Grant Coursey–Kyiv

October 9, 2023

The time and effort required to get donated aid from Colorado to soldiers on the frontlines of the war in Ukraine sounds Herculean, but the volunteers who make Sunflower Seeds Ukraine’s (SFSU) mission possible manage it while holding full-time jobs, raising children, and supporting friends and family through a difficult time.

SFSU is an initiative of the non-profit Ukrainians of Colorado founded by Andriy Zakutayev that sends non-lethal aid bound for Ukraine to Europe in the checked bags of volunteer travelers flying with Lufthansa Airlines. In September alone, the organization sent bags with four separate travelers, totaling 22 bags, roughly 1000 pounds of aid.

Andriy asked to be referred to by his first name, which is Ukrainian in origin, preferring it to his surname, which is of Russian origin.

The man responsible for packing and delivering the checked bags is Slava Fedor. Fedor, a Ukrainian-born American, moved to the United States in 2000 with his wife Irina. They live in Boulder, Colorado, where they raised two sons and where Fedor can be found assembling SFSU’s shipments late into the night in his garage.

SFSU has sent checked bags through many of Europe's major airports, often Warsaw Chopin International Airport in Poland, because of its proximity to Ukraine and more importantly, SFSU’s staging area in Europe.

Twin sisters Agata Ambrozewska and Beata Danowska, Andriy’s cousins, hold the aid brought to Europe at their mother’s house in Milanowek, a small village outside Warsaw. This is also where Andriy sends supplies he buys from digital European retailers because it is cheaper than purchasing and shipping them from the U.S.

Despite the relatively large amount of aid that comes through their door, the sisters say it has become a normal part of their lives. In September, Danowska’s bigger focus was a lice outbreak at her daughter's school and Ambrozewska’s was getting her son to his jiu-jitsu practices three times a week.

“Andriy, he buys all the stuff. I just get the stuff, I repack it and I connect with Jakub and Oksana, who’s in Rivne, and when Jakub is available, he goes.” Ambrozewska said. “So, at the beginning, it was much harder. Now it is very, very easy because I spend two or three days in a month to prepare the one transport. Every month there is a car full of boxes. In the beginning, it was four or five boxes but now it’s like twenty.”

At the beginning of the war, Ambrozewska said it was difficult to find someone to consistently bring the aid from Poland to SFSU’s warehouse in Rivne Oblast. That was, until she found Jakub Kopyra through a Facebook group consisting of people offering their services to get others out of Ukraine and aid in. Kopyra had already done the drive into western Ukraine several times during the war to help refugees flee the country.

One of these refugees was a young woman with her six-year-old son, the same woman who is now Kopyra’s fiancé and her son, who he sees as his own. As I accompanied Kopyra on the long drive to Rivne, he proudly showed me pictures from the now seven-year-old boy's second-grade class.

Kopyra may not be Ukrainian, but through Google Translate, he told me how much he had always loved the country, all the more so now that he was going to have family there.

Kopyra arrives in Rivne late at night on his once-a-month trek from Warsaw, a drive made longer by the time-consuming process of crossing the Polish-Ukrainian border.

In Rivne, the aid is delivered to Yuri and Oksana Shadyi. They are the masterminds behind SFSU’s operations in Ukraine and founding members of the organization. Each month, the two stay up to feed Kopyra a hot meal when he arrives and help him unload. September’s meal was a hot bowl of homemade borsch.

Yuri is the Director of the Rivne regional center of national-patriotic education, tourism, and local history, a municipal institution of the Rivne regional council and Oksana is the deputy-director of the Council's Public Institution “Rivne Regional Plast Education Center,” while also working as a part-time freelance reporter. The two have a spunky, entertaining, four-year-old daughter, Solomiya, and a thoughtful, comedic, 15-year-old son, Oles.

The aid that makes it to the Shadyi home is stored in what they call, “the warehouse,” which is little more than a glorified shed. There is little space, but with how quickly the volunteers turn aid around and send it to the soldiers, they do not need much.

Oksana handles most of the medical aid that arrives at their warehouse, while her husband Yuri focuses on the tactical equipment.

Next to the boxes of hemostatic and Israeli bandages, tourniquets, and duffel bags full of uniform pieces, are two used missile launchers, a thank-you gift from military units helped by SFSU.

The main way SFSU gets aid to frontline defenders is through Nova Post, Ukraine’s premier postal service.

Oksana and Yuri explained that Nova Post is so helpful for the Ukrainian forces that a common joke in Ukraine is, “You know when a town is going to be liberated from Russia because a Nova Post office arrives before Ukrainian soldiers do.”

When the war began, SFSU had numerous channels through which soldiers requested aid: Telegram, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and more. This became a problem when soldiers requested aid from several members of SFSU or through several messaging apps at once, making it difficult to track which soldiers had received aid.

To fix this, SFSU streamlined the process of requesting aid by creating a Google form for soldiers to fill out, specifying what they need and where to send it. The form has been wildly successful. The organization accurately recorded more than 1250 requests for aid via the online form between March and September of 2023.

Most of these requests are handled by Alyona Romanchuk, a 21-year-old college student studying ecology, who handles requests and packaging for SFSU.

Romanchuk said she prepares 30 or more packages a week to be sent to soldiers, Oksana said she is being humble and that the number is closer to 40 or 50. Packages that Yuri and Oksana deliver to a Nova Post office on the weekends or before heading to work on weekdays.

Oksana admits that sometimes soldiers fail to use the form. Because soldiers pass the Google form and Oksana’s phone number to companions at the front, it is not uncommon for Oksana to receive a call requesting aid directly and for soldiers to show up on her doorstep looking for supplies.

Oksana related this with a rueful smile but would not turn away soldiers seeking assistance.

On September 16, shortly after Kopyra had delivered a fresh shipment of supplies from Poland, a soldier named Oleksandr Lazaruk called Oksana. With Oksana’s permission, he arrived a short time later looking for medical aid and calling other members of his unit to see if they needed anything.

“They have a feeling,” Oksana said, referring to the soldiers who show up on her doorstep. “Somehow they know Jakub came [with new supplies.]”

Lazaruk was happy to explain how helpful SFSU is for him and other defenders. He said the organization has provided equipment and medical supplies that were often much better than what soldiers were issued, or provided supplies that soldiers needed but were never issued. He pointed at the boots he wore as an example, then left with an armful of medical supplies.

For Yuri and Oksana, the whirlwind of managing a small distribution hub has become their “new normal.”

Oksana explained that despite the bombing and pain caused during the past year of war, she and her family try to focus on the good. In her family’s photo album from the last year, there are few pictures of soldiers, funerals, or the toll of war but instead, pictures of the family eating ice cream, hiking, and rock climbing together. Oksana said this was because those are the memories she wants to look back on.

She also explained how her son had already normalized the war, as teenagers are wont to do. She joked that he saw the air raid sirens as an excuse to get out of class more than a source of fear or anxiety at this point in the conflict.

Oksana emphasized that while many Ukrainians, like her family, had normalized the war, it had not lessened their commitment to fight. And, as good as Oksana’s family and friends had become at living with the war, it still impacted them.

Every weekend Oksana invites her two closest friends, Oksana Krasovska and Oksana Vlasiuk, to help her pack medical kits. The three Oksanas pack roughly 40 medical kits a week, generally all of which are requested by defenders that same week.

The week before Oksana was interviewed for this story, her friend Krasovska’s father-in-law was killed on the front lines as he served alongside his son, Roman, her husband.

That same week, Vlasiuk’s husband was hospitalized after sustaining shrapnel injuries on the front. His injuries were less severe than another member of his unit, one Vlasiuk’s husband carried from the front lines back to medical care.

Yuri said that the Rivne side of SFSU’s operation will continue distributing aid to defenders as long as the U.S. side can provide it. Yuri, Oksana, and the rest of the Rivne volunteers remain committed to using any available means to get aid to the troops who need it.