Pictured, above: A bombed bridge near Kharkiv at Starisoltov, Ukraine. Photo Ben Stott

”This day was the most satisfying and fun since I arrived: good new friends, hard physical labor and an ephemeral sense of having contributed something tangible to repair the crime perpetrated on Ukraine. If anyone there is feeling depressed and bored with themselves and the pettiness of our everyday worries and concerns, I recommend coming here and volunteering. It’s liberating. At a minimum you’ll get to appreciate in a visceral way how lucky and blessed we are with the scope of the things which upset us. Sorry, I think I’m saying: it could be worse. That’s either trite or patronizing or both. Anyway I’m happy tonight to be here and to be sharing my experiences with you all.”

–Dr. Ben Stott from Zaporizhzhya, Ukraine November 1, 2022

Editor’s Note: Dr. Ben Stott is known to many in the Ashland area in particular for his skills as an acupuncturist. Inspired by fellow Ashlander and activist, Sharon Harris, Ben has undertaken a trip to Poland and Ukraine, hoping to set up a small clinic to use his skills to help people suffering from the war there. Ben took a number of medical supplies with him and was able to deliver them close to the front line.

It turns out that his travels have also led to engaging in other services, including volunteering to clear debris from a bombed out school and engaging with others who have come from many countries to support those in Ukraine with their various resources. Naturally, the journey has also led to a profound inner process of reflection, some of which Ben candidly shares in a thread to some friends and allies. After landing in Poland, Ben travels to Kiev, Kharkiv, Bakmud, Zaporihzhzya, Kherson, Mykolaiv and Odessa, sometimes returning to KIev in-between. Some reports were written en route to a destination.

Ben offers a birds-eye view into his own experience and life of those beset by a war they did not expect. Everyones’ energy seems to require a laser focus on strategic resistance and how to offer humanitarian aid in the midst of missile attacks, blown-up bridges and far too many destroyed apartment buildings. The there is the triage of rescuing Ukrainians from not only bombings, but hunger and shortages of water and food. This is all interwoven with some visits to churches, where Ben is drawn to look for sacred spaces and to reflect upon the strange beauty of religious “ikonostases.” In these haunting and seemingly hollow spaces, he looks for the Divine.

His journey leads him from Poland into Kiev and various other Ukranian cities and towns, helping to deliver medical supplies or bicycles, for instance: much at the service of what some might call Divine Orchestration. His original plan morphs him into various roles according to the day. Each experience begs particular support and insights, together with a spiritual practice of trust in the unknown, detachment and patience.

10-24-22 Kiev

This town feels like home, like Paris or Lisbon – full of art, coffee shops and history. What madness to want to bomb it. There’s talk of an imminent invasion from Belarus southward to cut off supply routes for military stuff from Poland. Looking at the map that would make it impossible to get back to Warsaw and home so I might have to find my way south to Odessa and cross into Moldova. So far this adventure has been mostly touristic and the war mostly over the horizon and sort of hazy and distant. But it could get very real in a moment and most likely will on this next leg heading from Kiev to Kharkiv. Our van is filled with wheelchairs …. I’m rested now and open to the challenge. Sooner or later though, my small bravado is bound to be tested and perhaps deflated or worse. I hope to have the honesty to report that too. 

10-28-22 Kiev

After a hiatus of three days wandering around Kiev: Oh, and I found out today that the Lavra monastery with all the beautiful churches I sent pictures of yesterday, which is the center of the Russian Orthodox Church in Kiev was used by the KGB in 2014, as an arms depot when they were fomenting trouble there. So the place is not so innocent and pure.

Anyway, today I drove with a really interesting Ukrainian American woman who runs some kind of defense policy and national security consulting company here, who was full of info about the backstory of the war. Too much to peck out this late at night, but one thing that stuck in my mind is the grandiose lie the Russians have foisted on the west. They have been justifying their annexation of the Donbas because the people there spoke Russian and therefore identified with Russia, not Ukraine; and that they were persecuted for speaking Russian. This is all propaganda.

Half of Ukraine speaks Russian part of the time; a quarter all the time (until the war) but they all think of themselves as Ukrainian, just as Spanish speakers in the states don’t give their allegiance automatically to Mexico. And the reason they speak Russian in the Donbas to start with, is that Stalin starved millions of people in 1931-33 in that region when he forced collectivization of all the farms and shipped all the Cossacks to Siberiaand then relocated “reliable” ethnic Russians in to take over the vacant farms. 

I met an IT guy in Poltava, on the way, who spoke some great English and worked for an American company. He said his whole family and most of his friends had grown up speaking Russian but never thought of themselves as other than Ukrainian. So that said, the whole justification for the war is a lie. The secessionist war in 2014 was fomented by Russian agitators and a small number of their lackeys. It was not a popular uprising and the voting was as rigged then, as it was just now. Hearing all the stories of how the Russians are behaving leaves me disgusted beyond imagination. 

I had dinner with two high ranking soldier (friends of Lotta, the security consultant) and got my first real taste of what is going on at the ground level. One of the men, when I asked him what his job in the army was, said “killing Muscovite’s.” He also worked as an interrogator. He’s a broken man, but his commitment to freeing his country was like steel. I’m going to treat a medic who works for him tomorrow and, if I can relieve the guy’s back pain maybe he will let me try and help him as well. He’s like a volcano about to go off from stress and I’m scared I won’t have the skill to deal with this level of trauma. I’ve never met a man like him. Tomorrow we are getting a tour from him of the damaged parts of the city and I will send pictures. This is what I came for. Now the test begins. 

10-29-22 Kharkiv

Notes on the fly, as I tour the bombed ruins of Kharkiv: I was wrong about the deportations in the 30s. That happened in the west. The forced famine was enough – over eight million people died. No Russian was ever held accountable. The event is called the Holodamar in history books. I’ve seen an institute for blind children in ruins, a huge neighborhood of high rise apartments for more than 10000 people burned out and abandoned – on and on. The Russians thought they would be welcomed in February, maybe because Kharkiv is only 40 km from the border. After 5 days they realized that would never happen and accurate bombing of all government and military structures went on for weeks. When that didn’t work they started shelling the whole city till late August just to terrorize. 

I’m traveling with a human rights activist who is downloading so much information about the process of the war and the descent of Russian troops into barbarism as they are forced to face the truth that they are the invaders not saviors and that they can never win. I am convinced now that the US is complacent in all this suffering by not giving Ukraine the means to end this war quickly, which they could do- so I am told by the soldiers I talked to- in particular with long-distance HIMARs. I’m standing now in front of a bombed school. My new friend doesn’t say this was done on purpose – maybe they thought there were soldiers inside. 

Another glimpse: This afternoon I went to an army barracks to treat a medic with back pain and sciatica. I was taken by Lotta’s boyfriend, the heavy duty “killer” soldier guy, who I am getting to know better now and admire. He used to be a dentist… anyway I had told him I wanted to help him relax and to put me off he gave me the test of treating this comrade with big pain. The barracks was an abandoned building with a long dim corridor with storage rooms off to the sides with little light and no heat, no beds and just a few chairs and heaped with military gear. I got a laugh, contrasting the conditions with my cozy office. The young soldier was actually frail, maybe 130-140 lbs, with scoliosis on top of his pain. His work was carrying wounded soldiers out of battle on his back. Imagine the stress.

Anyway I found a mattress in the corner of one room, got some rapport with the help of the translator on my phone and treated his back just using points on his opposite arm, because it was too cold to expose anything more. With needles in, I got him up to stretch and move and he got that delicious stoned look of amazement that his pain had gone. Actually it first moved to his opposite leg, so I put a few more needles in the other arm to get that. Would that every treatment worked as well. 

Having met the Tough Guy’s challenge, I had fun teasing him about being next and he chickened out. This is the guy who has been on the front lines battling for nine months…I think he knew, unconsciously, that if he let down his guard at all he might fall apart and “decompensate.” Maybe I’ll get a chance to do something tomorrow when I go back to give the other guy a second treatment. I’m hoping to have a good result … This might open up opportunities to stay here and work for a while. 

These soldiers are risking their lives day after day and having to sleep on floors like animals. I guess that’s why they’re so tough. By the way, the guys I talked to today said we don’t know the Russians like they do; how they think and what they’re capable of. They are convinced the US government is riddled with witting and unwitting FSB agents and that they are absolutely responsible for the increasing amount of social and political discord and violence in our country. They swore that, watching tapes of the Jan 6 riots, they could see and hear people speaking Russian in the crowd.

Wow I’m starting to buy into the conspiracy mind, but these guys know an awful about Russian tactics, having borne the brunt of their machinations since Putin came to power…especially from 2013 onward: the divide and conquer handbook. Let no one be allowed to assert that Russia is not an expansionist imperial power whose overarching goal is to demolish the primacy of western/ American influence and power. Many these guys  think maybe that would not be a bad thing. Come here and look at the alternative ethos. It’s awful!!! And this is independent of whether Ukraine is a shining light in comparison. Don’t forget for the last 100 years Ukraine has been ruled by Russia, so it’s sullied by association. 

Just the architecture tells that story. Since the 90’s, there’s been a renaissance here, particularly among the young, to adopt western values and culture and turn away from soviet domination and oppression. That’s what Putin-s afraid of: a comparison between two zeitgeists, knowing full well that his autocratic police-state vision wouldn’t hold up and he would be tossed in the dustbin of history. Isn’t it ironic that that is bound to happen anyway? Anyone who admires Putin, recognizing what’s going on here in his name is without a moral conscience. I’m bursting from all I saw today. Excuse my rant!

10-30-2022 Kharkiv

It’s getting really interesting now. I was just visiting the room of this heavy-duty soldier guy (I treated his medic). He wanted to show me his weapons: Three types of grenades, a sniper rifle, two sci-fi machine guns, an Ak47 and a bunch of pistols, one with a silencer. I gave him my knife and he said, I think seriously: “ I’ll send you a piece of a Russian.” The guy is so scary-serious. His call sign is “executioner.” He is so full of hatred of the Russians and more and more, as I see what they have done here and heard the multiple stories of torture chambers and deliberate targeting of apartment houses, I am getting polarized for sure. 

It’s so easy to blow off the news in the west, thinking it’s propaganda or exaggerated but here I am confronted by the ugly face of it and can’t look away. I want to lobotomize people who support or passively equivocate about Russia’s actions and justifications. I am so wired to see both sides of every argument, but not here, not this. I just had coffee with a Canadian aid worker from BC and his son, who’ve been here since March doing amazing things. With no money of his own, he’s gotten a bunch of vans together and takes medical supplies and food out to remote villages in recently reoccupied territories. 

The people there are starving because the Russians take everything when they leave, even the pots and pans. They showed me videos of old ladies so desperate for handouts they were fighting each other to get to the truck. These guys are doing such great work and taking big risks to do what the government and the Red Cross won’t do. The UN and the Red Cross won’t give out food unless you go online and register first and get a special pass. The people in these villages don’t have homes, let alone computers or even electricity. It’s absurd and typical of bureaucracy. They have huge amounts of supplies, but they don’t leave their warehouses. I‘ve sent a picture of their little organization above. 

Please, if my stories move you to want to help Ukraine, these guys are worth supporting. Please give what you can. I gave them $500 out of my pocket. Their group is HUGS. I’m writing in the van on the way to Dnipro now so it’s kind of a shorthand report. I’m going to try to get back to Kharkiv soon and work with the Canadians. I’m excited to hang out with them. They’re inspirational. More later.

11-01 Zaporizhzhya 

Finally I completed my self assigned task of delivering the medical supplies I brought to as close to the end users as I could get. This warehouse in Zaporizhzhya is only about 30 km from Kherson where the fighting is fierce and ongoing. Supplies are shipped from here to the front. It’s satisfying to have completed this task, though the warehouse was full of supplies, so my stuff was a small addition. For some reason they remain short of tourniquets and I only brought a dozen. Afterwards, we went to visit a pediatric hospital with 500 beds but only about a dozen patients, because most of the women and children have already been evacuated. Zaporizhzhya normally has 700,000 people – now half are gone. Imagine having to leave your life, your work and home, not knowing if anything will remain if you can ever return.

The hospital…was sadly run down and impoverished. They are lacking the most basic equipment to take care of their kids. For some reason they specifically asked for help getting a modern colonoscopy thing for kids. The doctors were so open and appreciative of our even trying to help and I would love to find a way to support them. Sharon and I are setting up a sister hospital relationship with Providence in Medford and we think that will reap benefits for them moving forward. 

Tomorrow I’m meeting with the director of a prosthetic limb company that has an in-house clinic in hopes that I can help anyone with phantom limb pain. It seems I won’t be able to work in any hospitals without a permit from the department of health and that will be difficult to procure bureaucratically. So my last chance may be to go back to Kharkiv and work with soldiers if my “killer” friend is willing to help. Otherwise I’ll just drive and help with refugees until I get burned out and find my way home. 

Another possibility is to work with World Kitchen. They’re doing amazing work feeding people and in my opinion would be a very worthwhile charity to support. One issue I’m noticing here is related to logistics. There is a lot of aid that has been donated, but lots of supplies are locked away in warehouses and aren’t getting out to the remote, often dangerous areas where it’s needed. The UN and Red Cross are particularly stuck because of their bureaucratic rules. For example they won’t send their trucks to the places even I’ve gone to, let alone the front lines, because their insurance won’t allow it. But they won’t share their huge supplies with the independent volunteers who are willing to take the risk and save the lives of all the people who are starving without heat, electricity or even water in the little settlements that have recently been liberated by the army. 

Also I haven’t seen or heard of anything being done for refugees by the Ukrainian government, but probably it’s there and I just haven’t seen them. All I’ve seen are volunteers and NGOs from all over: people looking past self-interest, mostly, and actually getting so much back from helping. In my other role, I’m mother henning some I meet. It’s so common to see people burning themselves out in the face of so much need because they feel guilty or something for taking care of themselves. The feeling of powerlessness to change the situation and end this madness is draining. I notice many if not most ( and I can’t exclude myself) get hooked into emotions of anger and hatred of Russians. They/we lose their ability or willingness to see their opponents as people trapped by circumstances beyond their control. 

I guess in war you have to dehumanize your enemy to be able to kill them. The man I played ping pong with has spoken Russian his whole life and doesn’t even know how to speak Ukrainian well, says that now he refuses to speak Russian anymore and always felt Ukrainian. If the Russians thought they were liberating the oppressed Russian speakers of the Donbas and Luhansk, they have a weird way of doing it, bombing the whole areas civilian population, torturing and raping and using the men as cannon fodder on their front lines. What a limp excuse for a cultural genocide and territorial land grab. When people say we’re responsible for this war because NATO expansion threatened Russia’s national security, they’re wrong. All the Baltic countries begged to join NATO – we didn’t coerce them – because they all knew Russia’s true nature and expansionist ambitions and wanted protection. Russia doesn’t fear a NATO invasion of their homeland, [they just] fear it is stymying its plan to reconstitute its empire at the expense of the aspirations and freedom of its neighbors. It’s uncool to think in Cold War terms of Russia as evil or a threat to our way of life, but talking to many people here, who have lived under Russian domination their whole lives, you get a different perspective. They are not nice guys.

11-8-22  Kharkiv

The pictures tell the story of the last few days but to round things out a little: I was stuck in Kiev for a few days, reduced to obsessing about “iconostases” again for lack of any clear direction or sense of purpose being here. It’s not tourism, that’s for sure. But I felt unfinished, as if I had just skimmed the surface of this desperate, beautiful place and hadn’t yet gotten close to the heart of the peoples’ experience having their lives ripped apart so violently. 

Then in a two hour period I got in contact with Paul …got invited to go to Bakmud where the fighting has been particularly heavy to bring aid to refugees stuck there- and then at dinner that night, met a French human rights film journalist who asked immediately if she could come along… and had a car. So we’ve become sort of a team and came to Kharkiv yesterday. 

Today we went with a bunch of Aussie guys to a village called Starisoltov (who knows it’s spelling in Cyrillic) about 30 km north of the city, which had been almost completely destroyed by Russian shelling in April and May. While she filmed around the city, I worked clearing the blown up sheet metal riddled with shrapnel off the roof so it can be replaced. The school is being renovated and set up as a “warm shelter” for the village this winter as there is no electricity, water or internet anywhere around.

Imagine how much work it will take to rebuild this society as a whole, destroyed for what? All the people in this village speak Russian as their native tongue. Is this Putin’s way of “liberating “ them from Ukrainian oppression? They laugh when I ask if they felt oppressed and point at their burned out school and their houses and their church. So, this day was the most satisfying and fun since I arrived: good new friends, hard physical labor and an ephemeral sense of having contributed something tangible to repair the crime perpetrated on Ukraine. If anyone there is feeling depressed and bored with themselves and the pettiness of our everyday worries and concerns, I recommend coming here and volunteering. It’s liberating. At a minimum you’ll get to appreciate in a visceral way how lucky and blessed we are with the scope of the things which upset us. Sorry, I think I’m saying: it could be worse. That’s either trite or patronizing or both. Anyway I’m happy tonight to be here and to be sharing my experiences with you all. 

11-14-22 Kiev

My absence in writing to you all is reflective of another period of watching and waiting for another opportunity to volunteer somewhere. I made a mistake, I think, coming south with my journalist friend, following her agenda in lieu of creating my own. But it was so much easier having wheels and I thought maybe I was just in the flow or something. We got blocked at a checkpoint  from making it to Kherson and Mykolaiv, though lovely, is half deserted and without clean water and I don’t know how to get engaged here. I am saying goodbye to Emma tomorrow, after visiting a nearby liberated village and getting a ride to Odessa, and then a train back to Kiev where, on my own, I trust I’ll reconnect with the groups I met before and get something going. I feel my time growing short and it makes me anxious when I cater to the sense that there is something of significance to be done or discovered before leaving. Mind-stuff that sours the spontaneity and contentment that have been frequent guests along the way so far. I’m in contact, on a thread, with a Brazilian aid-worker who may include me on some runs close to the border at Zaporizhzhya where the nuclear power plant is. That would be spicy but I’ve offered, and now it’s out of my hands.