This is one of a series of posts sharing stories from my spring trip to Ukraine, each loosely organised around a theme.

For my fifth trip to Ukraine, I wanted to drive. Selfishly, I wanted a road trip. Geographically, I wanted to orient myself to the largest land war in Europe since WWII by driving from my front door to as far east as was reasonable (for me).

I also wanted to toss something into the insatiable churn of attrition of people and things holding back the authoritarian horde from the east. Used trucks, vans and SUVs are critically important for the movement of people and supplies to and from the fight, including casualties.

Once put to work, the lifespan of a vehicle in this environment is short. Between the potholes (!) and frequent, deliberate attacks on civilian vehicles by russian drones, no matter the driver, the demand for replacements is constant.

NOTE: While not all attacks are by First Person View (FPV) drones, any attack by an FPV drone is deliberate, as it is remotely piloted by a human being who can clearly select and engage the target. Not even the UN is safe, with documented strikes on well-marked UN trucks in 2025 2026, and recent, deliberate strikes on warehouses storing UN aid in May July, and August of this year. Now imagine the risk Ukrainian grassroots humanitarian volunteers are facing when evacuating the elderly and their pets from frontline communities in an unarmored minivan. For free.

While specifics may vary with each recipient, the fundamentals are usually:

Mileage below 275 000 km and a spare set of tires are also good to have. Within that criteria under €10000, you’re looking at Mitsubishi L200s, Mazda BT-50s, Nissan Navaras, Pathfinders, and X-Trails, VW SUVs, and KIA and Hyundai SUVs.

As an experiment, my husband and I decided to front the money to buy, drive and donate two vehicles: a Hyundai Tucson that had been modified for a road trip to Morocco (lifted and reinforced with a skid plate), and an L200 that had lost a rear window and mirror in a farm accident but still ran well. We bought the two of them for just under €15000 total, worked with a Ukrainian NGO to arrange the paperwork, and set out for the four day drive.

Day one took longer than expected thanks to an accident on the autobahn that kept me parked for five and a half hours. Folded into the driver’s seat of the Hyundai packed nearly to the roof with camping gear, donated electronics, and a spare set of tires, I indulged in a multi-course dinner of chocolate Easter eggs, as the passengers in the cars around me blasted techno, and tailgated slices of German-looking cake.

Day two launched us from the east German village where we’d spent the night with the howl of an air raid siren. We wondered if the war had come to us, then realized that it was alerting the fire department to another accident on the autobahn. We made our way around it, crossed into Poland, and made good time, arriving at the border before sunset.

As we drove east, the war’s proximity became more and more visible. Now woven into the usual flow of civilian cars and civilian trucks on the civilian highway were convoys of military vehicles and equipment: jeeps, tanks and artillery systems painted in mottled green and khaki, strapped to flatbeds. While I’m not certain on their destination, the war no longer felt as remote or tidily on the other side of a border. Here it was, in Europe, just two days drive from my front door.

The border crossing from Poland to Ukraine went well and took less than two hours. After a nighttime pothole slalom race to Lviv before curfew (midnight), we arrived at our hotel (and parked!) without incident.

The drive to Kyiv went as well as it could have. With a car to myself, I continued my rounds of radio roulette at high volume, rotating through every Ukrainian FM station the seek button delivered me to. The weather was bright, cool and dry which made the day’s pothole slalom almost meditative. Other drivers were sensible, particularly when the two lane highway into Kyiv functionally became four, then one-half, and then two again. It felt as if everyone agreed that we shared the same goal of making it to the city unscathed. Happy to be back in the capital, we shared a celebratory meal at our go-to Crimean restaurant.

The final drive from Kyiv to Dnipro brought us across the Dniper River, through neighborhoods on the left bank and onto recently restored highways. Again the roads were decent and the radio delivered, as you can hear in the videos. This route took us through villages and freeways, delivering us to Dnipro at golden hour. The cars were delivered to their recipients and the rest of the trip (by bus and train) began.

All in all, the drive from our front door to Dnipro was approx. 2800 km. Most of it was highway and the days went quickly, and not just because I am used to North American distances.

While we are fundraising to cover the cost of these and future vehicles (and replace the chocolate eggs I ate), I wanted to share this mediocre road trip recap as just one tiny example of the thousands of very human-scale actions happening every day in the fight against authoritarian destruction.

Why? We live in dangerous times. We must make this fight human-scale. Every beat-up farm truck delivered, every slim strip of fabric hand tied to a camo net (future post), every work of latté art by a barista in Dnipro (another future post), every box of wool socks moved from one pallet to another in a dusty warehouse (another…you get it), every single action is an act of resistance. Each adds to the material, social and human power helping Ukraine defend democracy for all of us. The least we can do is pay attention, and if we can, help, starting in the communities where we live (you guessed it, another post).