaded. He called his coach. "You won't convince me. I've made my decision." He was 22. Day 14 of 40. Donate: razomforukraine.org/donate/ #Ukraine #Razom
Day 12 — Polina
Her school was destroyed by a missile. She studies online in her bedroom, 100km from the front lines, with a stress condition that flares with every attack. She keeps going. That's its own kind of heroism. Day 12 of 40. Donate: www.razomforukraine.org/donate/ #Ukraine #Razom
Day 11 — Volodymyr
Before the invasion he didn't know he was an extrovert. Now he's 16, leads a youth organization, runs his school, and is rebuilding his country from the inside. "The war was a powerful push to start moving." Day 11 of 40. Donate: www.razomforukraine.org/donate/ #Ukraine #Razom
Thirty more Ukrainians to meet. Thirty more days.
If you want to give:
razomforukraine.org/donate/
If you can't or don't want to, that's okay — I mean that sincerely. But if you want to walk the rest of Lent with me, I would love the company.
Слава Україні. 🇺🇦
#Ukraine #Razom
We are raising money for
@razomforukraine.org
— rated 99% by Charity Navigator, nearly $140 million in aid delivered, born out of the Revolution of Dignity in 2014.
Our goal is $1,991 — the year Ukraine declared independence. The thing this war has always been about.
That is the character of Ukraine.
That is what a free, sovereign Ukraine offers the world — not just its own survival, but the hard-won knowledge that comes from three years of fighting for it.
And that is why the next 30 days of this campaign matter.
Ukrainian drone intercept specialists — people still fighting for their own survival, still absorbing nightly attacks on their own cities — are deploying to help protect civilians they have no obligation to defend.
Because they can. Because they know how. Because people are dying.
This week, as Iranian drones threatened civilians in the Middle East, President Zelensky announced Ukraine would share that expertise with allies.
Russia has fired more than 57,000 Iranian drones at Ukrainian cities, hospitals, and power plants.
Ukraine's air defenders have spent 3 years under live fire, every night learning to find and destroy them.
They are now the most experienced drone intercept force in the world.
Ten people. Ten lives.
None of them waited for someone else to do what needed to be done. That's the thread. That's Ukraine.
Day 10. Maria Prymachenko.
She taught herself to paint. In 1982 she painted a white dove and called it: A Dove Has Spread Her Wings and Asks for Peace.
Russian tanks destroyed the museum holding her paintings on day two of the invasion. The dove survived. She is still asking.
Day 9. Asya Serpinska.
She runs a shelter for 700 dogs and 100 cats. When Russian soldiers came through, she didn't leave.
When journalists reached her after liberation, she was simply still there.
"How can I stop? I have almost 1,000 animals here."
Day 8. Valentyna Danchenko.
Russian forces came for the Ukranian language books — to destroy them, replace them with Russian texts, erase Ukrainian culture from its own shelves — but the librarians had already been there first.
They knew exactly what they were protecting.
Day 7. Oksana Sologub.
Twelve miles from the Russian border.
When the invasion came, she didn't close. She opened her doors wider.
Soldiers, displaced families, elderly neighbors — anyone who needed it. No charge. No questions. Just food.
Day 6. Volodymyr Ivasyuk.
On the 4th anniversary of Russia's invasion, we remembered Volodymyr, who was murdered by the KGB in 1979 at age 30. His crime: writing Ukrainian songs that Ukrainians loved too much.
You can kill the singers. You cannot kill the songs.
Day 5. Vira Tselyk.
When the invasion came, she moved her maternity ward underground and stayed for 42 days. Artillery struck the hospital three times. Women labored sitting upright in chairs.
143 babies were born.
"I don't have the right to panic."
Day 4. Oleksandr Abramenko.
He won his medal on February 16th. Eight days later, Russia invaded.
Sixteen days after the podium, he was on a mattress in his apartment building's parking garage while sirens sounded above him.
The next day he packed his medals and drove west.
Day 3. Rina Reznik
She cannot remember what her life looked like before February 24, 2022.
She performs blood transfusions 200 meters from the front line because helicopters can't fly — Russian air defenses won't allow it. The blood has to come to the wounded.
Day 2. Yuri Kerpatenko.
When Russian occupiers planned a propaganda concert, they asked him to conduct. He refused to let his orchestra be used as a prop.
Soldiers came to his apartment. He wouldn't open the door.
They shot him through it. He was 46.
Day 1. Svitlana Popova.
Russian forces occupied her school. A tank destroyed her house. She moved into the shed.
Then she went outside, propped a blackboard against a donated cupboard, and taught math like it was any other day.
Ten days ago I started something called 40 Days. 4 Years. 40 Ukrainians.Every day of Lent, I'm sharing the story of one Ukrainian — not a statistic, not a headline, a person — and raising money for
@razomforukraine
Here's who we've met so far. 🧵
Day 10 — Maria
In 1982 a Ukrainian peasant painted a white dove and called it "A Dove Has Spread Her Wings and Asks for Peace." In 2022 Russian soldiers burned the museum that held it. The guard ran into the flames. The dove survived. Donate: www.razomforukraine.org/donate/ #Ukraine #Razom
Day 9 — Asya
She ran a 700-dog shelter in Hostomel, directly in the path of the Russian advance on Kyiv. Soldiers shot one of her dogs. They locked her up for hours. She never left. "How can I stop?" Day 9 of 40. Donate: www.razomforukraine.org/donate/ #Ukraine #Razom
Day 8 — Valentyna
She watched garbage bags full of Ukrainian books stacked outside her library. Meanwhile, a colleague took the director job and called Ukrainian literature Nazi propaganda. Most people made the right choice. Day 8 of 40. Donate: www.razomforukraine.org/donate/ #Ukraine #Razom
If you want to honor Iryna tonight, donate to @razomforukraine.org — which supports millions of her sisters still inside Ukraine, still living under the bombs, still choosing life. Not as a symbol, but as a person who deserved to live.
Вічна пам'ять Ірині Заруцькій. Eternal memory to Iryna Zarutska.
There are hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian women in this country right now who are Iryna — who fled the same missiles, building the same ordinary dreams, calling their mothers on Sunday. They are here because home became unsurvivable. They deserve to be seen as she deserved to be seen.
I don't want you to think about whose mouth her name has been in, or what room she was invoked in, or for what purpose. I want you to hold onto the image of a young artist learning to drive, dreaming about healing animals. Who was happy.
Her mother came to Charlotte to bury her. Her father could not. Ukrainian martial law forbids men between 18 and 60 from leaving the country. He said goodbye to his daughter from the other side of a war.