Ukraine and Russian war: Ex-Tauranga mayor Tenby Powell on life in a warzone

Tenby Powell has spent 21 months in and out of war-torn Ukraine, ferrying refugees to safety and delivering medical and humanitarian aid – often under gunfire. Now, Tauranga’s former mayor, who has also been grappling with cancer, is home and considering what’s next, not just for Ukraine but for himself. He speaks with Kiri Gillespie.

Tenby Powell says he was lost for words when he walked through mass grave sites near Izium.

The sanitisation spray used by authorities failed, he says, to mask the smell of death and decay.

“You wander around the grave sites wondering how people can do this to other people. The vast majority were civilians.”

The former Tauranga mayor and army colonel arrived two days after several mass graves were discovered after Ukrainian forces recaptured Izium from the invading Russian army. One grave contained at least 440 bodies, according to Ukrainian authorities.

“It was so overwhelming.

“The police and whoever else had come in and they had sprayed it because you can imagine the smell – so there was this heavy damp chemical smell, I guess mixed with the smell of death.”

Tenby Powell, former Tauranga mayor, has returned from the Ukraine war zone where his Kiwi K.A.R.E initiative is helping distribute aid and medical care. Photo / Alex Cairns

Powell believes a genocide is occurring in Ukraine and the brutality of the conflict is hard to comprehend.

Media have reported that children are being stolen and that Russian soldiers are raping women and castrating male captives. .

Asked how often his mortality came to mind, Powell says, “Constantly”.

When Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, he had been waging a personal battle with stage four prostate cancer for more than a year.

He started Kiwi K.A.R.E, a volunteer organisation delivering humanitarian aid and medical treatment to Ukrainians impacted by the war.

A crucial part of its work involves using seven decommissioned New Zealand ambulances as military medical units.

Food, treatments, water boilers and stoves are transported to civilians in need along with hand-knitted teddy bears for children. No one is paid for their work and the organisation is funded solely from donations. Powell pays for his own travel and “humble” accommodation.

From one battle to another

Powell’s Ukraine mission began not long after his own bitter battle within the Tauranga City Council’s chambers came to a sudden and dramatic end.

On November 19, 2020, Powell resigned as Tauranga’s mayor and called for commissioners to be appointed, following months of infighting among elected members - particularly involving Powell and unsuccessful mayoral candidates.

Powell’s Ukraine efforts have been welcomed by the country’s Deputy Defence Minister, Nataliia Kalmykova, who wrote to him asking for more ambulances.

All things going to plan, more are on the way. Kiwi K.A.R.E is also helping to support a New Zealand documentary on Ukraine’s struggles.

“You have to ask, ‘How the hell did seven New Zealand ambulances make such an impact?’” Powell says.

Former New Zealand ambulances in Kyiv, Ukraine. Photo / Tenby Powell

Seated at a cafe table in Tauranga, Powell explains the decommissioned ambulances were mechanically sound, the bodywork was good and despite accumulating more than 300,000km, they had “all the bells and whistles” needed – just not for New Zealand roads.

“We painted them camouflage … we made sure they were serviced fully and reattached oxygen bottles … they were ready to go.”

Powell says another 35 ambulances should be available from April.

“I’m hoping that we will be able to move 16 fairly soon, they are not from New Zealand, and then we can look at the rest later.”

The push for armoured ambulances

Powell has also called on the New Zealand Government to help supply light armoured vehicles (LAVs) to protect medical workers on Ukraine’s battlefields.

Powell gave nearly three decades of military service to the New Zealand Army regular and reserve forces and was a deputy commander of a United Nations mission in Lebanon and Israel. His military service includes a tour of duty in the Middle East.

Powell shares a video he made appealing for greater Government support. He’s filmed with others wearing a helmet and armour in the back of one of the ambulances.

He stares directly into the camera and explains that during their time in the warzone they have experienced incoming artillery fire.

Tenby Powell and his daughter Charlotte pictured in March 2023 with one of the ambulances and medical supplies to be sent to Ukraine. Photo / Alex Cairns

“It’s not without some trepidation that we are traversing back across some very open country in what is effectively a soft-skinned vehicle, so the New Zealand LAVs [light armoured vehicles] would be amazing for this to take out a number of wounded soldiers to hospital …”

Powell tells the Bay of Plenty Times he knows full well what the outcome of shrapnel hitting an ambulance can be for occupants - fatal injuries are a real possibility.

The push for the LAVs remains ongoing, he says.

Kiwi K.A.R.E plans to help transport medical workers to makeshift surgery clinics made from buried shipping containers where some of the those injured on the frontlines are treated. Helicopter airlifts are not available due to the fighting and treating injured people is often hampered by difficulties of getting people to hospital.

Evacuations under military fire

Powell believes the world needs to be worried about Russian president Vladimir Putin and international leaders like him “making overt statements about their aspirations”.

“Putin has made it very clear he doesn’t recognise Ukraine as a sovereign state … he just wants his own way under any circumstances.”

He questions how Russian forces will ever be prosecuted due to the vastness of the crimes they are accused of.

Powell admits he questioned what he had got himself into “many, many times”.

He spent about 14 months in Ukraine and refers to his first rescue of an elderly woman trapped in a heavily hit city. She lived alone eight storeys high and every window in the building was blown out by arterially shockwaves. She’d lived like that for six months before her rescue. She now lives in Germany.

Kiwi K.A.R.E aid charity founder Tenby Powell in Ukraine.

He says such evacuations are typical and “we’ve been under military fire” often.

“Everybody has because it just happens … You don’t get used to it.”

The Kiwi K.A.R.E team is eight people including Australians, an American and Ukrainians.

“We are not soldiers. We are not pretending to be soldiers. We are not involved in the conflict. What we can do, is have people … who understand the issue of trauma, who’ve seen death before, who understand how to help people in tough situations. At the same time, we aren’t going to take any undue risks that will put anyone’s life at risk,” Powell says.

“Because of our relationship with government officials, military commanders and a whole lot of other people … we have contacts enough to be escorted into places where there is great need and sometimes when we are going to close that, we need to have a military escort. That happens fairly regularly now.”

Powell estimates Kiwi K.A.R.E provided 80 per cent humanitarian aid and 20 per cent medical aid with “piecemeal evacuations” when it started in June 2022. The proportions had since flipped, with “organised and way more sophisticated evacuations”.

Virtually every evacuee is administered oxygen and sometimes drugs by qualified medical staff in the back of the ambulances as they flee.

The medical treatment is desperately sought after.

‘It’s terrible driving away, terrible’

Powell estimates more than 1000 Ukraine hospitals and medical centres have been attacked or damaged during the conflict.

“It’s why ambulances are needed … because there’s nowhere else to go,” he says.

“And so when we roll up with an ambulance, you’ll have 100 people surround you in half an hour.”

Powell says the team is overwhelmed every single time.

Some of the hardships experienced by the people of Ukraine. Supplied Photo/ Tenby Powell

“The thing that consistently breaks my heart is that we will always run out before we can deliver and there’s going to be a queue of people left and we have an empty van. I have never got used to that.

“It’s terrible driving away, terrible. Arguments break out. Particularly in villages where people know each other, they say this person would have this or that.”

Kiwi K.A.R.E works with local councils to ensure appropriate distribution of goods to the right people in need.

“There’s still a queue left though, there’s still tears,” Powell says.

In a rare vulnerable moment, Powell’s eyes well up as he recalls those moments.

The Yuri Bear movement

Powell’s heartache is tempered by a movement known as Yuri Bears - Teddy bears hand-knitted by Australasian pensioners - named after a young Chernobyl refugee adopted by an Australian woman now working for a retirement village chain.

“So on every mission we take bucketloads of Yuri Bears everywhere we go and give them to the kids and the kids love them. I have so many photos of Yuri Bears, it’s endless. Can you imagine a [shipping] container-full? We will have Yuri Bears forever.”

Powell and his team are also buoyed by the response to their distribution of vital wood-burning stoves (burzhuykas) and water boilers (Voda Naharivach), recycled from electrical water cylinders and stamped “Love from NZ”. More than 1000 devices have been given to people whose homes and towns have been destroyed.

Ukrainian children pictured with their Yuri Bears, knitted by Australasian pensioners and distributed to young people impacted by the Russian conflict. Photos / Tenby Powell

Powell shares another video, showing grateful recipients in villages blanketed in snow, with damaged buildings all around.

“I do feel pride but I anguish when I see those living conditions, when you’re living in a house that has mostly fallen down or you’re trying to find shelter somewhere but want to remain in your village or town and this is the only water or heating you’re going to get, you drive away going, ‘Oh my God’.”

Now, film producer Scott McJarrow has approached Kiwi K.A.R.E for help with the planning and management of a documentary about the war.

My Name is Ukraine aims to capture the stories of war victims voiced by a close family member, as if they were the fallen soldier or civilian. It’s expected the documentary will include New Zealanders.

McJarrow tells the Bay of Plenty Times there’s so much “that needs to be told” and it’s “very much in our interests that we support Ukraine”.

Battling an ‘all-consuming’ war - and cancer

For Powell, a man diagnosed with stage 4 prostate cancer, the past two years have been a lot - emotionally and physically.

“It is exhausting and it’s never-ending. War is all-consuming,” Powell says.

But he’s not stopping.

“The world has let them down by not giving them all the things they promised”. He lists F16s fighter jets, heavy machinery and ammunition which Ukraine is running out of as examples.

“Americans, the Republicans, have stopped their aid, Europeans are slow to act, but the ammunition — in Afghanistan a heavy day of fire was 350 rounds, in Ukraine: 5000 a day easily. Can you imagine?

“Giving up now would just be terrible and I believe they can win this war … And it’s critical they do because the only pathway to peace for Europe and probably the free world is victory for Ukraine - there is no other option. Putin won’t stop.”

He says it’s frustrating but understandable the media spotlight on Ukraine has waned in recent months due to the Gaza conflict.

Tauranga City Council mayor Tenby Powell shortly before his resignation in November 2020. Photo / George Novak

Powell does not know how long he’ll be distributing equipment or helping people flee the warzone but there is a succession plan for Kiwi K.A.R.E should his health deteriorate.

The cancer diagnosis came shortly before his resignation as mayor. Commissioners have since been appointed and Powell has chased his dreams, making the most of the time he has.

“Because of the health situation, it has very much crystallised my thinking about who I want to be and what I want to do in the world,” he says.

“I think if you’re diagnosed with any stage four cancer, you do say the race might run itself a little bit short at some stage.”

Life after a war zone

Powell had surgery to remove the cancer and every six months has a blood test to check his PSA (prostate-specific antigen) levels stay at a safe level. In each six-month block, he aims to have made a significant, positive difference to society, he says.

“As it transpires, these six-month plans for Kiwi K.A.R.E had been probably a lot bigger than they would’ve been and a lot more compressed in terms of being able to deliver results than had I not done it like that.

“It’s kind of been a good thing for me to do personally, and at the same time I’ve done things like the master scuba diving course because I love diving, I’ve learned how to fly. So, where I used to try to do something big-ish by learning something big every five years and something small every year, now I try to do something big-ish every six months. This has been Kiwi K.A.R.E.”

Since being diagnosed with stage four cancer, Tenby Powell has achieved some big goals. Photo / Alex Cairns

Powell says he’s learned he can still be effective running the operation from home and is focusing now on the extra ambulances.

He is also in discussion regarding at least two commercial directorships “which has been lovely”, he says.

“But at the same time, I’m being very choosy about what I do how I do it and what the impact on the world is with anything I do, including directorships and the companies that I might end up supporting.”

Powell says that living life on six monthly cycles means it’s hard to know what’s next but he hopes that whatever unfolds, it’ll make a positive impact - here and in Ukraine.

“Life has to go on for people, it has to.”

Kiri Gillespie is an assistant news director and a senior journalist for the Bay of Plenty Times and Rotorua Daily Post, specialising in local politics and city issues. She was a finalist for the Voyager Media Awards Regional Journalist of the Year in 2021.