Today is my 55th birthday, and my friends at United 24 and my fellow ambassador Mark Hamill have prepared a special gift: the chance to help lead Safe Terrain.
This is a new campaign, starting right now, to help save Ukrainian lives during this terrible war by funding robots that can clear mines.
Mines are one of the most insidious killers in this war. Russians have strewn millions of mines on Ukrainian territory. Even in places that Ukraine has deoccupied, such as the parts of Kherson region I visited last summer, sappers and others have to risk their lives to remove these mines. Otherwise the mines will maim and kill civilians years or even decades into the future.
In Kherson I watched sappers move carefully through the fields under the hot sun. And in Kyiv I visited people in a rehabilitation center who had lost limbs.
Here technology can help. Robots can do this work. In Safe Terrain, Mark Hamill and I are enlisting you to help raise $441,000 to fund thirty demining robots. These will clear Ukrainian lands of explosive ordnance, reducing risks for sappers, and allowing people to return to their businesses, their farms, and their lives
I am spending this 55th birthday on my family’s farm. Whenever I am here, I think of the farmers in southern and eastern Ukraine who have to struggle with the aftermath of occupation: all of the mines in their fields. These are fields that, in good times, can feed half a billion people — fields on which hundreds of millions of Asians and Africans as well as tens of millions of Ukrainians depend for their food.
I won’t be asking for any other presents today: if you want to wish me well, please make a contribution today to Safe Terrain. The Safe Terrain fundraiser begins today at 11:00am Eastern on August 18th, right as I am posting this note. Thank you!
PS: If you want me to know about your contribution to Safe Terrain, feel free to mention it below, or to write me on timothysnyder13100@gmail.com.
PPS: And please share this message with friends of Ukraine who might also want to help.
Source: Timothy Snyder, “Safe Terrain,” Thinking about…, 18 August 2024