The last time I saw Andrew Bagshaw — one of two British volunteers killed in Ukraine this month — we were swapping war stories over a beer in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv. He was heading out of country on a supply run to buy a new van, after his previous one had been destroyed by Russian shelling in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, where the fiercest fighting in the country was raging.
“It was ripped apart” Bagshaw, 48, had told me of his van, its tires shredded and windows smashed by the explosion. “But we got a family out” — which, to him, seemed to be all that mattered. He knew he was fortunate to still be alive, but seemed unphased, planning to continue his work in all the most dangerous areas in Ukraine.
