Saskatoon volunteer traveling to Ukraine for the third time in less than a year

When 31-year-old Saskatoon resident Brett Drozd heard about the war in Ukraine last February, it resonated with him and he couldn’t sit idly by without doing something.

So the former live sound technician, who’d been going to school at the time, wrapped up his term, packed his bags and traveled to Poland.

“The nature of the invasion, it struck to the core of me,” he said.

Drozd is of Ukrainian descent, but said he’d never been to Europe and didn’t speak Ukrainian well. He started off working in a warehouse, helping send supplies to the Ukrainian border.

When those tapered off, he said he decided to reach out to other volunteers in Ukraine, to find out where he could be useful.

“I’d brought about $10,000 to $12,000 worth of medical supplies with me, and other supplies with me that I knew could be useful, so I took those with me into the country and was able to dispense those to an airborne unit, as well as hospital supplies to one of the front-line hospitals,” he said.

Over the next year, he said he continued to build his network and completed several additional missions, sometimes coming under fire on the front lines. He said he came home just before Christmas and spent the last few months in Saskatchewan with family.

Drozd said his hope is to head back to Ukraine for his third mission, completing work that he said he left unfinished when he returned home late last year.

“I had met a battlefield coroner. He was critically under-supplied, so I did find a supply of body bags from the United States at cost, fundraised and got enough for 350 bags for him. They’re currently sitting in the west of Ukraine and they need to be transported to the front, which as you can imagine, you can’t just Canada Post that,” he said.

Drozd said he spent his life savings in Ukraine, and has had financial support from his family. He also has a GoFundMe page, and an Instagram page with information on his continuing fundraising efforts, or for those who want to donate.

“The donations I accept from others … it doesn’t go to my own personal living expenses or anything like that. Essentially, it has been my savings that’s been keeping me afloat out there,” he said.
“I am able to support myself, I hope, for the next year out there.”

The 31-year-old said his time in Ukraine has fundamentally changed him. While he’s been lucky so far not to have been injured, other independent volunteers have not been as fortunate.

“I’ve been in a few situations where I’ve been under active fire,” he said. “Myself or anyone I’ve been with at the time never sustained any injuries. One of my colleagues (Andrew Bagshaw), who I was working with last January, was killed doing the same work that we had been doing last summer.”

While his family is worried about him, he said they support him.

“There’s a mix of emotions there. My mom worries about me, of course, but they do say they are proud of me. It’s a great weight lifted off my shoulders to have my family supporting me in what I’m doing,” he said.

Drozd said he expects to leave sometime in mid-April.