Randall Blazak, a sociology instructor at the University of Oregon, purchases a cappuccino from a coffee stand on a sunny, Monday morning. Women pushing baby carriages stroll by, and workers paint the outside of a nearby building.
He’s just about to take a sip when air raid sirens blare throughout the city of Lviv, Ukraine, causing everyone on the street to scatter. Smoke still hangs in the air from the weekend’s rocket attack.
“It’s a big city,” Blazak said. “So the odds of you being on the block that gets hit by the rocket are slim but not zero.”
Instead of spending most of his spring break in Paris as he had planned, Blazak rushed to the Polish border to help Ukrainian refugees after watching the news and seeing a young Ukrainian girl who was killed in the war that looked just like his daughter.
Blazak said he was tired of experiencing bystander fatigue. “I had seen enough from the other side of the TV screen,” he said. “I gotta do something. I can’t watch and just send $20 to UNICEF or something. I’ve got to do something more.”
Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, with the goal of bringing Ukraine under Russian control. With nearly 2,000 civilian casualties in Ukraine, according to Statista, the war has seen an increased level of action from individuals since governments are holding off on direct involvement, partially due to Russia’s nuclear weapons capabilities.
Blazak flew to Poland, which borders Ukraine, and arrived in a hotel full of Ukrainian women and children who had fled their homes, he said. He began working on restoring a safe house in Jaroslaw, where Ukrainian refugees could stay once they crossed the border.
He spent his first few days pulling weeds, digging a garden and plucking broken vodka bottles out of the ground so children could play in the yard. To fill the garden, he planted sunflower seeds — Ukraine’s national flower and a symbol of resilience throughout the Russian invasion.
While Blazak worked in the garden, Sally Naetzker Baer — a woman who took time away from her gift shop in New York to help refugees and distribute aid — asked him if he would deliver military and medical aid inside Ukraine since she was ill.
With only the clothes on his back and a phone that could barely hold a charge, Blazak set off into a warzone. “I was very honored to be there,” he said.
A night in Ukraine
Blazak said a 19-year-old Ukrainian wearing sunglasses and a bomber jacket named Vitali (the Emerald is only using Vitali’s first name for safety reasons) picked him up in a van and took off towards Lviv, Russian hip-hop booming from the radio.
“I said, ‘Dude, slow down,’” Blazak said. “‘He’s like, ‘the faster you drive, the harder it is for them to shoot you.’”
Once they arrived, they began distributing the supplies they brought, which included compasses, gloves, telescopes and armored vests.
The mission was meant to be a day trip, but as they neared the city’s curfew of 10 p.m., it quickly became clear they would not be returning to Poland that night, Blazak said.
A group of young Ukrainians invited Blazak and Vitali to spend the night in a shelter in the basement of a seminary. They shared their experiences of the war over hot dogs and leftover cakes from a wedding that had happened upstairs. “I’m normally kind of a vegan,” Blazak said. “But you’re in a war zone, somebody offers you some sausage, you’re gonna eat it.”
The shelter was filled with women, children, reporters and men transporting supplies. “I felt like it was a beehive,” Blazak said. “I mean it’s just surreal in its own way.”
The delay turned out to be fortuitous; Naetzker Baer contacted Blazak and told him a mother and her three daughters needed help getting out of the country and into Poland.
After Blazak grabbed a cappuccino and a phone charger, he and Vitali helped the family pack their things into the van, air raid sirens still pulsating throughout the city.
They began the journey back to Poland, the young family leaving behind their home and a father fighting in Eastern Ukraine. Blazak showed them a picture of his 7-year-old daughter, holding up a note with a drawing of a Ukrainian flag, hearts and peace signs. “We wish you peace and love, Ukraine,” the note said.
“It just added to the notion that the world cares about them all the way in Portland, Oregon,” Blazak said. “There’s this 7-year-old kid drawing pictures of the Ukrainian flag because she cares about what’s happening to kids in Ukraine, and I think that resonated with them.”
Although Blazak and the family did not share the same language, they did share a love for The Beatles. As they drove away from Lviv, they sang the lyrics to “Yellow Submarine.”
Russian spies
Sneaking military supplies into a foreign country is tricky, especially with meddling Russian spies. “In retrospect, you’re like, ‘Oh, this is totally like something of a James Bond movie,’” Blazak said.
He said Russian spies were undercover in Poland, trying to figure out how so many supplies were coming past the border under their noses.
“They were amongst us saying, ‘Hey, man! Oh, you took some pictures? Can I see your phone?’” Blazak said. “They’re getting the information off the phones about how things are getting in.”
Blazak and Naetzker Baer said they suspect a Russian spy was sent to watch the aid organizations in their area. In a hotel full of Ukrainian women and children, one man stood out, Naetzker Baer said.
For three days, he sat alone in common areas of the hotel, always with his laptop open, headphones in and frequent questions, Naetzker Baer said.
One night, the man asked if he could come with and help work on the safe house. Naetzker Baer agreed, knowing the amount of manual labor that needed to be done on the house, she said.
“He wanted to know specific information, or he wanted to know who we knew inside the country,” Blazak said. “And then we started looking at each other, and the bell went off: This is one of those Russian agents that we’ve been hearing about.”
Naetzker Baer said that day was a nightmare. “It was just a really, really horrible situation. In the end, we all collectively in the hotel decided that he was an unsafe person,” she said. They ignored him for the rest of their stay.
“It is an ‘individual war’ in many ways”
Naetzker Baer said she will likely write a book about the volume of aid delivered by individuals to Ukraine during the war compared to that delivered by governments or NGOs. “It is an ‘individual war’ in many ways,” she said.
She said she thinks Western leaders have been less involved in this war because no country wants to “tip the scales” and trigger a World War III. Russia is a nuclear state with over 6,200 nuclear warheads, according to the Arms Control Association. More than 90% of the world’s warheads belong to Russia and the United States.
Andrii Onysko, a second-year student at the University of Oregon School of Law, left his home country of Ukraine eight years ago. He still has family there, and the war has distracted him from his schoolwork, he said.
“I’ve just been reading the news nonstop,” he said. “Right now, I am actively involved in spreading awareness among Americans about the horror this war brought to my home country.”
Onysko said he believes Western leaders are not providing enough aid, particularly military aid, to Ukraine and should consider more direct involvement.
“I don’t find them empathizing with Ukrainians,” he said. “I don’t find them interested in making this conflict end.”
Onysko said it is spineless of politicians to represent the war as something happening far away from the United States. If the war ends in Russia’s favor, the conflict may spread, and the United States will feel in danger, he said.
Western leaders need to work on tougher sanctions against Russia, Onysko said. When people around him complain about inflation due to sanctions, he said he feels disheartened.
“We would rather see people die than pay $5 for a gallon of gas,” he said.
He encourages the local community to donate to relief organizations and be aware of how many people are dying every day in Ukraine.
Craig Parsons, a UO political science professor and an expert on the European Union, said Western governments took on strong sanctions quickly and pushed businesses to split from their dealings with Russia.
“My impression is that we’ve actually seen a very unusual level of responsiveness, certainly at the level of business,” Parsons said. “And then the United States and Western governments with their coordinated sanctions and taking a very strong stance.”
However, Parsons said Western governments are drawing a sharp line at not fighting directly for Ukraine and not imposing a no-fly zone.
“The United States and the rest of the Western governments are talking a big game. ‘We’re on your side. We’re going to do everything we can, but we’re going to sit over here on this side of the border while we watch you all get killed right now,’” Parsons said.
Parsons said the reason governments won’t cross that line is it could start World War III. Even if it doesn’t, Parsons said engagement could give Putin exactly what he wants: a bolster to his claim that Western governments are out to get Russia.
“There is a real concern that an escalation could just get out of control and could be very bad, very quickly,” he said. “But there’s also a desire among Western policymakers to not give Putin the satisfaction.”
Coming home
Blazak said he was so busy during his trip that he never got the chance to fully process what he saw. However, the experience helped him understand how waves of resurfacing trauma work — a concept he has already begun to teach about in the classroom.
“NPR was on, and, like Pavlov’s dog, immediately it was like, ‘I’m going back. I’m going back. What am I doing here?’” he said.
His students include veterans, former prisoners and those who have experienced horrible things, he said. “I feel like that’s something that I can share with students.”
Blazak also said he learned how much an individual can make a difference and that not everything has to be left up to governments or big organizations.
“I don’t know if I’ll ever meet the kids that I helped bring out,” Blazak said. “But I have a feeling that they’ll remember me and that I was the goofy dad that helped them get them out while the air raid sirens were going off.”
Editor’s note: This story was corrected on April 22 to reflect that Randall Blazak is an instructor at the University of Oregon rather than a professor. He is a Pro Tem Instructor.
