Hillsboro Ukrainian American therapist delivers aid and counseling to Ukrainian soldiers on the frontline

Feb. 24 marked the second anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers have died in the conflict and more than six million Ukrainians have fled their homes.

Meanwhile, the need for more aid — from ammunition to life-saving medical equipment and mental health services — grows more urgent as the war enters its third year, according to Yulia Brockdorf, a Ukrainian American psychotherapist in Hillsboro, Oregon. Brockdorf is the co-founder and president of DAWN, a nonprofit that has been sending medical supplies and equipment to Ukraine.

She made four trips to Ukraine in the past year to deliver humanitarian aid and to volunteer her services as a therapist, which means counseling soldiers on the frontlines and former prisoners of war tortured by the Russian military.

“The full-scale invasion really helped, kind of asked me to reflect on what my values truly are … and one of my values is freedom,” Brockdorf said. “My nation, my home, my heart is at the risk of losing her freedom. Parts of my country where I grew up are currently under occupation by the enemy. So for me to not go, it would be inconceivable.”

Before the Russian invasion, Brockdorf had volunteered with Returning Veterans Project, a Portland-based nonprofit that provides free, confidential health services to veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Despite growing up in Ukraine and that past experience of working with military veterans, she still had to gain the trust of soldiers living through the horrors of war.

“The original sense is that I could feel the attempt to protect me, I could feel the attempt to shield and cover and blunt the edges and not be able to go into the materials that was essential for them to work through,” Brockdorf said. “When I would call it out, it would be … ‘How can you understand what it’s like to be so cold that your fingers don’t move, or they’re actually frostbitten? … How can you understand what it’s like to crawl for nine hours with a tourniquet or two tourniquets on, and then later lose a leg because there was no way to evacuate?’”

So Brockdorf resolved to experience firsthand the constant risk of death, psychological trauma and injury that surrounds the people she sought to help. “Fire was above me, fire was around me. When we were in a trench, it was a risk to your life to exit the trench to go to the bathroom,” she said.

At first, Brockdorf said the people she met were “very cautious” about confiding in her, but that changed last spring during a trip to an area in Eastern Ukraine targeted by Russian artillery.

“I would make myself available and there were times I would have really a number of people more than I’ve ever seen in the states in one day,” she said.

Providing therapy to troops in the midst of war also changed how she communicated with this particular group of civilians turned soldiers.

“I’m really good at swearing in Ukrainian now,” Brockdorf said. “It makes me not be above, it makes me not to be a separate person. I’m in the milieu … speaking in the way (of) that people I work with.”

Brockdorf and her team of volunteers at DAWN have also helped support the mental health needs of Ukrainian civilians, including the youngest victims of the war. Last year, DAWN received a grant from Washington County to host a nine-week summer camp for children from Ukraine. Nearly 40 kids, ages 4-9 years old, attended the camp in Portland, which will return for a second year this summer.

“Kids would come into the camp really locked up and have difficulty interacting, communicating,” Brockdorf said. “By the end of the camp, they were singing, they were on the stage. We performed at Pioneer Square. You could see children blossom. We were leaning on the use of Ukrainian culture, Ukrainian language and various psychological tools to provide children with support.”

Related: Putin remains defiant as ever 2 years into Russia’s war in Ukraine

Roughly 4,500 Ukrainian refugees have been resettled in Oregon since February 2022, according to the Oregon Department of Human Services. Last November, the agency made available $2.25 million in funding to community-based organizations to help recent arrivals from Ukraine with housing, employment, mental health and other services. Brockdorf thinks those services need to be delivered in a culturally responsive way to avoid retraumatizing Ukrainian refugees.

“They need, very importantly, access to services in Ukrainian language,” she said. “For many people that I’ve worked with, I’ve heard the sentiment that receiving services, or asking for a Ukrainian interpreter, and the Russian interpreter comes in; it is an act of assault because this, for some people, they’ve seen a Russian soldier rape their child.”

Brockdorf left on Sunday to deliver 18 pallets of medical supplies collected by DAWN and to continue providing therapy to frontline soldiers. For security reasons, she said she could not disclose the locations she will be visiting until after her return home to Hillsboro.

But before leaving, she had a message for the House Republicans on Capitol Hill who are holding up passage of a new round of military aid to Ukraine: “We have a moral obligation to support Ukraine with everything she needs to win this war and end this war. And what is victory for Ukraine is when every last soldier of the enemy state is driven out of every last inch of Ukrainian territory.”

Yulia Brockdorf spoke to “Think Out Loud” host Dave Miller. Click play to listen to the full conversation: