My loved ones live in Ukraine and they had to endure almost 3 badly tough years now! Let me explain their story.. 

Taras and his daughter Ivanna live in beautiful Ukraine where he joined the AFU (Armed Forces of Ukraine) in 2015. In the beginning of the full-scale-war the little girl was given in children-affected-by-the-war care just age 8. Taras was defending his home country bravely from day 1 on against the evil aggressor. 

Later he was defending Bakhmut with his unit in house-to-house fighting over months. At some point they had to retreat to not sacrifice defenders lives unnecessarily for bombed-to the ground city ruins any longer. 

I met him while they were doing crowd funding to get 2 drones to help them for better surveillance of battlefield actions like enemy assaults and moves. By some chance (a spelling mistake in a donation transfer) we became good friends and I heard more and more about their selfless and so important work out there, often with not at all enough supplies and equipment.

At that point in time these hardworking heroes were in duty 16-18 (!) hours per day, most of the time 7 days a week with rare days off to just recover from what they had to endure. Sometimes they had to stand multiple day-long - shifts not even enabling them to catch some sleep other than during rare hours out there within their missions.

What was meant to be a close and precious friendship turned into love.. leaving me waiting for some sign of life nightly and emotional relief when he returned (just love the words “Sweetheart, am back..”).

At that time Taras was not able to visit his little girl except one day in June and 2 hours for Christmas day despite they love each other so much and are very close. 

Taras and his unit was involved in the defense of Chasiv Yar from that time on, brutally attacked by the invader over and over again, even with thermal bombs at night, I´ve seen drone videos, don´t ask..

At that time he first hinted that he had seen so many colleagues wounded and dead and that he would not want to die out there. But most of the time he did not tell a lot about what he had seen during his missions to protect me from what he had to endure. 

We started to work on a plan to bring the two of them over here to Germany.

Taras tried to resign from the army and sent a resignation letter which was just ignored and he never got a reply.

That´s why he talked back on an “relocation agent”, meaning a person who had helped some other soldiers from his unit to leave before.

This guy asked for quite a lot of money.. so we went all in!

All our savings and more (taking out a loan) were combined to get this brave hero and our sweet daughter out there to safety to start a life where he can be with his little girl more than some rare hours per year!

In the meantime Taras got severely wounded by artillery shelling and almost lost one of his arms.. after a specialized surgery he was sent back to frontline in a very short amount of time, even not fully recovered!

We still were struggling to get a leaving date that finally was set at the end of December 2024 leaving us happy to be together soonest..

The big day arrived, we talked back with a lot of delightful anticipation but anxious as well. Taras was so happy to leave all that load behind and to have his last service fulfilled. We were so much looking forward to being together from now on - but the day that was meant to be our happiest day turned into a complete nightmare!

For the next 9 days onwards I did not get the eagerly awaited phone call nor any other sign of life, leaving me more and more deeply desperate about the well-being and even lives of my two precious sweethearts.

At day 10 I finally got the news that Ivanna was brought back to the kids house and Taras had been arrested while trying to leave the country! 

A very good friend of him was able to contact me after all that really bad days, Taras himself did not have the chance to reach out to me any more as they took away his phone.

Now we are desperately trying to organize a lawyer for him specialized on military law who asks for an amount of 2000 Dollar. 

Taras friend already started a collection in his former unit, we are using all our savings again, but still we need 1000 more to get the lawyers support.

Without that Taras would face a sentence from 5-10 years in prison for going AWOL ..

Please help us to fund that lawyer that we don´t loose so many more precious years after all he has sacrificed to protect his country and loved ones!