“Hello Daniel, my name is Dima. I’m a friend of Anya and Bogdon’s. I heard that you are going into Ukraine soon. Is there a chance that you would have an empty seat for me?”
I got this call on Thursday, two days before I left for Ukraine. My first thoughts had to do with how many boxes I wouldn’t be able to take into the country, and how many podcasts I wouldn’t be able to listen to on the road. I don’t love last minute changes and my initial reactions are almost always negative. But I’d also taken the bus most of the way to Kyiv, and wouldn’t make someone else do that if I could take them with me. So, that’s how I got a passenger for this trip into Ukraine.
I was really hoping that it wouldn’t turn out to be an awkward trip. Thankfully, it wasn’t. Dima is a warm and engaging person with a fun, if quirky, sense of humor. I’m a bit quirky, too, so it was right up my ally.
Dima and his wife have three school age kids, and because of that he is allowed to leave Ukraine. But he only comes to the Czech Republic to visit his family. He has chosen to remain in Ukraine and so that he can where he can. We had about 17 hours in the car together, so I heard quite a few stories.
“I quit being a programmer, and now I want to be a builder. I want to rebuild Ukraine.” Computer programming is one of the few jobs that Ukrainians are able to keep working at without interruption in spite of the war. They can even be displaced and just keep working. But even though Dima has the ability to continue making a very good living by Ukrainian standards, he quit his job when the war started. Since February 24th, he’s been doing whatever he could to help on the ground in Ukraine. He started by evacuating people from encircled Chernihiv, and has made runs all over the country transporting aid and people. Recently he’s been up north of Kyiv helping to build houses in a village that was almost completely demolished by the Russian forces. … and he’s done all of this without a driver’s license, even driving in the EU some. (I was bummed to learn that he didn’t have his driver’s license, I knew that I COULD drive the whole rode to Kyiv and if he didn’t have a license, I wouldn’t risk him getting pulled over without his.). He had a few fun stories of being stopped at police and military checkpoints without a license and the authorities not knowing what to do with him. He probably wouldn’t get away with that during normal times, but war changes things.
“The shrapnel missed the people in back by 4 inches, and in the row behind me, shrapnel went through a ladies jacket, but missed her.” It was Dima’s first action just a few days into the war. He and he’s family had evacuated a little south of Kyiv. Once they were settled, they started hearing about the pummeling that Chernihiv was taking (I had heard about this as well, and have friends in that area. This was heart wrenching for us to follow). Dima and about eight other drivers made the trip into Chernihiv, which was encircled by Russian forces. When they were leaving, they were shelled and one of the shells exploded right next to the van he was driving. Dima showed me a video. The caravan was clearly a civilian caravan driving away from the city. The Russian forces were intentionally targeting them. Dima showed me a picture of his van while we sat at the border. Several pieces of shrapnel hit the body of the van, and yet no passengers were injured and no tires punctured. They kept driving to safety. Dima is convinced that this was a miracle.
“Pastor, I need your most unnecessary person to make a trip with me.” You might think that a conversation about the war would be somber and heavy. The material was heavy, but not the story-telling. Dima is a wide-eyed guy and has a way of talking with his friends where he is always thinking up the most direct way of asking for something, and that is usually a bit jarring, but really funny as long as you have a sense of humor. He told me about talking with his mechanic and asking, “You know how you found me a clutch last week? Do you happen to have car now to go with it?” (Turns out, the mechanic did. Dima’s mechanic had, and gave him a car that needed a clutch. I don’t know people who have that kind of audacity. And quite a few people actually come through for Dima.) Dima had been assigned a long trip when he asked his pastor for “the most unnecessary person.” He knew that he needed someone to take shifts with at the wheel. So why not ask his pastor, and phrase it crazy way? The Pastor came through for him and volunteered his own 22 year old son. This humbled Dima and showed him that his pastor both trusted Dima and valued the work that he and his friends were doing.
Dima did not tell me how the 22 year old responded to being considered the “most unnecessary.”
While we were at the border between Poland and Ukraine, Dima showed me a video with two elderly sisters. He met them a month after a Russian missile blew the roof off more than half of their house … and they are still living there! One of the sisters showed Dima the house, and in each room, he pans up … no roof. But they don’t want to leave. During the video, you can hear a shell being fired not too far in the distance. Dima asks if that doesn’t scare them, and the lady just shrugs it off. They are used to it. But behind the camera, Dima says that it scares him.
“By your logic, Dad, I’m a Nazi … because I speak Ukrainian and love Ukraine.” Most Ukrainians we know have loved ones in Russia. In his case, his dad lives not far from Moscow. When the war started, Dima wrote and asked his dad if he was worried at all about his son and grandkids now that Russia had started a full scale war. His dad responded, “It’s not a war, it’s a ‘special military operation.’ Our boys are going in and they will clean out the Nazis and soon everything will be better for you. Don’t worry.” The perception gap between most Russians and Ukrainians is huge. The thing is, even as Russian soldiers commit war crimes constantly, every Ukrainian I know actually wrestles with trying to remember that these crimes are carried out primarily because the soldiers have succumbed to propaganda and haven’t been diligent to ask basic rational questions. People like Dima don’t want to answer hate with hate. They want to be better. Of course that’s not always easy when you have loved ones who are killed and you are driven from your home and separated from your family. But I am so grateful that most people are wrestling with this.
“I believe Ukraine will be victorious, I just don’t know how much it will cost.” It’s one thing to ponder this question in the abstract. Dima is living this question. His family is in the Czech Republic, and he has chosen to stay in Ukraine. He wrestles with whether or not he is abdicating his responsibility to his family to help his country. He’s risked his life. He’s given up his job. He’s gone days without sleeping. How much will victory cost Dima, and so many other Ukrainians like him? But when he asks the question, I get not hint that giving up is even an option. It’s more the kind of question to help brace themselves for the suffering that still awaits.
Dima is looking forward to a different future for Ukraine when the war is over and it is time to rebuild. But he’s not waiting for the end of the war to start rebuilding. He and some friends are already working in a village near the Belarussian border. During his time in the Czech Republic, he shared about some of this work with his friends there. One of our mutual friends had a hard time processing this. He couldn’t understand why Dima would spend energy building in an area where there was the threat of future invasion. The threat is real, though the Russian troops that are currently positioned on the Belarussian border may only be there so that Ukraine will have to dedicate resources to the north instead of deploying everything they have to the south and the east. Dima’s answer to these questions was very simple, “We have to build because we have to have an active hope.” Waiting till there is no risk risks crushing the heart of Ukrainians in this villages.
That night, when we pulled over at a hotel to get some sleep, Dima showed me the design that he was currently using for houses. They are very small, but comfortable and economical. And they are designed to be easy to add onto. Personally, I’m hoping that I’ll be able to join him at some point and spent a week putting one of these houses together. His enthusiasm was contagious, and I also love little projects like that where I can work hard, but then walk away.
“If they didn’t want to listen that was fine”. I found it interesting the way that Dima’s faith worked itself throughout the conversation. He didn’t feel like he could be a soldier because he didn’t think that God would allow that for him. That didn’t mean that he had any criticism of those who chose to fight. That also didn’t meant that he didn’t have anything to offer his country during this critical time, which is obvious. His volunteer efforts have put him in contact with people of all walks of life during the war, and there was one night when there was a caravan of cars pulling people out of the Donbas, and as they drove through the night, he hopped on the radio and shared how God had changed his life. His thought was that if people wanted to listen, they could, if they wanted to sleep or ignore him, no problem. In the end, it boiled down to, “This is why I am doing what I’m doing.” Some people haven’t really cared, and some have been really grateful for his story. The thing that struck the deepest chord with me was that his faith created in him a drive to do something to actively love his neighbors.
This weekend, I am running back into Ukraine to pick up Anya, Pasha and Bogdon. Dima came back out of Ukraine to spend the holidays with his family, so he will be going back in with me again. I still have the small pang at how many boxes I won’t be able to carry because I have passengers (it feels like I will never get all the supplies into Ukraine that I have in stock), but I’m not worried that it will be an awkward trip. I’m looking forward to the new stories that this fascinating man will have.
People like Dima are the reason that I have a ton of hope that Ukraine will not only be victorious, but rebuild a better Ukraine.
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