From his temporary home in Croatia, Brian Milakovsky has been following reports of the chaos and carnage unfolding in Ukraine.

As Russian forces continue to shell homes, hospitals and shelters in Ukrainian cities, cutting off transportation routes and smashing infrastructure, the 36-year-old Somerville native is working every day to do what he can to help, sending money he and his network have raised to feed people and help them escape the violence.

“There will be massive amounts of assistance (later), but every dollar spent now is worth $100 at that later stage as far as its impact on people’s lives,” Milakovsky said via Facebook video chat Monday evening.

Brian Milakovsky Facebook photo

For weeks, Milakovsky has been collecting money, first through donations to his father’s PayPal account and now also through a gofundme campaign set up by a fellow graduate from Cony High School in Augusta.

Between the two, Milakovsky said he has managed to raise about $60,000. Every day, working with trusted friends and volunteers, he doles out funds to pay for food and supplies and for fuel.

“It’s really hard to get fuel in Ukraine right now,” he said. “They bought most of their diesel from Russia and Belarus, which are the two countries presently invading them. We send the money to volunteers in eastern Ukraine who are evacuating from these really dangerous cities that are under attack. The money is used to buy groceries and bread, which is distributed to people in bomb shelters and to displaced persons centers that are set up to accept the evacuated.”

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Since 2015, Milakovsky has made his home in eastern Ukraine, living in Severodonetsk within a government-controlled area not far from where Russian-backed separatists have controlled some territory.

Milakovsky has been drawn to Eastern Europe because of his family’s ancestry. His father’s family came from what is now Belarus, and his mother’s family from what is now the Czech Republic. When he was 18, he legally changed his name from Miller — an anglicized version of Milakovsky, the family name.

With a degree in forestry from the University of Maine, he first worked in Russia doing conservation work, but the outbreak of war following the 2014 Russian invasion and annexation of Crimea meant he had to leave. He settled in Ukraine, where he had been earlier, drawn by concern about what was happening. He has been working most recently for a global development organization doing economic recovery work. Because of the ongoing war in the region that started in 2014, the area’s economy has been disrupted.

Heeding warnings from the U.S. State Department at the end of 2021 and the beginning of this year, Milakovsky moved with his wife, Anna, and their baby and dog first to Kyiv. But then, the State Department issued warnings that Russia was expected to attack Kyiv.

“We thought, ‘That’s crazy, that can’t happen,'” he said.

As the warnings escalated, they moved to Lviv in western Ukraine, near the border with Poland. On Feb. 24, they woke up at 5 a.m. to the news that Russia had launched its military operation and they headed to the border, about an hour and 20 minutes away. Once they were in Poland, they continued to travel until they reached Croatia.

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From that vantage point, he’s been in contact with volunteers who remain in eastern Ukraine and in Severodonetsk, where many of the Soviet-era apartment buildings stand blackened and broken.

For many, he said, this is the second time they have stepped up to help, driving out in beat-up minivans and trucks, heading out to the front lines, bringing food and picking up people who want to leave.  Among them is a university official from Severodonetsk who assembled a list of 120 people waiting to board buses Tuesday to head to safer territory in Ukraine or in Europe, where they will be refugees.

Many are from the Baptist and evangelical Christian communities.

“When things get bad, they start helping. It’s quite remarkable,” he said.

While the Russian military forces are concentrating on cities like Mariupol and Kharkiv, Milakovsky said it’s still possible to travel across Ukraine because the highways remain under Ukrainian control as do territories across central and western Ukraine. But that could change.

“Cities could any day become frontline cities,” he said. “It’s a scary situation. The Russians just started bombing Odessa for the first time. I mean, they’re bringing the war to the entire country.”

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The situation has been complicated by the weather. Following a relatively mild winter, cold weather and snow have moved in at a time when people who have been bombed out of their homes have been forced to seek shelter where they can.

He has also been posting updates and asking for help on Facebook, which is where Amanda Berticelli saw them.

Berticelli, now a real estate agent living in Cumberland, and Milakovsky were classmates at Cony High School in Augusta. While they weren’t close friends at the time, they attended a few classes together.

She wanted to do something bigger and more organized than solicit funds to be sent to Milskovsky’s father’s PayPal account, something that could reach far more people.

“As the invasion developed, I became increasingly bothered that I wasn’t doing anything to contribute to relief efforts,” she said Tuesday. “So I asked Brian and his father if I could set up an account and help streamline the process for reaching donors and getting the money to Brian faster.”

After passing a compliance review process, the account, named “Help Me Help Brian” with Milakovsky’s father, Roy Miller, as the beneficiary, was up and running with a goal of $15,000, which has since been raised to $30,000. As of Tuesday afternoon, nearly $14,000 had been raised.

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Berticelli said as the contribution amount rises, Milakovsky will continue to assess needs and find a way for the donations to make a difference.

“There’s so many people in our extended network that want to help,” she said, “and this is a way they can do so.”

Milakovsky said the level of violence that Russians have unleashed on Ukraine is unprecedented.

“It’s blowing the earlier war out of the water, as far as intensity,” he said. “I don’t think anyone was expecting them to get so murderous so quickly. I think they thought it would be a cakewalk, that people would welcome them. They didn’t and (the Russians) got disoriented and angry.”

For now, Milakovsky and his family plan to stay put in Croatia, where his father is now staying with them.

He plans to continue raising money for as long as he can.

“We’re waiting to see if there’ll be a peace,” he said, “if we can return.”


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