When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy made a plea for foreign volunteers to go help his country fight. 

Bruce Perry heard the call. 

“I have military experience. I have first aid training. I’m retired. I have no dependents. And my grandfather was from Ukraine. So I thought, what the heck, I’ll go,” the resident of Savona, B.C., told CBC’s Daybreak Kamloops. 

However, after doing a series of interviews, it turned out the 76-year-old was not a candidate for military service. But that didn’t stop him. 

Perry went to Ukraine in May 2022 and looked for other volunteer work. First, he worked with an organization that supported military efforts, bringing them much-needed supplies to the frontlines.

But after 90 days as a foreign visitor, he had to leave the country and wasn’t able to return for another three months.

He returned to his farm in Savona, a rural community located about 35 kilometres west of Kamloops, where he looked for other Ukrainian causes where his services might be of use. 

That’s when he found Animal Rescue Kharkiv (ARK). 

The organization began as a small volunteer-run animal shelter in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, back in 2016.

Russia’s invasion prompted the group to expand, becoming more of a rescue organization. They’ve since rescued more than 29,000 animals, according to the ARK website.  

“The minute I got into the [ARK] clinic, I knew this is for me, this is the thing for me to do here,” Perry says, speaking from his apartment in Kharkiv on Wednesday.

He started working as a caregiver at the ARK veterinary clinic in January 2023, where his first job was feeding young puppies.

“We get a lot of litters of puppies and kittens whose mothers have been killed in the war zone [or] so badly injured that they cannot care for their puppies or kittens,” he said in an email. 

“A real heartbreaker. Poor little one with no mother, except an old man.”

Challenging, but rewarding work

It hasn’t been easy work. In fact, Perry describes the scenes he’s witnessed as “absolutely horrendous.”

“These dogs and cats come in with broken legs, missing legs, missing eyeballs, fur burned down to the skin, shrapnel wounds,” he explains.

Many were left behind as owners fled drone and rocket strikes, with no time to collect their pets. Others are left alone after their owners were killed.

“It’s been a difficult thing to see, to tell you the least.”

Now closing in on 77, Perry says working at the ARK clinic has given him a “sense of purpose.”

“It gives me a reason to get up in the morning, and it gives me satisfaction at the end of the day, knowing that I did something to help some creature that couldn’t help himself,” he says. 

“I mean, these animals are helpless. They’re out there helpless. They need human intervention. There’s just no way around it. There’s thousands of them. There’s going to be thousands more.”

Violence persists in Ukraine, more than four years since the invasion began; at least 26 people were killed in an apartment attack in the Ukrainian city of Ternopil on Wednesday.

‘Winter is going to be very difficult’

Travel rules dictate that Perry can only stay in Ukraine for six months. Come spring, he’ll return to Savona.

He says it’s important to stay with ARK through the winter, and be there during power outages and when communication goes down to support the team. 

“This winter is going to be very difficult. The infrastructure here is targeted every day,” he says.

He plans to return once he’s allowed, and keep working with the animal rescue as long as he’s needed. 

“I’ll just keep it up as long as I’m physically able to do it.”