The deputy commander of Ukraine territorial defense forces, Tetiana Poudel’s father, was in desperate need of combat boots.
Russia had just invaded Ukraine, and his unit was desperately in need of basic protective gear and medical supplies, both of which were severely lacking.
To help her father and other members of his unit, Poudel, a 31-year-old Ukrainian American citizen — who is on leave from her day job as an attorney for the music-streaming service Spotify — packed up her life in Silicon Valley and moved to Poland, where she raised $13,000 to buy approximately 100 pairs of boots for them.
“I like to tell people I’m a lawyer by day and a boot smuggler by night,” she said earlier this month in an interview with CNN. A photo she shared with CNN shows her father and another soldier beaming next to new boots stacked on top of cardboard boxes.
Private citizens from all over the world, many of them veterans, are working together to provide Ukrainian soldiers with the additional equipment they claim they need in order to continue fighting effectively against the Russians. Poudel’s initiative is a microcosm of a much larger network of private citizens, many of them veterans, from all over the world who are working together to provide Ukrainian soldiers with the additional equipment they claim they need in order to continue fighting effectively against the Russians.
Private citizens’ efforts to get gear and supplies to Ukrainian soldiers have been faster and more direct than government-led efforts, Poudel and Western officials told CNN. Volunteers and ordinary citizens from around the world are trying to help the Ukrainian army, which has grown in size since Russia invaded two months ago.
CNN reported Tuesday that the Biden administration is preparing to announce another $800 million in military aid to Ukraine. If approved, the US will have given Ukraine around $3.4 billion in aid since Russia invaded on February 24.
CNN reported Tuesday that the Biden administration is preparing to announce another $800 million in military assistance to Ukraine. If approved, the latest package would bring the US total assistance to Ukraine to approximately $3.4 billion since Russia’s invasion began on February 24.
