Marshall Mayer: The View From Ukraine

For nearly 4 years, Ukraine has battled invading Russian forces.

For almost as long, Ukraine Aid International has been helping supply food, communications and medical equipment, portable heaters, clothing, toys and more, to Ukrainians in hard-hit areas.

The non-profit was co-founded by 2009 Staples High School graduate Marshall Mayer. He and his brother Brian — the other co-founder — were instrumental too in helping Westport develop its sister city relationship with Lyman, in the embattled Donetsk oblast.

This week, Marshall was in Kyiv. He reports:

It was 10º in New York this weekend. I bet most New Yorkers stayed home if they could. They huddled by their radiators, watched a good movie, and maybe read a book. Many made coffee with their Keurig, or a mug of hot chocolate.

Cold days like this are terrible if you have to go outside, but they can be a joy to sit through in the comfort of your home.

I am writing to you from Kyiv, Ukraine. Today it is a chilling -7º, with wind chill pushing that even lower.

Marshall Mayer (far left), in frigid Kyiv.

But most residents of Kyiv do not have a warm home to go back to. There’s no working radiator, no soft light to illuminate that novel, and no coffee maker. In the worst winter in more than a decade, Russia has seen to it that Kyiv, and many other cities across Ukraine, have not had any respite from the cold.

Every power station in Ukraine has been hit by Russian missiles or drones — at least 5 times each.

With power stations hit, streetlights are off.

The landscape is ever shifting in Kyiv, but high-level statistics tell the humanity of the situation. In just one district of the city, out of 1,500 residential apartment buildings, only 28 have heat.

98% of the district is as cold inside the walls as outside. Most residents across the city are without power more often than they have it. Rolling blackouts have given way to rolling “power-ons.”

Lack of electricity is now the rule, not the exception. The situation is far more dire than a headline can convey.

I’m stopping for a lunch meeting today at a wonderful café in the Arsenalna area of the capital, a neighborhood named after the Russian Empire-era Arsenal Factory that used to be here.

Europe’s deepest subway station is 350 below our feet. It takes 6 minutes of escalators just to reach the platform. The escalators aren’t working today, but neither is the metro, so at least nobody has to hike the 600 steps up or down — except if they need to use the station as a bomb shelter.

A long way to walk, when the subway escalator is out.

The door to the café is adorned with cute, laminated icons welcoming you: free Wi-Fi, hot coffee, pet-friendly, and delicious food.

Inside, the reality is starkly different. The room, while beautifully furnished, is cold. The lights are off; the kitchen is nonfunctional.

The “lunch” part of our meeting will not materialize. Two pre-brewed towers of warm coffee are all they can serve, prepared earlier in the day during a period of power.

In true Kyiv fashion, the choice is between an Ethiopian and a Rwandan blend. Even at war, Ukrainian hospitality prevails.

We have been out all morning, delivering aid to an orphanage in Bucha, so as we leave the café several of us need the bathroom. No luck; the water in the neighborhood is shut off, which means the toilets cannot flush.

We try 5 different places. Nobody has a working toilet. Two of our group find a tree behind a corner; the rest of us hold on until our next stop.

I’m one of the lucky ones. I don’t live full-time in Kyiv; I get to come and go. My hotel is one of the fortunate ones with a working generator. It has reliable power and some electric heat (the radiator is ice cold).

But several members of UAI’s team do live here. They, like many of Kyiv’s residents, have spent the last several weeks alternating between friends’ and family’s homes, crashing on couches or sleeping on floors, following the warmth wherever it’s available.

Marshall Mayer, in Lyman.

This morning we learned that the brother of a UAI volunteer was killed this week on the front lines. It’s not our first devastating loss. But we hope, as always, it will be the last.

This is daily life here. Ukrainians suffer, mourn, and keep fighting.

Despite all this, Kyiv soldiers on. Kyivans know it can be worse. They could be living near the front lines of this terrible war. One regional city leader gave this analogy: Kyiv’s situation in comparison to Donetsk is like comparing Las Vegas and Afghanistan.

At least in Kyiv, city services (mostly) continue, for now. At least in Kyiv, food is not scarce, for now. Fuel for generators is plentiful, for now.

In Donetsk — Lyman’s oblast — and in all the frontline regions in which we operate, none of these are a given.

Ukraine’s capital city is dark. 

And though the intention of the Russian attacks is clearly to terrorize, torture and demoralize Kyiv’s residents, spirits remain high.

If the intent is to push the capital to give up, the reality is the opposite. Citizens have dug their heels in. Few things can bond people more strongly than suffering under an oppressive regime’s terror tactics.

Everyone is more determined than ever.

In times like these, UAI looks everywhere for ways to help. We are currently in discussions with several municipalities in Germany to provide matching public funds to support electrical generation and heating facilities.

Our first goal is to raise $5,000, which will be matched 10:1 to support the purchase of nearly 1 megawatt of generator capacity, with delivery possible within days. This would restore emergency power and heat to nearly 3,000 Ukrainians, helping them survive the cold expected to last well into the spring.

When successful, we plan to replicate this pilot project to support more purchases of the same for Kyiv and other cities.

As the weather warms, infrastructure attacks become less effective, and Ukraine slowly repairs its grid, we will move these generators to wherever they’re most needed.

Every contribution, large or small, truly matters right now. If you are able, please click here to make a tax-deductible contribution towards this goal. If you prefer it to go to Westport’s sister city of Lyman, click the dropdown menu for “Where It Is Needed Most.”

(Here’s another way to help. On March 5, the Westport Country Playhouse hosts “Keys for Resilience.” The evening of classical music — a fundraiser for Connecticut’s sister cities in Ukraine — features Ruslan Ramazanov, an extraordinary Ukrainian pianist and refugee now based in the US, and Ukrainian-American soprano and bandurist Teryn Kuzma. Click here for tickets, and more information.)