One of a series
BUDAPEST — Revving the engine on a black BMW, Keti Dgebuadze cut across Hungary grinning beneath impenetrable sunglasses.
The 44-year-old set out from Kyiv, Ukraine with her 17-year-old daughter, Kristina Gordienko, with hopes to help soldiers on the front lines with aid supplied by Alona Matchenko, 30, of Toledo. Ms. Matchenko, a native Ukrainian, is the founder of the nonprofit Toledo Helps Ukraine.
After the war started in February, six bags of luggage filled to the brim with aid for Ukrainians became Ms. Matchenko’s top priority.
Each bag weighed barely less than 50 pounds, the weight limit for air travel, and was stuffed with flashlights, medical kits, earplugs, boots, and ibuprofen to help Ukrainians during the war with Russia.
Waning availability of pragmatic goods at the front inspired the 700-mile trek from Kyiv, where Ms. Dgebuadze’s husband, Vitalyi Hordiyenko, works in Ukraine’s Territorial Defense Forces as a mechanic, fixing tanks, and other military vehicles.
Across the world, Ukrainians are pulling together to help their country in the war with Russia.
Yet this is not Ms. Dgebuadze’s first war with Russia.
Leading the charge from the front of Ms. Dgebuadze’s car are two small flags affectionately tucked beneath her dashboard. One flag is Ukrainian, and the other is from the nation of Georgia, where she was born.
For Georgians, the war in Ukraine is one more notch on the bedpost for Russian aggression.
Decades before the current conflict in Ukraine while the Soviet Union was dissolving, war broke out in the country of Georgia.
“They started the war in the country of Georgia,” Ms. Dgebuadze said. “It’s the exact same as Russians are doing right now.”
And what happened then has not been forgotten.
“The whole world admitted that there was a genocide against the Georgian people back then,” said Ms. Dgebuadze, who pulled out a photo comparing the recent war crimes in Bucha, Ukraine with the 1992 destruction in Gagra, Georgia.
Through tears, Ms. Dgebuadze recounted how her uncle, Ilya Tsagareli, 30, was forced to kneel, and then was executed at Gagra with 30 rounds from a Kalashnikov in front of his sister and mother for not bowing to Russian imperialism.
To this day Mr. Tsagareli is held in esteem within Ms. Dgebuadze’s family, and the Russians are hated, not even considered human.
At the age of 12, Ms. Dgebuadze fled Georgia to Ukraine, where her experiences were initially misunderstood.
Now things are much clearer for Ukrainians, and they have reached out to express thanks to Ms. Dgebuadze for “staying on guard.”
Eventually, Ms. Dgebuadze met her husband and made a second home in Ukraine, and 30 years later the Russians are vying to take away her new home again.
But this time, “she will not leave Ukraine” without her Ukrainian husband.
“I want my country to grow, that’s why I want to stay there,” said Ms. Dgebuadze with pride, resilience, and some suitcases to get to the soldiers who are fighting.
First Published May 22, 2022, 1:30 p.m.
