Ukraine: No dull chronicle - Joe and Sophie Durso on the turbulent road to Zasillya
Mykolayiv Oblast, southeastern Ukraine
The frozen mud road cutting through flat barren farmland seemed almost endless, with convoluted crevices and pits that had to be maneuvered slowly, each approached at a different angle. We humped, swerved, and dove, weaving the little Chevy Aveo over and around the mega-potholed road at under 15 miles an hour. Bouncing around inside, our team of three journalists—myself, Gleb and Natalia—were decked out in body armor, heavy Kevlar helmets at the ready. We were being followed at a distance by a huge 20-foot-long truck painfully towing a large, overstuffed trailer. Occasionally we would stop so the slower truck could catch up to within sight of us. As we progressed, we found parts of the road easier and sped up to about 25 miles an hour. Later, things slowed again, and we found ourselves following a police car and maintained our distance behind it. Clearly the local cops knew the road well enough to travel without getting stuck or losing their undercarriage to a frozen rut; we were happy to emulate their every move.
After 40 minutes or so, the road flattened out and we passed small settlements. These were little Ukrainian country villages, “selos,” where a hundred-or-so farmers and their families had lived in small, pleasant one-story buildings, sometimes near what appeared to be small agricultural processing plants. Each plant and some of the houses showed signs of having been bombed, missing parts of walls and often entire roofs. Gleb, the driver, explained that this area had been under Russian bombardment for several months. Most of the younger women with children had fled as refugees for the west of Ukraine or nearby Poland, Slovakia, and Czechia; most men went to the front lines; and older people, unprepared to start over in a strange new land, had remained, living in their basements for much of the last year, hoping a Russian rocket or artillery wouldn’t come through the roof. After passing through several selos, we pulled onto the apparent main drag of one called Zasillya.
Spotting a crowd, we pulled over. Ahead were dozens of bulkily attired people, lined up in the bitter-cold and intermittently blowing but not-sticking snow, for aid packages dispensed by three rather bored-looking workers from a nondescript truck that had probably once been yellow, now almost as mud-colored as the road. They were handing out off-white boxes of toiletries prominently labeled “NRC”: the Norwegian Refugee Council.
The big truck behind us drove up, and through the open window a couple with strong English accents asked where they should park. Joe and Sophie Durso had a truck and a trailer full of supplies—donated food, clothing, and medicine they’d driven here all the way from the UK. Gleb got out of our car, consulted the crowd, and directed the Dursos to a grassy area by the road. Out jumped Joe and Sophie, a fit-looking couple in their 50s, short-cropped wheat-colored hair blowing in the wind.
The locals, mostly older women, left the NRC truck and grayish boxes of toiletries to check out this novel and colorful arrival. As they came over, Joe stretched a large shamrock-green tarp onto the grass. Women set NRC boxes on the corners to keep it from blowing away.
Joe started unpacking multihued bags onto the tarp. Gleefully, women laughed and picked through the clothes, commenting at length on which of their neighbors would benefit from this or that coat, suddenly quite animated, especially when they learned Joe and Sophie had traveled here from the UK to help. Despite the freezing wind and snow, the mood had changed to party time.
But when we took aside one of the women for an interview, she broke down into tears. She said this selo had undergone horrific daily artillery bombardments for many months. Only occasionally had she been able to venture out from her basement to go to the bathroom (the water and electricity were cut off during the early days of the shelling in March 2022). She said she was lucky her daughter had found work in Poland and could send money for food; otherwise, things would have been immeasurably worse. Her story and others on the front lines is one I want and intend to tell, but right now I’m fascinated by Joe and Sophie: Why are they in Ukraine, what makes them tick?
Sometimes in life you meet people who seem straight out of a blockbuster movie. Joe and Sophie Durso are two such people - self-described self-funded volunteer aid workers, bringing food, clothing, and medicine to Ukraine. I interviewed them twice, once in Kherson with the intermittent sounds of artillery in the background and again over WhatsApp.
What got you two interested in helping Ukraine?
Joe: “We hadn’t been interested in Ukraine until the war started. Like most people, we watched the war unfold on television. We saw the refugees going into Poland, we saw the misery of the women and children, and we saw how the Polish and Ukrainian border guards and international volunteers were helping them.”
Unlike most of those watching these tragedies unfold on the evening news, Joe and Sophie decided to do something about it. Just a few months earlier, Joe, a firefighter by profession, had had a serious traumatic experience. “This is a bit of a hard story for us to tell,” he said. “You'll notice that from time to time, our eyes will water. It's a bit emotional. I had just been diagnosed with cancer, and the chances of survival were pretty low. I underwent treatment and I thought if I wasn't going to survive for long, I wanted to do something special with my life before it ends. As for Sophie, she had just finished some of her medical qualifications, and I have some medical qualifications as well, mostly relating to trauma care. So, between us, we thought this would be a really good way of making the most of the rest of our time together. And seeing all the refugees in need on TV, I thought that helping others seemed like the best thing to do… I couldn't think of a nicer people to help than Ukrainians.”
Sophie was completely supportive. “Long story short, as a child I always wanted to be a paramedic, but life got in the way,” she said. “I didn't make it. And then two years ago, I had the opportunity to start doing a first aid course, and it kind of grew from there... And when this started, I figured, what is the point in me getting trained and not doing something with that training? So, Joe wanted to do something worthwhile with what may or may not be the rest of his life. Between us, we thought this would be a really good way of making the most of our time together… So, we said, yeah, let's go! And it snowballed from there.”
Joe and Sophie took leave from work, emptied their bank accounts, bought a 20-foot-long Dodge Ram 1500 truck and an attached trailer, and set up an organization called Ukraine First Aid Support, advertising it through word of mouth and a Facebook page. Soon after, they started to receive donations of clothing, food, and medicine, as well as funding through a PayPal account.
Polish-Ukrainian border
They then drove to the Polish-Ukraine border. “But our documents weren't correct, so we didn't actually go to Ukraine, other than visiting for one day,” Joe recalled.
In the border town of Peremyshl, they found “a huge refugee center, which had been set up by volunteers just like us,” he said. “Lots of volunteers…hundreds of volunteers from all over the world.” The volunteers were treating “predominantly women and children or disabled men who were leaving Ukraine… But interestingly, once in the humanitarian center, the refugees themselves were standing up and helping with running the center. There were even some Russians helping… There were people from everywhere, all walks of life… There was very much a feeling of ‘we're all the same here’… And we spent time there, and when we left, we figured we'd done something.
“Let me add that working in the humanitarian aid center was also quite a traumatic experience,” he said. “I am a firefighter in my normal life, and I've seen some horrible things, but what I didn't expect is the emotional impact it has on you when you are seeing children with shrapnel wounds, seeing and hearing from women who have been through the most horrific experiences. We planned on spending two weeks there, but we could only handle ten days of it. We were so traumatized by the things we were hearing and seeing that we couldn't stop crying, and we said, ‘We've got to go.’” He and Sophie headed back for the UK, but on the way, they decided they had to return.
You mentioned that this effective, multinational, nongovernmental refugee center was eventually closed by the Polish Red Cross. What happened?
Joe: “There was one of these big multinational grocery Tesco stores in Peremyshl. And it had been closed earlier and was empty. So, the company turned it over to the volunteers to use as a refugee center. And every day there was a constant circulation of, say, 1,000 people. It may have been a bit more, but we can round it down to 1,000 people who come across the border at that time every day. These refugees needed a meal and a bed for the night. The next day, transportation was arranged for them to Krakow, Warsaw, or elsewhere. Immigration papers were arranged for them, all by volunteers. And it was all set up and worked like clockwork. It wasn't necessarily a clinically clean situation, but it ran like clockwork. And that had been going on for months without any incidents. But the Polish Red Cross weren't very happy about it, because it was independent and stealing the limelight and the Polish Red Cross wasn't getting much publicity. In fact, the Red Cross were virtually pushed off the site because there was so much free aid being given out that they didn't have much to do other than parade around in their fancy fleets of cars and Gucci uniforms. So, they left the site.” Clearly, the international and local volunteers had rankled the establishment.
So, according to Joe, the Polish Red Cross decided to retaliate. “In the background, what no one knew is that the Red Cross had asked the mayor of Peremyshl to throw out all of the volunteers and close down the volunteer-run refugee center, so that the Red Cross could then take it over. And that is what they did.” The volunteers were removed, and the Red Cross took over. The number of refugees availing themselves of the center decreased exponentially. “I think they were having about 100 refugees a day instead of 1,000 a day. The Red Cross ran it entirely on their own. And now the center is completely closed.”
After Peremyshl, Joe and Sophie returned to the UK, “raided the bank account again,” re-stocked their supplies, and headed to Lviv, to the refugee center at the Arena Sport Stadium. They dropped off provisions there, stayed a few days, and returned to Britain.
Their third trip was deep inside Ukraine, to Mykolayiv, a city 70 miles east of Odesa on the Black Sea. At that time, it was only 30 miles from the front lines where Russian forces had been stopped in their advance. There the Dursos would get their first baptism by fire.
Nightmare in Mykolayiv
Can you tell us about your first night in Mykolayiv?
Joe: “Sure… our first time in Mykolayiv. At the time, the nearby city of Kherson had been already taken over by the Russians. And Mykolayiv was next in the Russian sights. But we didn't know that it was going to be bombed that night. We had done all the research before we went. We talked to people on the way there, and they said Mykolayiv was fairly quiet and should be quite safe. So, arriving just before the nightly curfew, we managed to get a hotel...”
Sophie: “Joe had been driving all day, so by the time we got to the hotel, he was exhausted. We checked into the hotel and the manager said, ’Bye. I'll be back in the morning!’ and just leaves. We're like, ‘OK… that's a bit odd, but OK!’ We knew there was a curfew. We knew we'd only just got there in time. We were exhausted and immediately went to bed. Joe was asleep within five minutes of hitting the pillow. I was lying there listening to far-off gunfire; it was in the distance, but you heard 10 smaller booms and then two big ones, and then it would be quiet for about a couple of minutes and there’d be another 10, then another 10 or 12 and then two big ones, and it was the same cycle over and over.
“And I was still lying there for hours, unable to sleep, but the gunfire still wasn't bothering me too much because it was in the distance. However, later I started to hear that it was getting a bit closer… And getting a bit closer still. And then it was about one in the morning, and there was one explosion that was a lot closer, at which point Joe woke up, not sure whether he was dreaming or something.
“And then he opened his eyes, looked at me and realized, ‘OK, that's not a dream.’ So, we headed downstairs. There wasn't a bomb shelter or anything down there, but earlier, on the way up the stairs, I had thought to myself, if we need such a place, this is a very small corridor, only as wide as a very narrow door. And it's the bottom of the stairs, so it's within the stairwell. It had many walls: a good place to go. So that's where we went. We sat down there for maybe 45 minutes to an hour, listening to the explosions all getting closer and closer. But they were still not on top of us.”
Joe’s memory:
“Sophie had laid awake listening to the bombing in the distance until at one point the bombing got so near it shook me out of the bed. And I first thought that it was a dream. As I turned over and looked at Sophie, and I realized it was no dream. We had had a little bit of training from some military friends and others, and we knew what we needed to do. So, we got up and we headed to look for a basement, but there wasn't any! Now what? But there was a corridor, slightly below ground level, that Sophie had earlier spotted on our way into our room. We immediately headed for that, and we stayed in that corridor for about an hour. And then the bombing seemed to stop. So, we thought, ‘Oh, OK, it's safe to go back to bed now.’ So, we went back up to our room on the second floor and just lay on the bed fully clothed. And then about an hour passed and the bombing started again. And it got nearer and nearer.” The two made a hasty retreat back down to the corridor.
“The bombing went on all night, on and off. At five in the morning, the Russians decided that they were going to pretty much hit the hotel. And the bombing was just so near and we looked at each other and we thought, ‘OK, this is our time. We're not leaving here alive.’ And we just held each other and waited for ‘the white light’…”
The nudes at the end of the tunnel
“And then there was an amusing situation,” Joe said, “if there can be such a thing in a bombing situation! An almighty explosion causing all the doors to blow in. At that moment, at the end of the corridor, a naked man and woman ran into the corridor where we were cowering. They saw us, and the woman, who had a blanket with her, covered herself and the guy just ran back into their room. Both of them looked totally shocked senseless to see us in the corridor!
“So yeah, that was the most terrifying experience of our lives. We did survive it. And the next morning, we went outside the hotel to see just how lucky we had been! And if you will excuse my French, it was, like, ‘Let's get the fuck out of here, out of Ukraine, and fast —now!’ We went up to our room, grabbed all our medical equipment, and headed back down to the truck. And by the time we reached the truck, we’d reconsidered: “Hold on a minute, we came here to help. So, let's head into the city and start helping.”
And that is what they did. Again, and again, and again.
I had some questions about working in Ukraine: how to pick where to work and whom to trust?
How do you know where exactly to deposit aid to Ukraine?
“We normally post messages on Facebook and other online groups and say, ‘We're on our way, this is what we've got. Anyone interested, make contact,’” Joe said. “And en route, because it's such a long drive, we get a few days to sift through all of the people who message us.
“And the first thing we do is try to weed out the people who are corrupt, the people who are asking for aid and then they're just selling it. And there are a lot of those people out there. So, we do checks online, trying to find out who is who - which people we definitely will not help. And then we break it down bit by bit to see who the neediest are. And that's where we head for.”
Afterward
After my trip to Zasillya, I posted images and comments on my Facebook page. Some of my colleagues and friends have worked professionally for many years with major aid organizations, and I received comments from them, mostly offline. However, one respected friend, Robyn Ziebert, whom I knew from my times in El Salvador and who put in a lifetime of very good work, commented openly and gave permission to use her comments. Here is our exchange:
Robyn Ziebert: “As an old aid worker…this is reminding me of my four winters in Bosnia. And later Kosovo. ’92, ’93, ’94…’98, ’99. Wow. Thank you. People are undeniably generous and caring. Bosnia and Herzegovina was a bit closer to access than Ukraine. But in Ukraine they do need the clothing. Now.”
“Sooner rather than later, however, it will be more cost effective to donate money and have aid agencies purchase and distribute as locally as possible. Sending donated clothing by boat, plane, and train sounds like a lovely thing to do but is prohibitively expensive. And usually a waste. With agency help on the ground the money stays local and excess donated clothing doesn’t have to be burned.”
Me: “Very good point! But these are individuals doing what they wanted to do. The interesting thing is that they tend to go far off the beaten path—and they find very thankful people! Sometimes the big agencies miss places, or at least that's what these volunteers say and what the recipients confirm. It also allows these people to feel solidarity with perfect strangers and to feel that someone in the UK cares about them. But I accept your point.”
Robyn Ziebert: “What you say is very true. Small groups of loving, giving people helping others. And yes, often able to slip into areas where others haven’t been able to reach. My concern, amongst others, is coordinating and not duplicating efforts… Many NGOs brought in a lot more via trucks and trains. In Bosnia, the UN High Commission for Refugees rented a huge warehouse near Metkovic, all the clothing sent using donated funds, by ship, air and trains. Trucks of course too. We then had to pay staff to sort clothing into clean and dirty, no used underwear, etc. And security. And people to load trucks for convoys. Drivers. And then in the end most of all that was destroyed: too expensive to distribute. And wasted.
“New underwear, socks, gloves, hats can be a good thing to take if you’re traveling into a region. Hard-to-find items…always depending where you are… School supplies are good, but it’s very dependent upon where. Children like to have their own cups: this may sound silly to some, but it’s helpful.
“After a horrendous mudslide that destroyed 150 homes in a Mexican village, we spent more time and effort sorting than distributing. In the end we left things accessible on the plaza for people to take what they needed or wanted. Three huge semi-trucks and one large building’s worth of donated clothing were sent on to the south, where there were more slides, or were simply destroyed. I know, I know, I’ve made my point. Sometimes donations of clothing, etc. work and sometimes not. People-to-people is a wonderful thing when it works, showing survivors people care—when it doesn’t duplicate and is needed.”
Other volunteers aid worker critics wouldn’t allow me to quote them, so I have little space for them here, but one did make a very important point. Aid organizations had never planned to be working in Europe when Russian invaded Ukraine and were caught off-guard and ill-prepared. They are, after all, mainly aimed at Third World crises.
My main takeaway from Zasillya was that Joe and Sophie Durso’s efforts, seemingly coming out of nowhere, were incredibly morale-boosting for the long-suffering Ukrainians. And when you are fighting a war, keeping morale high is essential to survival.
Whenever I have traveled lately by train in Ukraine, especially between Poland and Kyiv, I’ve often met young volunteers: medics, prosthesis-fitters, physical therapists and those who participate in “hot-extractions” of civilians under fire. They are a vital and significant part of the collective defense against Russian aggression.
We must remember that the threats against volunteer aid workers are very real. At the beginning of this year, British volunteer aid workers Chris Parry and Andrew Bagshaw were killed while trying to rescue an elderly woman from the town of Soledar in eastern Ukraine, probably by members of Russia’s Wagner group. Being captured by the Russians can be even worse. Another British volunteer aid worker, Paul Urey, was captured in April at a checkpoint near Zaporizhzhia in southeastern Ukraine while working to evacuate civilians there. He died in captivity of “illness and stress,” according to the Russians. But The New York Times headline to his story stated: “The body of a British aid worker captured by Russian proxies showed signs of torture, a Ukrainian official says.”
The Dursos are now on their seventh trip to Ukraine. If you want you can follow them on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100083226405779
This article was graciously edited by Cynthia Rubin.