(Trends Wide) — On a recent afternoon, American businessman Brent Reynolds was on the phone from his fourth-floor apartment on Pushkinskaya Street in central Kyiv, when a sudden explosion interrupted the conversation.
“Wait a minute, let me look,” he told me, as he went out onto the balcony. “We just had an explosion. It seemed like a mile or so away, I think, but it’s hard to tell, in a city. I heard one the other day that was close by and it was 10 miles away.”
“Need to get to a bomb shelter?”
“No,” he said, noticing that the warning sirens weren’t going off. “Not well”.
Reynolds, 63, had just spent three days trying to join Kyiv’s defense as a foreign volunteer.
“I was tired of sitting on Pushkinskaya and having a latte and waiting for the Russians, so I went to the local and national police headquarters,” he said. “I queued for seven hours to get a Kalashnikov. I couldn’t get one. I went out again the next day during curfew and tried to get one and couldn’t. They told me to go home.”
On February 27, as a more than 40-mile-long convoy of Russian military and armored vehicles began its journey from Belarus to Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called for volunteers from around the world to help defend the country from invasion. Russian. By March 3, Zelensky said in a video on Facebook: “Ukraine is already greeting foreign volunteers. (The) first 16,000 are already on their way to protect freedom and life for us and for everyone.”
Where the volunteers are coming from and how many have arrived, could not be immediately confirmed independently. Ukrainian officials have invited volunteers with previous military and combat experience or who wish to gain such experience. Meanwhile, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Thursday that “mercenaries sent by the West” would not be considered legal combatants and would not be entitled to prisoner-of-war status.
The US State Department has repeatedly told Americans not to go to Ukraine; Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday that Americans who want to help should focus on providing assistance through humanitarian aid organizations.
Ukraine legalized the service of foreigners in its army in October 2015, after Russia seized the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine and then backed separatist groups in Donetsk and Luhansk in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. Those who join receive an accelerated path to Ukrainian citizenship.
Between then and early this year, only a small number of Americans have been among the thousands of foreigners who served with the Ukrainian army and fought in breakaway regions, according to military analysts.
In recent weeks, as Russia built up forces and then launched its latest attack on Ukraine, news organizations in North America and Europe have reported on people eager to volunteer to help defend the country. The Ukrainian government has established a process for them to join the International Legion for Territorial Defense of Ukraine by applying through the Ukrainian embassies or consulates.
But it is another matter for foreigners already living in Ukraine, those who have not yet joined the million Ukrainians who fled the fighting and left the country. The US embassy in Kyiv has moved to Lviv, near the Polish border, as have the embassies of the UK, France and Japan, among others. The UN has also moved most of its staff out of the city.
When I called Reynolds, it was the first time we had spoken in decades. We met as children; our respective maternal grandparents were neighbors; and when his family visited him we played together.
After getting on the phone and talking for a while, I asked Reynolds if he knew of any other expats who might want to talk. He said yes, only to find that everyone had left. He saw four cars in the yard of his building on a recent night. “There used to be 20 or 30,” he said. “A lot of people have left. Everyone who had a car took it. I guess half of Kyiv has left.”
After a few months in Beijing, Reynolds moved to Kyiv 15 months ago, looking to invest in local businesses like a biogas plant that produces renewable fuels. He also planned to shift some of the production of his main business, selling hats under his “Mad Bomber” brand, from China to Ukraine. (The name, which he came up with 40 years ago, refers to his approach to ski jumping in the 1980s.)
Reynolds launched his business right out of college following a trip to China, where he bought souvenirs and other products, then sold them when he returned home. In the early 1980s, he began selling Chinese fur hats in the US, Europe, and the Soviet Union, and traveled frequently. “They sold like crazy,” he said.
When he first arrived in Ukraine at the end of 2020, his youngest son, then 15 years old, accompanied him. They took a 10-day rental car trip from Kyiv to Lviv and the Carpathian mountains. His teenage daughter also spent a semester of high school at an international school in Kyiv, he said.
But in recent months, as the likelihood of a new Russian attack on Ukraine mounted and then became a reality, many of Reynolds’ friends and family have urged him, directly or through social media posts, to return to the US. USA Reynolds has four children, ages 16 to 24, and is about to divorce his wife.
When I contacted him a few days ago on Facebook, the first response I got was from his mother in Virginia, saying, “Bob, please don’t cheer him up.”
“I think he’s crazy,” his sister, Kathy Reynolds, told me over the phone. “My parents are completely stressed and very upset, and he is adamant, and I don’t know why.”
She was particularly excited because her brother had flown from Kyiv to Helsinki shortly before the Russian attack, then turned around after a couple of days and returned to Kyiv.
“I have a lot of Ukrainian friends with children,” said Brent Reynolds. “I decided that I would not leave if the Russians came. It was more of an emotional decision than a logical one. It felt like you don’t leave your friends in a fight.”
Like his Ukrainian friends, Reynolds sought refuge at the nearest metro station, the Teatralna stop, just off the central Khreshchatyk Street, when defense sirens warned of Russian bombing. His children, through smartphone applications, have shown him where the Russian attacks in and around Kyiv have hit.
After two days trying to volunteer and get a rifle in Kyiv, Reynolds heard that weapons were being distributed in Hostómel, 25 kilometers from the city, near where Russian forces, including helicopter gunships, recently fought for control of a aerodrome. Reynolds, who has regularly competed in triathlons in recent years, rode his bike to Hostómel but was stopped at a military checkpoint.
“I ended up waiting and talking to one of the commanders,” he said. “I grew up in a military family; I get along with the Ukrainian army. We laughed; we talked for a while. They said: ‘No, go home.'”
Reynolds is careful not to take photos of soldiers or anything military. “I had my camera searched a couple of times at the checkpoints,” he said. “Everyone is nervous.”
In recent days, Ukrainian officials have warned of pro-Russian agents in Kyiv who are believed to be spying or engaging in acts of sabotage.
“There were a lot more bomb blasts today,” Reynolds said Friday. She left her apartment to help a friend and her children get to the train station so they could evacuate to Lviv. In recent days, as Trends Wide and other news organizations have reported, thousands of Kyiv residents have packed the train station every day, trying to move west. But a large number of other residents remain in Kyiv, trapped for various reasons.
“I tell my friends, ‘go away,'” Reynolds said. “Everyone has children, so ‘go away’.”
Don’t you think you should take your own advice?
“It’s worrying, it’s hard to wait for the Russians to come,” Reynolds said. “The city is an armed and blockaded fortress. I don’t think it will fall unless Zelensky or the leaders decide to surrender to avoid shelling.”
Reynolds said morale among the Ukrainians he speaks with remains good. If he decides to leave, Reynolds said he will bike 300 kilometers to Moldova, a trip he believes will take two days.
But he doesn’t plan to leave any time soon.
(Trends Wide) — On a recent afternoon, American businessman Brent Reynolds was on the phone from his fourth-floor apartment on Pushkinskaya Street in central Kyiv, when a sudden explosion interrupted the conversation.
“Wait a minute, let me look,” he told me, as he went out onto the balcony. “We just had an explosion. It seemed like a mile or so away, I think, but it’s hard to tell, in a city. I heard one the other day that was close by and it was 10 miles away.”
“Need to get to a bomb shelter?”
“No,” he said, noticing that the warning sirens weren’t going off. “Not well”.
Reynolds, 63, had just spent three days trying to join Kyiv’s defense as a foreign volunteer.
“I was tired of sitting on Pushkinskaya and having a latte and waiting for the Russians, so I went to the local and national police headquarters,” he said. “I queued for seven hours to get a Kalashnikov. I couldn’t get one. I went out again the next day during curfew and tried to get one and couldn’t. They told me to go home.”
On February 27, as a more than 40-mile-long convoy of Russian military and armored vehicles began its journey from Belarus to Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called for volunteers from around the world to help defend the country from invasion. Russian. By March 3, Zelensky said in a video on Facebook: “Ukraine is already greeting foreign volunteers. (The) first 16,000 are already on their way to protect freedom and life for us and for everyone.”
Where the volunteers are coming from and how many have arrived, could not be immediately confirmed independently. Ukrainian officials have invited volunteers with previous military and combat experience or who wish to gain such experience. Meanwhile, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Thursday that “mercenaries sent by the West” would not be considered legal combatants and would not be entitled to prisoner-of-war status.
The US State Department has repeatedly told Americans not to go to Ukraine; Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday that Americans who want to help should focus on providing assistance through humanitarian aid organizations.
Ukraine legalized the service of foreigners in its army in October 2015, after Russia seized the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine and then backed separatist groups in Donetsk and Luhansk in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. Those who join receive an accelerated path to Ukrainian citizenship.
Between then and early this year, only a small number of Americans have been among the thousands of foreigners who served with the Ukrainian army and fought in breakaway regions, according to military analysts.
In recent weeks, as Russia built up forces and then launched its latest attack on Ukraine, news organizations in North America and Europe have reported on people eager to volunteer to help defend the country. The Ukrainian government has established a process for them to join the International Legion for Territorial Defense of Ukraine by applying through the Ukrainian embassies or consulates.
But it is another matter for foreigners already living in Ukraine, those who have not yet joined the million Ukrainians who fled the fighting and left the country. The US embassy in Kyiv has moved to Lviv, near the Polish border, as have the embassies of the UK, France and Japan, among others. The UN has also moved most of its staff out of the city.
When I called Reynolds, it was the first time we had spoken in decades. We met as children; our respective maternal grandparents were neighbors; and when his family visited him we played together.
After getting on the phone and talking for a while, I asked Reynolds if he knew of any other expats who might want to talk. He said yes, only to find that everyone had left. He saw four cars in the yard of his building on a recent night. “There used to be 20 or 30,” he said. “A lot of people have left. Everyone who had a car took it. I guess half of Kyiv has left.”
After a few months in Beijing, Reynolds moved to Kyiv 15 months ago, looking to invest in local businesses like a biogas plant that produces renewable fuels. He also planned to shift some of the production of his main business, selling hats under his “Mad Bomber” brand, from China to Ukraine. (The name, which he came up with 40 years ago, refers to his approach to ski jumping in the 1980s.)
Reynolds launched his business right out of college following a trip to China, where he bought souvenirs and other products, then sold them when he returned home. In the early 1980s, he began selling Chinese fur hats in the US, Europe, and the Soviet Union, and traveled frequently. “They sold like crazy,” he said.
When he first arrived in Ukraine at the end of 2020, his youngest son, then 15 years old, accompanied him. They took a 10-day rental car trip from Kyiv to Lviv and the Carpathian mountains. His teenage daughter also spent a semester of high school at an international school in Kyiv, he said.
But in recent months, as the likelihood of a new Russian attack on Ukraine mounted and then became a reality, many of Reynolds’ friends and family have urged him, directly or through social media posts, to return to the US. USA Reynolds has four children, ages 16 to 24, and is about to divorce his wife.
When I contacted him a few days ago on Facebook, the first response I got was from his mother in Virginia, saying, “Bob, please don’t cheer him up.”
“I think he’s crazy,” his sister, Kathy Reynolds, told me over the phone. “My parents are completely stressed and very upset, and he is adamant, and I don’t know why.”
She was particularly excited because her brother had flown from Kyiv to Helsinki shortly before the Russian attack, then turned around after a couple of days and returned to Kyiv.
“I have a lot of Ukrainian friends with children,” said Brent Reynolds. “I decided that I would not leave if the Russians came. It was more of an emotional decision than a logical one. It felt like you don’t leave your friends in a fight.”
Like his Ukrainian friends, Reynolds sought refuge at the nearest metro station, the Teatralna stop, just off the central Khreshchatyk Street, when defense sirens warned of Russian bombing. His children, through smartphone applications, have shown him where the Russian attacks in and around Kyiv have hit.
After two days trying to volunteer and get a rifle in Kyiv, Reynolds heard that weapons were being distributed in Hostómel, 25 kilometers from the city, near where Russian forces, including helicopter gunships, recently fought for control of a aerodrome. Reynolds, who has regularly competed in triathlons in recent years, rode his bike to Hostómel but was stopped at a military checkpoint.
“I ended up waiting and talking to one of the commanders,” he said. “I grew up in a military family; I get along with the Ukrainian army. We laughed; we talked for a while. They said: ‘No, go home.'”
Reynolds is careful not to take photos of soldiers or anything military. “I had my camera searched a couple of times at the checkpoints,” he said. “Everyone is nervous.”
In recent days, Ukrainian officials have warned of pro-Russian agents in Kyiv who are believed to be spying or engaging in acts of sabotage.
“There were a lot more bomb blasts today,” Reynolds said Friday. She left her apartment to help a friend and her children get to the train station so they could evacuate to Lviv. In recent days, as Trends Wide and other news organizations have reported, thousands of Kyiv residents have packed the train station every day, trying to move west. But a large number of other residents remain in Kyiv, trapped for various reasons.
“I tell my friends, ‘go away,'” Reynolds said. “Everyone has children, so ‘go away’.”
Don’t you think you should take your own advice?
“It’s worrying, it’s hard to wait for the Russians to come,” Reynolds said. “The city is an armed and blockaded fortress. I don’t think it will fall unless Zelensky or the leaders decide to surrender to avoid shelling.”
Reynolds said morale among the Ukrainians he speaks with remains good. If he decides to leave, Reynolds said he will bike 300 kilometers to Moldova, a trip he believes will take two days.
But he doesn’t plan to leave any time soon.