Every week in the summer The duty takes you on the side roads of university life. A proposal that is both scholarly and intimate to pick up like a postcard. Today, we are going, with Gabrielle Joni Verreault, to meet those who, thanks to technology, are involved in the war effort in Ukraine.
Thursday, December 15, 2022, 8 p.m. Night has fallen and beyond what the headlight beams of the 2001 Ford Fiesta can reach, all is darkness. The only sound that pierces the veil of darkness of the surrounding plain is the sharp revolution of the engine running at full throttle. We try to get out of the black and greasy mud that immobilizes us. I—almost literally—shoulder the wheel to get us out of the quagmire: half of my body in the cabin, the other outside, my boots bogged down with the tires bouncing under the paralyzed car.
To encourage myself, I add my voice to the lamentations of the engine by shouting all the swear words in my repertoire, from the three languages I know. As my salvo of Quebec blasphemies echoes in the cold air, it meets the muffled detonation of an artillery cannon, which interrupts this tirade of vulgarity. ” Did you hear that? I say, questioning the driver who assists me. He puts the transmission in neutral, listens… and on the second ring, he simply says to me: ” Holy sh*t, Lara… Without adding anything, we resume our synchronized choreography of shoulder and motor thrusts. The man behind the wheel is called Ivan Karaman, a Serb whom I met on the Internet and whom I have known for 24 hours. My parents would be proud!
We are near the Dnieper River, in the Oblast of Kherson and I am Gabrielle Joni Verreault, alias “Lara”, doctoral student in bioethics at the School of Public Health of the University of Montreal. Ukraine is my laboratory.
I went there for the first time in May 2022 to bring a shipment of medicine to Kyiv. Before this excursion, I had spent almost two months in Warsaw to coordinate the transport of this load from Canada via Poland, but also to get involved in other humanitarian initiatives with my fiancé. It was in the coordination center housed in the Palace of Culture and Science in the Polish capital that the first ideation of my doctoral project took place.
In contact with an impressive number of volunteers from all over the world having in common the honest desire to help Ukraine, I understand that there are as many reasons to help as there are people agitating the daily from Centrum Wsparcia Koordynacji Warszawa. While this spectacle is unfolding before my eyes, another is offered to me on my cell phone: social networks are on fire. I see a huge group of digital guerrillas forming — NAFO — to fight Russian disinformation with a clever mix of memes and black humor; fundraising campaigns coordinated by citizens to help the battalions of their friends at the front; 4k videos of modified drones distributing explosive charges, or excerpts from intervention cameras attached to the bodies of soldiers who share their images.
At that time still a master’s student in bioethics — which I devoted to artificial intelligence and the impact of digital technology on our world — to say that I was fascinated by all these ingenious technological and citizen mobilizations would be an understatement. Already involved in humanitarian work, I wanted to go further and put my skills at the service of this inspiring movement.
Supported by my director Bryn William-Jones, the doctorate was born: to seek out the values and deep convictions of civilians who, thanks to technologies, engage in the war effort, whether in physical or digital space. . But that’s not all: the large-scale invasion of Russia will have swept over the Ukraine, a wave of sympathy drawn from the very hearts of citizens of many nations.
The injustice disseminated not only by the traditional media, but also from the personal perspective of victims on social networks, has meant that Ukraine, a country more or less known before the aggression, is no longer unknown. She has galvanized masses of strange volunteers, fighters and humanitarians alike, who are putting their lives on hold to rally to her cause, a cause that transcends physical and virtual boundaries.
Such mobilization is possible thanks to the power of connectivity and accessibility to technologies that democratize access to the best and the worst. So I’m also going to discover their moral compass: that of non-Ukrainian citizens who drop everything to meet the moral imperative that guides them to the country of the Cossacks. This partisan involvement changes the face of war: civilians will be able to take part in foreign military campaigns more than ever, even from home. The current ethical frameworks of war must be redesigned to keep everyone as safe as possible.
Tuesday, January 24, 2023, around 4:30 p.m. I have my head resting on the window of the Ford and I watch a bleak landscape of dormant fields pass by. They are riddled with black spots that disfigure them, testimony to recent horrors. Ivan leads; we have just delivered several kilos of medicine as a thank you to the village of Borozens’ke, which we are leaving by the same route we had taken by tow truck a month earlier. Because, after getting out of the mud, barely 15 minutes later, we had broken down at the gates of the village.
So I’m also going to discover their moral compass: that of non-Ukrainian citizens who drop everything to meet the moral imperative that guides them to the country of the Cossacks
This had earned us many explanations with the military police, who were trying to understand the shady absurdity of the pairing of a Serb and a Quebecer, outside in full curfew, in a country at war. Once the clarifications were established, the police, as well as the whole village, took care of us by showing us their community – broken, but strong – and by giving us their painful testimonies.
No amount of money or medicine will ever be enough to pay my debt to the community of Borozens’ke, who took us in when they were supposed to be the ones we help. I hope at the very least to succeed in paying homage to them, through my research, and also by sharing this little piece of history with you so that you can see how much Ukraine has to teach us, much more. beyond research.