San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
As some go to defend Ukraine, we can help
As Congress dithers on helping Ukraine defend itself against Russian invasion, there are other private financial ways to help defend the besieged nation. Taking part in them feels like one of the most moral acts we can carry out in the midst of a war that — unlike many others in my lifetime — has a clear aggressor and a clear victim.
And donating is safer than some other ways of supporting Ukraine.
Meet Mark “Gino” Jannetta. He lives in Austin, where he’s a home builder.
Because he had U.S. Army infantry experience — including a deployment to Afghanistan a decade ago — he decided to volunteer to defend Ukraine after Russia invaded in February 2022. Not only did he put his business on hold to go, he self-funded nearly everything he did. He estimates friends chipped in to the tune of $1,500 for his first tour.
In July 2022, he crossed the border from Poland and served with the International Legion until that October. Unlike Ukrainian soldiers, legion members supply their own gear. The only two things provided by the Ukrainian military to foreign fighters are a weapon and ammunition.
“Everyone says going to fight in Ukraine is not like joining a video game. The risks are very real. There is no respawn,” Jannetta says, using the term for a character in a video game reappearing after having been killed. “But in every other way it is exactly like a video game. No two soldiers are the same. Everyone pieces together their own uniforms and gear. It’s very grass roots.”
In what he calls a “chooseyour-own-adventure gear-up,” he says financing matters.
“You bring the old deployment multi-cam uniforms you had from 10 years ago, you buy whatever optics and weapon attachments you want at the military surplus stores, you spray paint your rifle, Velcro on whatever patches you want to use to identify yourself from the pack.”
Funding the fight
International Legion volunteer soldiers already in-country sometimes turn to grassroots funding groups like Protect A Volunteer. The group matches volunteers with donors to bridge the private funding gap needs.
It was founded by Rachel Jamison, a law professor at New York University. She estimates the cost to fully equip a soldier — a kit built to American standards — at $20,000. That’s out of range for most to personally fund or crowd-source.
Jannetta’s second tour was brief — from April to May 2023 — and he was mostly held in the rear of the Bakhmut front while many of his fellow legion members saw desperate action. Because he already had incountry experience, Protect A Volunteer matched Jannetta with donors who booked his flight into Ukraine. The group did it again for his third tour. According to Jamison, Protect A Volunteer funded 117 flights for volunteers through its donors in 2023.
On his third tour, Jannetta also benefited from a private
sponsor whose house he’d been building in Austin, a former Navy Seal with a successful social media business named Mr. Ballen. He opened up his credit card to Jannetta to the tune of $8,000 because he knew from his own military experience the importance of highquality equipment.
Jannetta’s third tour began in August. In mid-October his team was sent overnight to shore up a frontline unit of eight Ukrainians. Before they had a chance to rest and acclimate, though, the Russians at 8 a.m. began a relentless assault that continued until nightfall, with multiple waves of troops interspersed with kamikaze drones, artillery and three tanks.
Late that morning Jannetta took shrapnel to his arm, lower back, and legs from a grenade tossed from 20 meters. Pulled to a bunker by a fellow U.S. veteran named Tommy who applied a tourniquet and packed his wounds with gauze, Jannetta lay in the dark, unable to move and expecting to be overrun and killed by the Russian attackers at any moment. Instead, he and other wounded — including Tommy — were extracted after midnight. Jannetta was dragged miles away from the front on a sled, all the time under constant threat of drone surveillance and artillery.
Foundation support
With the support of the privately funded Weatherman Foundation, he eventually was
transferred from Kharkiv to Germany via a 50-hour ambulance ride.
The R.T. Weatherman Foundation arranges transportation for International Legion fighters to the U.S. Army’s Level 2
trauma center Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, which has agreed to dedicate up to 18 beds to wounded soldiers from the Ukraine conflict. According to David Bramlette, Weatherman’s deputy director of operations, the foundation has helped about 40 international legion casualties to make it to Landstuhl since July. He says it costs about $3,500 for an ambulance evacuation to Germany like Jannetta’s, or up to $20,000 for the occasional emergency flight.
The Weatherman Foundation is also focused on returning soldiers to their home countries or back to Ukraine. It paid for Jannetta’s flight back to the United States after his discharge from the hospital in Germany. It also arranges for the repatriation of remains of U.S. volunteers who are killed in action in Ukraine.
Back in the U.S. for Thanksgiving, Jannetta received a phone call that his buddy Tommy — Marine veteran Thomas Harris — had been killed Nov. 24 while still serving in Ukraine.
As we wait for Congress to act, private donors, private citizens, grass-roots organizations and private foundations from the U.S. are working hard to keep Ukraine from being overrun by its Russian invaders.
Jamison, of Protect A Volunteer, says she understands her efforts are small stacked up against all the needs they see and requests they get.
But they are still meaningful. “A lot of us feel helpless. But you can help one person,” Jamison says. “We have had soldiers tell us ‘This is why I’m alive’ when pointing to their body armor bought by a donor.”
She is also the founder of
Safe Passage 4 Ukraine, which allows donations of airline miles and credit card points to help Ukrainians join the safety of family members outside of their country.
I donated through that organization myself by purchasing one such ticket for a Ukrainian refugee from Warsaw to Orlando, using just American Airlines miles I had already accumulated.
I hope you’ll join the many private citizens, organizations and volunteers like Harris and Jannetta who are doing what they can to keep our helpless feelings at bay while we wait for Congress to provide the support Ukraine needs.