When New Zealand Red Cross’ John Dyer went to western Ukraine in April to assess the risks colleagues heading into the conflict might face, the biggest danger turned out to be a tad surprising
Crazy driving on shoddy roads was identified as the biggest risk for Red Cross workers in Ukraine when Kiwi John Dyer was deployed to the west of the country in April to carry out an assessment.
The International Federation of Red Cross called on the security expert not long after the invasion of Ukraine, asking him to travel there to complete a three-month deployment.
Dyer had his own personal commitments that meant he agreed to five weeks, which he said was enough time to get a good grasp of the risks Red Cross workers and volunteers would face while assisting Ukrainians, and moving supplies around the country.
“It was about how do we mitigate those risks; how do we enable the people that are coming in to operate safely and securely in this arrangement.
“The risk assessment when I did it, the number one risk which surprised a lot of people, was actually traffic accidents,” Dyer told Newsroom.
“The roads are, if you think of basically New Zealand’s secondary roads, with people driving about 110 to 130kmh – it’s just crazy driving.”
Red Cross staff moving from one location to the next are having to drive six hours or more between cities.
“The number of major vehicle accidents we saw on the way and many of them were clearly fatalities.”
The fighting was in the East, so in the West where Dyer was making his assessments there were risks around potential missile strikes but there were bunkers and the strikes tended to come with warning.
“We were also spread out and weren’t near any strategic targets, so the chance of a missile hitting us was actually medium to low…so for me the biggest threat we had was vehicle accidents.”
There were other threats too, primarily the fact most Ukrainians were armed.
“So, you had no idea what level of training these people had and what they might do. It was generally calm but a lot of uncertainty and a lot of checkpoints around the place where you didn’t know what people might do.”
There were also no medical evacuations by air, which meant if someone from Red Cross got injured there needed to be plans to get people to hospitals and then out of country for hospital care.
The path to Red Cross
Alongside four other security delegates, Dyer and the team came up with a plan of what to do in various circumstances for any Red Cross staff coming into the country.
“We were pulling together a security plan that meant if you’re coming in this is what you need to know, here are the risks, this is where you can and can’t go, when you’re travelling this is who you call, this is how we monitor your movements, and this is what happens if there’s a vehicle accident.”
Dyer has worked in a number of war zones through his work with the International Federation of Red Cross.
That career came after two decades of military service, which included a six-month tour as an unarmed military observer with the United Nations to West Africa, which was his first experience with humanitarian work.
Dyer was acknowledged with the New Zealand Gallantry Decoration in the 2000 Queen’s Birthday Honours List for his efforts overseas.
“The shops were still open, the restaurants were open, I could get a beer if I wanted to. You just had to be aware of the possibility of missiles.” - John Dyer
After leaving the military he then turned his mind to New Zealand’s high-performance sports academy and got involved with the Red Cross locally, which saw him get contracted to do some safety and security work during the Asian tsunami.
That was his first time abroad as a New Zealand Red Cross delegate employed by the Federation.
Around the same time he got a call from Geneva asking him if he was interested in a two year posting working in a newly established security and safety unit within the Red Cross, which turned into eleven years abroad.
In 2017 he returned home and reconnected with the New Zealand Red Cross and helped set up security for sending people overseas.
Dyer still does on-call work for the Federation, which is how he ended up being asked to go to Ukraine.
A different type of conflict
Ukraine was different to other war zones he’s worked in, mostly because it’s a “conventional” conflict.
“You have two sides, and there’s conventional weapons. In Africa typically, or places in Asia or South America, there’s not clearly two sides. There’s different factions and they all have different weapons, a lot of small arms, and a lot less training, and are very much unpredictable,” he said.
The other difference is that while the conflict is affecting all of Ukraine it’s affecting the country differently.
“What we see in the media is eastern Ukraine…in the west where I was, if I didn’t look at the street signs I could have been almost anywhere in Western Europe.
“The shops were still open, the restaurants were open, I could get a beer if I wanted to. You just had to be aware of the possibility of missiles.”
Where the western side is affected is the movement of the population with 7 million people shifting from the east to the west and beyond.
“Most of the cities, their population has increased by 30 percent which is having a huge impact.”
A lot of people are arriving with nothing but the clothes on their back and the Red Cross Federation has been running programmes to get basic medicines to people in need.
“I remember talking to one woman who was trying to get her cancer drugs and didn’t know how she was going to get them,” Dyer said.
Cash vouchers are also a big area of work because many parts of the economy are still functioning.
“If I give you a card or cash and you can go buy what you want to buy, that’s a lot better than lining up behind a truck and being given some bags. You just feel better with cash.”
Part of Dyer’s role was working out how these types of programmes, and mobile medical clinics, could all be run safely and securely.
If he went back now, he doesn’t think it would be that different from when he left in May.
For the most part Dyer doesn’t think the risk assessment will have changed much since he left in May, with the exception of nuclear power plants now being seen as targets.
“My sense would be that the nuclear plant risk has increased but, in the west, I’m not convinced the risk profile would have changed.”
Dyer has no plans to go back, and that’s partly because of how difficult it is now for the Red Cross to get war risk insurance.
Red Cross is focussed on deploying people to bordering countries where there is just as much need, and getting war insurance cover for its delegates is much easier.
