Interview conducted by Alia Bonanno
Charles Goggin, an 11th grader at Avon Old Farms School in Connecticut, is the co-founder and Executive Director of Ukraine Underground, a grassroots organization that works to evacuate and aid residents of Ukraine through donations, communication, and research. This exclusive interview covers Goggin’s personal experience, connection to the conflict, and hopes for the organization and Ukraine.
Learn more and donate at ukraineunderground.org. To get involved with Ukraine Underground, email charles@ukraineunderground.org. If you or a family member are in need of help in the Ukrainian conflict, email help@ukraineunderground.org.
Q: Who are you? What do you do?
I’m Charles, I go to Avon Oak Farms in Northern Connecticut, 15 minutes outside of Hartford. I’m a junior [in high school] and I am the co-executive director, along with my brother, of an organization called the Ukraine Underground which is essentially a youth-led grassroots project of sorts that works on helping people evacuate from Ukraine. We also help people, especially the elderly, remaining in Ukraine to find resources, necessities, and safety.
Q: How have you been able to start Ukraine Underground? Do you have school support or have you started this on your own initiative?
It was primarily founded on our own initiative. My brother goes to Colby College where he’s a sophomore, and we started it together. We have received support from our schools only lightly because when we were founding [the initiative] it was just the end of our quarters, [approaching] our spring break. Since then, however, we have received both verbal and some volunteer support from both of our schools. They have been a huge help in encouraging us and letting us spend as much additional time as we need it on this project.
Q: How are you able to help the Ukrainian people? How do you get funding, volunteers, etc.?
It’s a merge of all of the above. We’re very lucky to each have lots of contacts and friends in Eastern Europe, Western Europe, and Ukraine specifically. We are able to use a network of volunteers that we know all over Eastern Europe, North America, Asia, and even a few in Ukraine to help mobilize people while also plotting out routes monitoring conflict, keeping up to date on news, and informing the general public about what’s going on in Ukraine. We’re also very lucky to also have some adult support from our board of directors; our biggest supporter is Grady Anderson. He is an American who was working in Ukraine at the time of the invasion and this whole thing came about because my brother and I were both working to help him depart from Ukraine which he successfully did in late February. He mobilized his own company and all his contacts possible to help us get the marketing the volunteers. I must admit that my mother has also been very helpful, especially concerning getting her own friends and contacts for donations and knowledge. You help us get donations as well.
Q: How would you describe your job, specifically?
I’m the Executive Director, which essentially means I oversee day-to-day operations with my brother as well as making long-term progress goals. Ukraine Underground is organized in an interesting way. We have teams and groups of people: we have the research team, which does a lot of our public information, keeps each team updated, and plots out routes. We have our creative team which works on our social media and more of our public information. And then we have our command team or our command center. Those are the teams or groups of teams that work directly in contact with people in crisis working to help them get out or fix whatever situation that they are in. My brother and I both also oversee the executive team, which is the group of all the directors of those various teams, they’re sub directors. We also have a mental health counselor who’s a student trained by a professional licensed psychiatrist at my own school to assist us in any mental health crisis, because it’s a very traumatic event.
Q: What has the human impact been of this war? How have you seen the impact of your work in Ukraine as well?
Concerning the broader impact, it varies from place to place and how close people are to it, but across the board this has all been very devastating. On top of the thousands of deaths, including 109 children as of this morning and thousands of injuries of civilians and soldiers on both sides, people related to Ukrainians— families—have been ripped apart. Families in Russia have been ripped apart over the conflict and choosing sides because in many cases, those who tend to be of older generations are more nostalgic for the Soviet Union and therefore see the war as having a proper cause, while younger groups tend to have more information concerning what is going on. But even in places like here in the U.S., people are suffering emotionally and mentally. I know even before I started this project, I was emotionally drained by everything that was going on. My maternal grandmother, her family is Polish, Russian, and Ukrainian, so I could kind of connect to the conflict in that way despite not knowing them super well. A lot of people across the world have connections in some way to Ukraine or people who know people who know people in Ukraine. That has caused a lot of emotional and mental damage to a lot of people around the world— on top of the obvious damage to those evacuating for which this is an extremely traumatic event with having to leave your country, uncertain about your life or the life of your country at the force of a global power, which is the number one nuclear power in the world. Being unsure about the life of your children about relatives remaining is all so terrifying and a fact of this war.
Q: Past the human toll, what are the other implications of this war, especially the environmental one?
Though our primary focus is humanitarian aid, another major focus is just how devastating this will be in terms of climate change and the future of this planet. As we’ve seen historically, wars obviously kick up industry globally and therefore are a huge contributor to climate change. In this context, whole ecosystems are being leveled around eastern Ukraine and it’s looking like soon to be Western Ukraine as well with the current Russian bombing of Lviv. Russia has also now gained control over at least two nuclear plants within Ukraine. Using the Chernobyl disaster in the 1980s as context, we know this could have a huge environmental impact across Europe, even spilling it to Asia and North America, Africa, and the Middle East. On top of that, the future of Ukraine, which is still up in the air, is completely intertwined with the future of the climate in the region, at least in a small way. Russia is a very large industrial power and Ukraine has historically, especially during the Soviet times, been used as an industrial power with so many nuclear and coal-powered power plants there. There are also large oil reserves in Ukraine, so obviously, that kind of creates further ecological worries in the region and for the world with Russia in control.
Q: What are your views on the international response, especially that of the U.S.? How should Russia be held accountable?
I’m very conflicted on the international response myself. I recognize the reasoning behind NATO’s response and specifically the response of the U.S. and I am extremely grateful for Ukraine and for the Ukraine Underground and especially the people that we are helping. NATO has been generous to unilaterally grant weapons access through shipments of missiles and others. At the same time, however, I think it could be beneficial for NATO to step into the war in Ukraine, but I do recognize the impact that would have on world peace and the world order as it is now, especially because it would probably mean the U.S. and Russia would delve directly into a head-on-head war. I would say that the best action that the U.S. could take right now would probably be to increase its shipments of weapons as well as closing the skies over Ukraine. However, Russia has stated before that it would take this as an aggressive action and treat any power involved in such actions as a power. Like Ukraine— they would treat it as a declaration of war. But I think at least a minor closure or protection of people evacuating could be beneficial. I must confess that I don’t know what the future will look like, however. The news that we get concerning Ukraine, even from volunteers and tips is really conflicting. It’s changing every two or so seconds. I think that Ukraine has a very strong chance of winning this war. But at the same time, I recognize that Russia has the upper hand concerning military and armaments as well as control over the balance of peace in this world. I don’t know what the future holds for Ukraine or the region or the world, but I am hopeful and trying to stay optimistic.
Q: How do you feel about the way Black students and Ukrainian immigrants have been treated in this crisis? In comparison to the Afghanistan crisis, how has the world responded?
I myself am biracial and very clearly condemn the fact that so many people of any sort of Black descent have been turned away or discriminated against at the border. I’ve actually seen that on quite a few occasions and it’s surprising. We are lucky that so far we [the Ukraine Underground] have had no issues with it. But it’s becoming a real issue. And truthfully, I think that it is an issue which can be resolved through diplomacy between nations. But in these specific cases, it’s very clear that it is those who are oftentimes not native to Ukraine who are attempting to leave, as they should be able to, and they are still being turned away. And that is the very antithesis of what Ukraine and people working around Ukraine are like; we would like to get as many people out who want to get out as possible. A lot of the international response and news coverage being more focused on this has been because people in the U.S. tend to be closer to Ukraine in like any, every way, shape, or form concerning the government, of course. In terms of Afghanistan, the lack of media coverage also has to do with the U.S.’s history in Afghanistan and the role that Ukraine serves against Russian imperialism is a factor as well. I think that there should have been far more coverage and organization like this surrounding Afghanistan. I don’t exactly see why other than the fact that Ukraine serves a more direct role as a buffer between Russia and the West. I also think in terms of current conflicts, like Yemen, in which the U.S. is heavily involved, there should be far more outcry about that because that has been a significant thing with now millions of refugees and thousands of lost lives which is hopefully something that one day we can organize around.
Q: What drives you to keep doing this despite the emotional toll it takes? How have you seen the impact of your work in Ukraine as well?
I think being able to directly speak with people who have helped evacuate, or we have aided and knowing their connection, not just to the country of Ukraine but to the land that they lived on, the people that they knew, the memories they had, is a really big driving force for me and the team as a whole. On top of that, the knowledge that this is also happening in so many other places and we can fully build this as our primary cause, recognizing that our work doesn’t stop here— we’re hoping that we can one day branch out into other conflicts aiding in evacuation. Primarily, though, it’s the ability to directly talk and understand the experiences of so many people which I think in today’s day and age, despite social media and the connectedness of our world, so many people are unable to do that because they don’t know anybody from these areas to no fault of their own. Within the Ukraine Underground, we have so far, in our relatively short period of work, been able to aid or directly rescue over 20 people which is a shockingly large milestone considering the original magnitude of this project. We are currently working to partner with a few other groups and agencies doing similar things to increase this magnitude as we obviously want to help as many people as possible. But we’ve been very fortunate in that a lot of [those we have contacted] have been emotionally stable in one way or another— that may be primarily because the groups we have directly evacuated are groups of expatriates living in Ukraine, so they have less of a connection [to the country than natives]. However, we have definitely seen a lot of lasting trauma that even over weeks and weeks, and I predict months and years will not be able to cure or fix this damage because it’s terrifying: sleeping in a bomb shelter, hearing bombs around you and not knowing if you’ll live until the next morning.
Q: How can our readers help? How can we help from a high-school level?
We are always, always, always desperate for volunteers in any of our departments. Even to be a contact in Eastern Europe— if you know anybody in Eastern Europe, we are always looking for more people to help in any way we can. The number one way outside of nations or volunteering would probably be to combat the disinformation that Russia is putting out surrounding the war. Obviously, Russia is generally known for disinformation campaigns, and they have a wide reach globally. The evidence is very clear in Ukraine that this is not a special military operation— it is a blatant war and a blatant invasion to remove power in Ukraine that has sat with at the very least the people, if not people who are against Russia’s power. Russian officials promised the Russian people that they would be met with flowers and smiles and welcomes in Ukraine, which has clearly not come to fruition because the Ukrainian people are fighting back very hard. My point is, the number one thing outside volunteering or donations— we need to combat disinformation, especially on social media, as best we can. You can do through sharing news, sharing stories pointing out when things are wrong, et cetera. Spread the word, that’s the best we can do.
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