Name: Veteran spending New Year delivering medical supplies to Ukraine
Uploaded: 2025-12-30T14:31:17.800Z
Duration: 2 min 38 s
Description: As many around the world ring in 2026, one Canadian veteran is gearing up to head to Ukraine -- to hand deliver medical equipment and supplies. As Johna Baylon reports, a local Reverend from Surrey is traveling there this weekend.

As many around the world ring in 2026, one Canadian veteran is gearing up to head to Ukraine -- to hand deliver medical equipment and supplies. As Johna Baylon reports, a local Reverend from Surrey is traveling there this weekend.

Kyiv

Russian forces have invaded Ukraine from land, air and sea with strikes causing widespread damage. Global leaders have condemned the move and imposed sanctions.

Ukraine Invasion

Reverend Paul Richards, a veteran with service in Bosnia, Croatia, and Afghanistan, is traveling from Canada to Kyiv to deliver medical supplies to civilian hospitals and front-line workers injured by landmines. The supplies include items such as thermal socks, blankets, and critical medical equipment like wound pumps and electrocauterizers.

His mission comes as Ukraine continues to endure Russian drone and missile attacks, with the country's invasion entering its fourth year. The initiative is part of broader volunteer efforts to support Ukraine, offering both practical aid and a reminder of international solidarity during a difficult holiday season.

Veteran spending New Year delivering medical supplies to Ukraine

Okay, this is the last box of all our shipments to Ukraine. Reverend Paul Richards serves at this church in White Rock, but will be helping out at a church in Kyiv in a few days. For now, he's making some deliveries. In addition to items like thermal socks, lap blankets, stump covers for amputations, contains a number of pieces of medical equipment that are absolutely essential to civilian hospitals, like non-pressure wound pumps, and when we save legs, and as well as amputations, it also has an electrocauterizer for cauterizing veins and blood vessels. A veteran who served in Bosnia, Croatia, and Afghanistan, his focus is those working on the front lines who have been injured by landmines. It's really important, both from a volunteer basis, but also in professional sort of kinship with those that I work with, is to go over and be with them. Ukraine has been reeling in the aftermath of Russia's drones and missiles over the holidays. The coming February will mark the fourth year of Russia's invasion. On one hand, it's a festive season of Christmas, of New Year's, of theophany, and on the other hand it's war, destruction, death, homesickness, instability, unsureness of the future. The holidays have been bittersweet for the lower mainland's Ukrainian community, says this priest at a Ukrainian church in New Westminster. So all our wishes are, all our prayers, all our hopes for 2026 is end of Ukraine, just peace, fair peace, true peace, long-lasting peace in Ukraine and for Ukrainian people. Reverend Richards, one of many volunteers flying in to hand-deliver medical supplies, says whether up close or from a distance, it's important to help. It's important that the light shines, you know, in the darkest places. So for us, that's what we do, and so it is important that people be seen standing with them very much. For a country thousands of miles away, a small reminder that they're not alone. Jana Bailán, CBC News, Vancouver.

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Veteran spending New Year delivering medical supplies to Ukraine

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Ukraine Invasion