This is the incredible moment a Ukrainian man fighting in the war against Russia thanks an eight-year-old girl from Swansea for the gift of a helmet. Alex, from Cherkassy in central Ukraine, is not a member of the army - before the war he ran a small bar in Kyiv - but he has still been called up to serve and protect his country and fight against Russian soldiers in the war.
After taking a short leave of absence to be with his wife Mariia as she gave birth to the couple’s baby son, Arie; 40-year-old Alex was preparing himself to fight in the war when he realised that supplies for civilian battalions were low and he was not going to be given a helmet. He soon informed Never Surrender UA, a charity set up in the UK to arrange for donations and assistance to be sent from the UK to Ukraine, to tell them what he needed and crossed his fingers that someone would be able to help him in some way.
At the same time, kind-hearted Dakota Mitchell from West Cross, Swansea, was selling bunches of lavender she’d picked from her grandmother’s garden at her school’s summer fayre and was going around Mumbles Fest, a community music festival in Oystermouth Castle, with a bucket and two friends, asking people in the crowd for donations for Ukraine. You can get the biggest Swansea news stories straight to your inbox with our newsletter.
Read more: Ukrainian families who fled the war speak about their harrowing journeys to resettle in Wales
Caring Dakota raised £322 in total for Ukraine and she and her mum got in touch with Never Surrender UA charity to ask their advice on how the funds should be spent. On hearing about Alex and that he needed a helmet, Dakota immediately decided to buy the helmet he desperately needed and she and her mum arranged for the helmet to be delivered to Alex through the charity.
Dakota also sent a “Stay Safe” card and a cuddly toy for Alex’s baby son to “cuddle when you’re not there,” as she wanted to help put a smile on his face and help him through this challenging time.
Never Surrender UA arranged for the helmet to make its way to Alex at his training camp in Ukraine, alongside other donations the charity had raised for people fighting in the war – and Alex was taken aback by the kind generosity of Dakota and the charity.
After receiving the helmet, he recorded a thank-you message for Dakota and sent it to Never Surrender UA to be sent on to Dakota and her family. In the clip, understood to have been filmed at a civilian training camp, Alex said: “Dear Dakota, I just want to say thankyou, thankyou for your helmet. I hope it will save my life.
“Now I’m changing this hat to this one [the helmet] and it’s all because of you. So I want to say thankyou to all you guys from Never Surrender. Thankyou for your job that you’re doing, keep doing it and united we stand. Thankyou from Ukraine.”
In a message from Alex's wife, Mariia, to Dakota's family, Mariia said: "We are crying! Thank you very much! It's even not a cute act but very very powerful! I will tell this story to Arie, our son, when he gets older. Like an example of such a big heart!"
The video and message came after Dakota had sent a series of videos to Alex via Never Surrender UA charity, to update him on what she was doing to help him.
Dakota’s mum, Clare-Anna Mitchell, told WalesOnline that she tries to teach her children the importance of charity and giving back to others whenever they can. Clare-Anna, a community councillor in Mumbles, has been praised by residents across Swansea in recent weeks for arranging more than £300,000 worth of aid to be sent from her home in West Cross to people fighting the war in Ukraine.
Earlier this year, she set up an Amazon Wishlist so people across Swansea and beyond could donate items easily online - you can read more about this in a previous article here – and was so overwhelmed with donations that she was soon able to fill her living room and hallway with parcels and packages.
Explaining how Dakota had taken it upon herself to raise as much as she could for Ukraine and wanted to help as much as possible, Clare-Anna said: “We were at MumblesFest and we had a bucket asking people for donations, there weren’t many to begin with but Dakota piped up and said ‘give me the bucket, I’ll collect for you’ and she and her two friends had a bucket each and they went around asking people for donations.”
“During the pandemic, she picked lavender from my partner’s mum’s field and arranged them in bunches and sold them to raise money for NHS charities, she said she wanted to do this sort of thing again so I asked at her school if she could sell lavender for Ukraine, they said yes – she raised £322 in total from the lavender and Mumbles donations.
“She’s a little entrepreneur, she’s amazing. We contacted Never Surrender UA to speak about what they needed and they said they knew of a Ukrainian civilian who had been on paternity leave and was due to go back to fight but had no helmet – I asked Dakota if she wanted to use the money to buy the helmet and she said ‘definitely’.”
“We bought the helmet and found out Alex had a baby son, so we went to Captain’s Cabin [a gift shop in Mumbles] and bought a cuddly toy dragon for baby for when Alex isn’t there. She also wrote a card that said ‘Stay Safe’” she added.” “Never Surrender UA sent donations and supplies to Ukraine that same week and delivered Alex’s helmet, card and cuddly toy to him at a training camp. Dakota was really excited to know that it all got to Alex and wants to meet him when it [the war] is safe and settled, whenever that may be.”
Never Surrender defines itself as a "group consisting of Britons and Ukrainians organising weekly deliveries to the east and south of Ukraine" who have "come together with one goal - help save as many lives as possible". You can donate to the charity directly online here, and you can find out more about Never Surrender on their website here or on Instagram here.
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