‘The real medicine is artillery’
My new favourite guy is a Canadian called Brandon Mitchell, a volunteer combat medic. He and some Ukrainian colleagues recently completed a tour of the UK in a bombed-out ambulance, raising awareness.
The video below shows him speaking at Trafalgar Square at the rally on 24.2.24, the second anniversary of the full-scale invasion. It’s only about two minutes long. (Sorry about the quality. A better, longer version is available here.)
A Western advocate for Ukraine can be blunt and some people will find it distasteful - I don’t think Brandon will be invited back to Trafalgar Square next year - but while angry Ukrainians get dismissed outright as emotional and biased, it’s harder to do this with someone who is devoting themselves to the cause 100% by choice. I met Brandon in person when I went a talk at University College Ukrainian Society the day before, and his message was much the same, if at greater length. He is not a ‘good speaker’. He is not interested in being a ‘good speaker’. He’s marginally less intense one-to-one but the intensity is still there. He looks traumatised, and presumably is.
Brandon’s key message:
“Donate to drones, because so many people will only donate to medical. Thank you very much for everyone who donates to medical, but that’s not how we win a war. I’m sure we will have a fantastic paralympic team! Thank you very much for that. The real medicine is artillery! I’m done. Bullshit! Bullshit! I thank you.
Drones and artillery are equally important, but the latter has to come from states, while individuals can fund drones.
‘Medic’ evokes an image of hospitals, and some degree of order. But combat medics – like Brandon and my late friend Savita – live in or close behind the trenches, and crawl out to drag wounded soldiers back from the zero line (the actual point of contact at the front line). They need cover from artillery, and scouting drones, to do this. The Ukrainian joke that the Russians regard a red cross as a target is not really a joke. Kill a medic and you make more deaths more likely. Medics themselves are armed, which can confuse Westerners who see armed soldiers in appeals for medical help.
Certainly donations for medical and social projects are important - my JustGiving is for that, and JustGiving forbids you from collecting money for military purposes. But paradoxically the Ukrainian military are the ultimate lifesavers. While babies in east Ukraine need nappies, they need even more not to have their parents killed in the fighting, their homes destroyed and their limbs blown off by missiles, however high quality the prostheses available in hospitals further west may be. And that means military hardware to prevent and repel attacks.
If you are interested in donating to buy drones, the best way to do so is via individual Ukrainians collecting for units with which they are associated. It is of course hard for Westerners to identify the right people, but my dear friend Maria passes on my own donations to collections of that kind, so contact me and we can make sure your money ends up where it’s needed.