S1E63 - Agatha on Ukrainian Mutual Aid

Episode Summary

Margaret and Agatha talk about mutual aid in Ukraine and Agatha's experience trying to go there to fight in an anti-authoritarian platoon, but ending up doing a bunch of mutual aid supply distribution work instead. They talk about he intricacies of relief work and some of the special circumstances in Ukraine. Heavy content warning on this episode. Towards the end of the episode around 46:00, Agatha starts to tell a really intense story about being in a war zone. Around 56:00 is when it begins to get graphic.

Guest Info

Agatha (they/them) can be found on IG @jalutkewicz You can donate to their mutual aid work on venmo @agathawilliams or on Paypal @[email protected]

Host Info

Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.

Publisher Info

This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.

Transcript

Agatha on Ukrainian Mutual Aid

Margaret 00:14 Hello and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for it feels like the end times. I'm your host, Margaret Killjoy. And I'm really excited about this week's interview, I am going to be talking to an old friend of mine from quite a while back who haven't talked to in a while about what's involved in anarchists mutual aid in war zones, and specifically, Ukraine, and in the things that are going on there. Yeah, I'm really excited for you all to hear this conversation. But first, I'm excited for you all to hear that we're a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchists podcasts. And here's a jingle from another show on the network.

Margaret 01:13 This is Margaret, from the future, coming back to say that this episode deserves a content warning near the end of the episode and there'll be some heads up. We will be talking about, "Hey, so I hear you were attacked." That part contains graphic descriptions of war and violence. And so listener discretion is advised.

Margaret 02:05 Okay, we're back. So, if you could introduce yourself with your name, your pronouns, and then kind of a brief description of why you are in a good place to talk about anarchists mutual aid in places of active conflict.

Agatha 02:20 So my name is Agatha. My pronouns are they/them. Yeah, I went over to Ukraine last year about this time to do mutual aid support with anti authoritarian units and anarchists units. Things got fucked up on my way over there. So, that wasn't a possibility any longer. So, I just started doing aid runs with a convoy of other solo operators who went over there to try and do something to help alleviate the suffering of folks. Yeah, I'm here to talk about that.

Margaret 02:57 So one of my questions about that, is, what do these aid runs look like? I'm under the impression there are different organizations working to try to get new vehicles and armor and all of these things that, you know, to frontline units, to anti authoritarian units. And these are like, organizations from outside Ukraine that are like sending people and supplies to then deliver the supplies? Like what does this look like?

Agatha 03:25 Yeah, so me and a few other folks went over there with a group of cash all of our own, you know, what I mean, and we use that for operational costs, which was, you know, feeding ourselves buying diesel in Poland. And then we worked with some more wealthy sympathizers to the cause, who, one person we worked with owns a distribution company, and they have a giant fucking warehouse in Warsaw, Poland. And, you know, they would make sure items that needed to get to folks close to the frontline, where bigger NGOs wouldn't go, could get things that they needed that were not getting there, i.e. like medicine, sanitary products, food, you know, and then later on body armor and diesel. So, this person would basically...they have a bigger organization that looks a lot friendlier on their website, and you can go and donate money and it has pictures of like Ukrainian kids smiling. So, the run would start like this, we'd get a text from this wealthy patron and they'd be like, "Alright, I've organized another run," you know, "Meet me at my warehouse Saturday at four in the morning and bring four vans," you know, "and eight drivers." And like, we wouldn't know where we're going. We wouldn't know what we're doing. And then we'd get there at four in the morning and then there'd be all these like, gnarly angry Polish dudes just like moving boxes around and making piles. And then the, you know, the person who lead everything and orchestrated everything, she's just a very strong, amazing woman. And she would come out and just start barking orders and be like, "You, you're driving this van, and you're putting all this in your van, but like, I have some other shit to hide at the bottom of the pile. So don't load it yet," you know, "load this van." And then she'd like really quickly, have one of her cronies, bring out a pallet full of body armor inserts that were like, made at a metal shop out of like, AR500 steel that can withstand 556 and 762 rounds.

Margaret 05:31 Yeah, gun Twitter will be very upset about this.

Agatha 05:35 What's that?

Margaret 05:36 I said gun Twitter will be very upset that they're using steel.

Agatha 05:40 I know. But if you're out there fucking around, you want something more than nothing, and it's not gonna spatter, AR500 is at least not going to spatter on you, you know what I mean? Yeah, it's not going to create any spalding. But, that regardless, you know, she did her own research on what steels are like the most bulletproof and then she fucking contacted a metal shop with a brake press that could you know, bend quarter inch thick steel that was hardened. And then she had them plasma cut out the designs that fit into vests that she had manufactured from different tailors around Poland, you know, it was just like, it was 100%, DIY, you know, ballistic vests. And it was just amazing. And she'd be like, "Alright, you're delivering all this, like toilet paper, and ibuprofen, and like, you know, baby food to this one location, then you're going to meet with my people at this location, and you're gonna give them these 10 boxes," you know, and those had whatever in them. I never asked, you know, but and then she'd be like, "Give them these 50 vests," you know, "they have like a poorly equipped unit that needs them. They have a mortar unit that's taken a lot of casualties because they're so ill equipped," like, blah, blah, blah. And then she'd be like, "Also, the next van, we're gonna fill it with all toilet paper. But, at the bottom of the toilet paper pile, we're gonna hide 300 gallons of diesel, you know, in these little containers."

Margaret 07:02 Why are you hiding it?

Agatha 07:05 Because there's like tariffs involved with transporting body armor and transporting fuel across conflict zone lines, apparently. I don't know very much about it. I just know that li