A former Western University student who is now serving in Ukraine’s Territorial Defence Forces is sending a message to those in Canada watching Russia’s invasion of his home country: “Don’t be indifferent.”
In 2020, Maksym Sviezhentsev defended his PhD dissertation Phantom Limb: Russian Settler Colonialism in the Post-Soviet Crimea (1991-1997) through Western’s department of history.
In 2021, he moved from London, Ont., back to Ukraine. Just over a year later, he signed up for the country’s military two days before Russia launched a full-scale invasion.
“I always expected that this might be something I would have to do,” Sviezhentsev told Global News.
Established as a standalone branch of Ukraine’s armed forces in January, the Territorial Defence Forces soon began amassing thousands of civilian volunteers as the country made preparations amid the looming threat of a Russian invasion.
“I’m still a civilian, I was not engaged in the military in any capacity before,” Sviezhentsev said.
Outside his role in the military, Sviezhentsev works full-time as a journalist and maintains another full-time role working for the non-governmental organization Crimea SOS.
“I have an almost two-year-old son, he will turn two years old in just a few weeks, so that’s kind of my third job,” Sviezhentsev added.
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Speaking to Global News from Kyiv on Friday, Sviezhentsev says his family is safe, having been able to evacuate to western Ukraine nearly two weeks ago. He is not currently with them.
“The war has been going on for eight years now, but I always expected that it would turn to the phase that we are experiencing right now,” said Sviezhentsev.
His suspicions of a full-scale invasion were bolstered even further when he watched live as Russian President Vladimir Putin recognized the eastern Ukraine regions of Donetsk and Luhansk as independent.
“He basically denied us Ukrainians the right to exist. We were listening to that speech and … not just me but a couple of people around me had the same feeling that it would be totally logical for that speech to have ended with an official declaration of war,” said Sviezhentsev.
“We’ve been told that the invasion is imminent for a few months now … when we heard the speech, it didn’t really surprise us. Nothing really surprises us anymore.”
Sviezhentsev believes the invasion will mark “the beginning of the end” for Russia, though he emphasizes “it’s not something obviously positive for Ukraine” due to the consequences that it may bring.
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“They failed to take Kyiv as fast as they wanted – they wanted to take Kyiv within a few days – not even close. They are losing in northeastern Ukraine as far as I see, they have some advances in the south, but most of those maps that are being published give them too much credit, so the Russian army mostly controls just roads, not the whole territories,” Sviezhentsev said.
International support continues to pour in for Ukraine, largely in the form of sanctions, humanitarian aid and shipments of protective equipment.
Sviezhentsev says it’s not enough.
“There is a meme going on in Ukraine right now. It consists of two pictures: The one on the top shows a soldier saying, ‘We need air support,’ and the one on the bottom shows a plane displaying a banner which says, ‘You’re doing great,'” he said.
“It’s very easy to evaluate whether the response is enough — if you open news in the morning and you see that Russian forces are still in Ukraine, it means that the response is not enough.”
Reiterating a call that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been making for more than a week, Sviezhentsev wants NATO to establish a no-fly zone that would see the alliance impose and enforce a ban on Russian jets flying over Ukrainian skies.
“This is not about the security of Ukraine, Russia took the whole world hostage and the response has to be appropriate,” Sviezhentsev added.
The call continues to be rejected, with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg telling a Friday news conference, “we understand the desperation but we also believe that if we did that, we would end up with something that could lead to a full-fledged war in Europe involving much more countries and much more suffering.”
During a separate news conference on Friday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau offered a similar defence for NATO’s decision.
“The thing that we have so far avoided — and will continue to need to avoid — is (creating) a situation in which NATO forces are in direct conflict with Russian soldiers,” Trudeau said.
“That would be a level of escalation that is unfortunate that we need to avoid.”
For civilians watching overseas from Canada and who want to help, Sviezhentsev suggests several options.
One includes making donations. Locally, donations are being facilitated through the London Ukrainian Centre which is hoping to collect a variety of items including medical supplies, personal protective equipment, baby food, personal hygiene items and water purification tablets. Global News has a list of other online donation options in this online story.
For those looking to serve under Ukraine, Sviezhentsev points to the International Legion of Territorial Defence of Ukraine, a unit largely made up of volunteers foreign to Ukraine that was formed in the wake of Russia’s invasion.
Sviezhentsev also asks that citizens continue to pressure governments to increase their aid to Ukraine and implement a no-fly zone.
“We are not asking for (your troops) to come here and fight. We’ll do the fighting, just give us a no-fly zone,” said Sviezhentsev.
“That’s the least you can do, because if we fall, you will have to do all the fighting.”
— with files from Global News’ Rachel Gilmore
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