OPINION

As Russia’s attacks on Ukrainian cities intensify and civilian deaths reach their highest monthly toll in more than four years, former Tauranga Mayor Tenby Powell writes from Kyiv about the reality of living and working under constant threat, and why New Zealanders cannot afford to look away.

I have now spent some two and a half years in Ukraine across five tours of duty since the full-scale invasion began.

Every tour is different. The technology changes. The needs shift. The people we work alongside change. And the word that defines this current deployment is unmistakable: vulnerability.

Together with my team, we have lived under constant attacks. We have heard the air-raid sirens, felt buildings shake, and watched people emerge from shelters not knowing whether their homes still stand.

We have driven through neighbourhoods where apartment blocks have been reduced to concrete skeletons overnight and stood with Ukrainian colleagues in Kyiv and Kharkiv while the sky was contested over Ukraine’s two largest cities.

Our teams have delivered ambulances and support vehicles into high-risk areas – Sumy, Kharkiv, Donetsk and Kherson – knowing that the same missile and drone threat devastating civilian communities also hangs over the roads we use.

This is not an abstraction. It is the daily environment in which we work and live.

Since May 2022, our teams have made and delivered some 10,000 stoves and water boilers from recycled hot-water cylinders, each carrying a brass plaque that reads “With love from New Zealand”. We have put 68 ambulances and seven support vehicles into service and evacuated some 12,000 civilians.

Behind every casualty statistic are families and communities living under constant threat, Tenby Powell says. Photo / Tenby Powell

All of it has been done without New Zealand Government funding, sustained entirely by the generosity of ordinary Kiwis and a core group of international partners.

Today, our work continues under a more vulnerable sky than at any point in the past two years.

When air defences cannot reliably intercept ballistic missiles, communities are exposed. Families go to bed knowing an air-raid siren may wake them, and that not every incoming missile can be stopped. The psychological weight of that reality is heavy, and the sleep deprivation cumulative.

The international community has grown accustomed to reading monthly casualty figures almost as if they were weather reports. We cannot allow this to become normal.

In July, the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission confirmed 437 Ukrainian civilians were killed and 2610 injured.

That is a 30% increase on June, and a 70% jump compared with July last year. It is the highest monthly civilian death toll recorded since May 2022, more than four years into this war.

The primary driver is clear. Russia sharply intensified long-range ballistic and cruise missile strikes on cities far from the front line, taking advantage of Ukraine’s critical shortage of Patriot air-defence systems needed to stop ballistic missiles.

Russia roughly doubled the number of ballistic and cruise missiles fired in July compared with the previous month. Many of them were aimed at residential areas of Kyiv, which alone recorded 54 civilian deaths and 202 injuries.

Long-range weapons accounted for 38% of all civilian casualties. Seventeen children were killed and 166 injured – the worst child casualty figures since April 2022.

Cities such as Kyiv, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Dnipro and Odesa bore the brunt. Ukraine urgently needs advanced air-defence systems and interceptors. In my view, the only viable system is the PAC3 Patriot interceptor.

These numbers are not simply statistics. They represent parents, children and grandparents killed or injured in their homes and neighbourhoods.

Ukraine urgently needs more advanced air-defence capability, including the Patriot interceptors capable of countering ballistic missile threats.

Accountability for attacks on civilians must continue to be pursued. And humanitarian support for those living under this threat must be scaled up immediately.

For New Zealand, “not looking away” must mean more than expressions of solidarity.

It means continuing to stand alongside Ukraine diplomatically. It means supporting international efforts to give Ukraine the means to protect its civilian population.

And it means ensuring humanitarian organisations working on the ground can continue to provide practical help to communities living through this war.

A woman carrying supplies in Ukraine. Photo / Tenby Powell

New Zealanders understand vulnerability. We understand what it means to stand with people who are being deliberately targeted.

The plaques on those stoves, the ambulances still running in frontline cities, the quiet determination of our Ukrainian colleagues – these are tangible expressions of a very Kiwi instinct: when someone is in trouble, you help.

And they are small, but often lifesaving, acts of defiance against the deliberate creation of vulnerability.

The need here in Ukraine has not lessened. In many respects it has become more acute. Every stove delivered, every ambulance kept on the road, every family given a measure of warmth or medical care under these conditions is a small act of defiance against the deliberate creation of vulnerability.

But small acts of defiance are not a substitute for the systems that stop missiles in the air.

Ukraine does not need our pity. It needs the ability to protect its people. It needs interceptors. It needs the political will of nations that still claim to stand for the protection of civilians. And New Zealanders, of all people, should understand that looking away is not neutrality; it is a choice.

The plaques on those stoves were never just metal. They carried a simple message from one small nation to another: With love from New Zealand. They were also a promise that, despite the distance between us, Ukrainians had not been forgotten. That promise still holds.

Kiwi K.A.R.E will remain here, under this more vulnerable sky, for as long as Ukrainians must live beneath it. We will do so without Government funding if we must, and without the comfort of distance.

Because the alternative – a world that has grown accustomed to watching cities burn and then turning the page – is a world none of us should be willing to inhabit.

*The figures in this article are based on verified data from the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (HRMMU) report published on August 12.

Tenby Powell is a veteran, businessman and humanitarian who chairs Kiwi Aid & Refugee Evacuation (Kiwi K.A.R.E), which has been operating in Ukraine since May 2022. He also chairs the New Zealand Ukraine Business Association (NZUBA).