Lena Wilderäng, a Swedish firefighter and volunteer

A rescue service member and professional adventurer in Sweden, Lena Wilderäng has also been a vocal supporter of Ukraine, along with her husband Lars, a prominent writer and blogger. Since the big invasion in 2022, she has been to Ukraine multiple times, delivering firetrucks, ambulance vehicles, gear, and other aid to help Ukrainians in their fight against the Russian onslaught. She also authored a book, Sunflower Effect, about the resilience of the Ukrainian people, spreading awareness among the Swedes about the Russian war. In November, Lena came to Ukraine as part of a research mission by the Center for Civil Society Studies to study the role of civil society in Ukraine’s defenses. The volunteer spoke of her ongoing assistance effort, public opinions in Sweden regarding the war, and critical things that help people survive in major conflict, as well as opened up about why the Russian invasion was personal to her.

SAVING LIVES AND HELPING PEOPLE IS PART OF MY EXPERIENCE AS A FIREFIGHTER

- You've been here multiple times, can you tell how it all started?

- It all started really a long time ago because I've been active as a volunteer in several other organizations in Sweden and Norway, during other crises, however never as active as in Ukraine. But my commitment to Ukraine started in the morning of the 24th, February 2022. I was reached by the news of that there was a full-scale occupation of Ukraine. I think a lot of people remember that very moment, just like myself. We didn't want to believe it, the question was like “Is this true? Is it fake news? Disinformation? This cannot be, not in 2022”. I woke up in the in the morning as usual, to go to work - I was head of IT department in an organization of about 4 000 people. But that morning, my husband told me: “It has started”.

My husband Lars is a known blogger and author in Sweden, and he has been following the situation in both Russia, Europe, and Ukraine for a long time through his Cornucopia blog. In fact, he had long been warning about this development and some even labeled him as “Russophobe”.

But then suddenly he was not the Russophobe anymore. And he's still writing his blog, it’s the major source of information about war in Ukraine for Swedes. He has very many followers, and he works from morning to evening every day, no holidays, no weekends.

So when the full scale occupation war started, I was very personally affected because I was born in the Soviet Union, in Moscow suburbs, in 1983, before moving to Sweden at the age of 13. My dad is from Siberia, my mom was born in St. Petersburg, but we also have a lot of relatives in Ukraine. So sometimes we spent my childhood summers in Ukraine’s Crimea, Zelenodolsk, and Kyiv. I have absolutely beautiful memories of me being there as a child – sun is shining, the trees are full of ripe fruit, there’s fish in the pond, everyone is so nice like nowhere in the world. This is Ukraine to me.

By the way, when I moved to Sweden, I had a double citizenship for a few years, but then I canceled my Russian citizenship. I spent most of my life in Sweden and I identify as a Swedish person. I have the set of values that are Swedish. I am definitely not Russian because I don't share their so-called “values”. So once it was possible, I canceled my Russian citizenship and passport.

So when I realized that the country I was born in carried out a full-scale attack on Ukraine, a free, sovereign and democratic country, of course, I was angry, frustrated, sad, and I needed something to do about it. I could not just wait, sit and observe. Perhaps I wanted to create some balance in the Universe. Of course, it’s impossible to balance up the horrible things that Russia has done. But I still needed to at least do something, any tiny bit that I could.

- So that was personal for you.

- Oh yes. I work as a firefighter in Sweden as a part-time civil job. I drive fire trucks, put out fires, get called to traffic accidents. It’s basically about saving lives, helping people, so it’s long become part of my background. Plus, I have the language. I still speak Russian, understand Ukrainian, and understand what Ukraine is. I’ve been here a couple of times before the big war when I was already an adult.

All this, together with my experience as a manager, team lead, project leader, as well as a professional adventurer, just channeled into this volunteering effort. I started crowdfunding, raising money for ambulances, fire trucks, and other vehicles to drive to Ukraine. I used my own networks and my husband's blog to organize that fundraising.

I THOUGHT IT’S IMPOSSIBLE TO JUST BUY AN AMBULANCE VEHICLE BUT I DID IT

- What was the first batch of equipment you brought to Ukraine and where did it go?

- A friend of mine back from school years is from Kharkiv. He called me up at the outset of the invasion: “Lena, you are a firefighter. Can you get some firefighting equipment because Kharkiv firefighters are in need of lots of stuff – hoses, even gloves and helmets, they barely have food”.

So initially, when I asked around at my office, I was told “no” to my appeal to donate a firetruck or gear because the procedure is that everything was accounted for, reused for training, and recycled when too old or not needed. They did not understand how dire the need was.

Then my friend called again and asked me if I could get them ambulance vehicles, they were badly needed. At first, I thought it was impossible to buy a used ambulance as a private person. But I tried and it worked. I bought an ambulance that had been put up for sale, along with radios and other equipment. I got it for quite a good price, having raised the money with the help of my family and friends. That first ambulance went to Eastern Ukraine and I realized that this is the way I can help Ukraine.

I also tried other things, helping in the volunteer center in Gothenburg, taking care of the displaced Ukrainians. We, of course, had people from Ukraine living in our place, which a lot Swedes did.

But the major thing for me was understanding that I can buy ambulances, and eventually fire trucks and other vehicles, to send them to Ukraine to save lives.

- Do you have a team you work with?

- I’ve collaborated with several organizations but I still prefer to do it as my own initiative, as a private individual. I came to realize through some negative experiences that it’s best for me to have control of the operation and stick to my principles. See, some think it’s okay to send cars that haven’t been fixed, clothes that haven’t been washed, or gear that’s of poor quality. These type of things…

SWEDEN VALUES DEMOCRACY THE MOST AND YOUR FIGHT IS TO DEFEND DEMOCRACY

- As someone who visits Ukraine so often and then goes back and talks with people in Sweden, have you observed any shifts in public opinions toward the war as such and the Ukraine cause in general?

- Sweden has statistically been somewhere on the top of the list when it comes to supporting Ukraine. I believe the rate is 93 percent, which stands out from the rest of Europe. This may depend on different factors, from our historical heritage to social, cultural and political factors. Also, don’t forget about the colors of our flags. I truly believe my husband's blog has affected the public opinion quite a lot, to which he never agrees, humble as he is. But the most important factor is that Sweden has long been one of the countries in Europe that values democracy the most. And now your battle is to defend democracy.

However, indeed, there is a certain downward shift concerning attention to the war. It's been 1,000 days now since the full-scale invasion. And the human brain, if not presented with the problem the whole time, tends to forget it. It becomes sort of like a new norm, a part of normal life. Also, now there is a conflict in the Middle East, election in the U.S., domestic political changes… So, of course, if Ukraine is lower in the news feed, people start forgetting.

A lot of my work today is not about driving cars and ambulances to Ukraine but about driving public opinion so that people don't forget. We, the West, have forgotten and turned away from the conflict in 2014 and we're reaping the bitter fruit from that today. If the West turns away now, we will reap the even more bitter fruit, sooner than we ever think.

No country can stand against Russia on their own, so we need to help. After all, the war is not only about Ukraine. I hope that most people know that the war is about democracy, freedom, and human rights. It’s about Europe and the whole civilized world. While it may be within Ukraine now, if we're not doing anything about it, it will be everywhere.

So what I do nowadays is I give lectures a lot. I try to keep this high level, to reach out to the decision makers within anything from rescue services, medical care, or crisis management in the administrations of communities or regions. Back in the fall of 2022, I was invited to the Ministry of Defense, and the minister of civil defense actually listened to what I said, raising really competent questions and took notes, and I’m happy to see a lot of things we spoke of have started to happen over the past two years.

As for social media presence, I am personally critical of how social media is used to influence public opinion because those mechanisms are so easy to manipulate. I also hate the click bait model of modern journalism. Besides, false balance is the problem in the news. I was invited to the Swedish radio in the spring of 2022, and I said on live air that a crazy dictator is waging a war with a democratic country. The person interviewing me interrupted me: “Putin is not here to defend himself”.

When commenting on Russia’s war against Ukraine, what kind of balance should you have? There’s an aggressor state and there’s a victim. Someone says it’s raining outside and someone says sun is shining. A journalist’s job is not to offer both a platform to voice their statements, their job is to stick their head out and see who's lying.

But I do see news about Ukraine in the newspapers, national television and radio, and the balance has become a little bit better. I've otherwise seen horrible journalism sometimes, like hosts calling the war a “special military operation”, which was straight up propaganda from the Russian narrative.

- You come here offering aid in the form of vehicles and gear, but as an IT specialist, do you have anything to share with Ukrainians in terms of technology, maybe AI, that can help, say, in emergency response?

- In fact, I see that it’s the Ukrainians who are driving that knowledge. There’s a very important perspective not to come from the West and start teaching people, imposing something, which would be a colonial attitude. Ukrainians are cutting edge in technology. Those who come here from the West should learn from their knowledge, their innovations and then maybe come back with a comment, advice, or further innovation.

HAVING A FAST FEEDBACK IS KEY TO SUCCESSFUL DONATIONS

- You come here as part of the mission to research Ukraine’s civic activism. Which peculiar elements of Ukrainian volunteering experience have you already figured out?

Well, the Swedish and Ukrainian societies are different. If we talk about Civil Society in general, they're developed in different ways. In Sweden, we have an old tradition of civil society organizations. Most people are a part of them, and they have a very well-functioning connection with the government. So the government’s way of interacting with individuals is through those organizations. There’s a lot of trust towards the government and towards each other. In Scandinavia, in fact, it’s higher than anywhere in Europe. In Ukraine, trust toward the government and governmental organizations is quite low, and as for people-to-people connections, Ukrainians trust family and friends the most, not just random people. So given these prerequisites, we wouldn't expect such a strong Civil Society as you have now to emerge, but somehow it did, already back during your revolutions, when people came to squares and made their voices heard. It was like a school of democracy.

So today people choose to organize “despite”, not “because” of these trust patterns. For me, it’s very interesting to see trust affect how people distribute their donations. In Ukraine, if someone donates to the front, it's normal and natural to give to someone they personally know. But in Sweden, it would be exactly the opposite - to try to distribute it fairly among random recipients, not people you personally know, because that might be seen as graft. But those are empirical categories.

In my personal work, I see how Ukrainian people are welcoming and grateful to foreign volunteers, and this is one of the keys why donors keep coming back and giving more. There are so many kind and brave people that inspire donations. For instance, I have a contact in Kharkiv, Zhasmina, who has shown us the hard-working and selfless face of Ukrainian people, she is the Strength of Ukraine for me.

Another key to successful fundraising is to receive fast feedback. If someone donates for a car, they soon see photos of that vehicle in action – a fire truck putting out a blaze, some SUV evacuating the wounded… This has an enormous impact on Swedish donors who see that their money doesn’t just get lost somewhere. They respect transparency.

AUTHORITIES IN SWEDEN ARE COMMUNICATING THE THREAT OF GETTING INVOLVED IN CONFLICT

- What about the general perception of Russia’s war nowadays in Sweden? Do you feel any anxiety in Sweden about a potential big war coming to Europe or is not often discussed at the moment?

- I think our membership in NATO made people a little bit less anxious. But there is a risk, of course, and I think a lot of people do realize it.

I believe many understand the situation, realizing that, if Russia is not stopped where they are now, Sweden may become next or one of the next countries Russia might target. Actually, the authorities are now telling people that there is a potential risk that Sweden could become part of a conflict either inside of the country or outside.

Still, the society is struggling to change direction from sort of pretending that nothing is happening to seeing that there's an actual threat and we need to get prepared. We need to prepare our defense and we need to prepare the Civil Society and the individuals. Everyone needs to be able to both support themselves and their families in terms of water, food, and warmth for a few days, and also support the society in other ways. So there’s an ongoing paradigm shift. And it takes quite a lot of energy and time to turn this thing around because the Swedish military, for instance, had long been in the state of “eternal peace” after the Soviet fall.

My husband and I actually wrote a book about civil preparedness in Sweden so it has been very interesting to be in Ukraine and see how all this has put in practice. What is important is that you can you basically survive three weeks without food, only three days without water, three hours without protection from the cold, three minutes without oxygen, but you can only survive three seconds without hope. Three seconds is what it takes to jump off a bridge, or give up in another way.

UKRAINE’S LESSON FOR THE WEST IS “OPEN YOUR EYES”

- That’s an interesting thought…

So hope is vital. To keep hope strong, you have to actively choose where you get your information, how you filter it, to distinguish between panic or rumors - and facts. It's about raising your mental resilience, training your mind as if it were a muscle, doing things that are difficult.

I ask people in Sweden: think of Ukraine, imagine if during that week of February 2022, they would have given up, wouldn't have that hope, and just say, oh, Russia is so big, they have this big army, so let's just give up, it's not worth it, let them march into Kyiv… Where would have Ukraine been now, had they all just laid down their arms and given up? Where would all the world be?

Another thing is fear. A lot of people ask me if I ever experience fear. Well, I'm a firefighter, volunteer, I’ve also worked with extreme adventures for years now - sailed oceans, climbed mountains, explored the Arctic… Of course, I experience fear. I was afraid when we Russian artillery was firing at us in Dvorichna near Kupiansk in Kharkiv region, or when our ambulance vehicle got a flat tyre at the Donbas front with nearby activity.

Fear is a natural reaction, telling us that something is wrong. But despite that fear, you have to continue being constructive. And that is called bravery. Otherwise, if you let fear affect your decisions, you will not get far, you'll just slip into panic.

- What is one major lesson for the people in Sweden that they can draw from what's going on today at this stage of war?

- The lesson is “open your eyes”. Because a lot of people still don't understand what the war means and how it affects the world. So open your eyes, do everything you can to help, keep on supporting Ukraine, sending out right information, driving opinions, as well as build a society that is based on trust and helping each other. Because we can only do this together, both as individuals and as countries. Only in this way can we save the world.

Ievgen Matiushenko, Kyiv

Photo: Yevhen Kotenko