After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Nome resident Mark Hayward began drawing up plans to support the embattled Eastern European country.
Hayward served in the U.S. Army Special Forces as a Medical Sergeant. As he watched the war unfold on the other side of the world, he said he felt called to bring his combat medic training to Ukraine’s International Legion.
“I crossed the border into Ukraine in early March of 2022 and I’ve been going back intermittently since then,” Hayward said.
Hayward began traveling between his home in Nome and Mykolaiv. Although he didn’t end up serving as a combat medic, he said he found other ways to help.
“I didn’t wind up filling that role because I got requested to put together a team of trainers who could teach Ukrainian Marines in Mykolaiv how to use the Javelin and NLAW missiles,” Hayward said.
In the months following the start of the war, Hayward helped start the charitable organization, Alaska2Ukraine. A big portion of the funds, he said, came from Nome.
“The first ambulance I delivered was paid for entirely by donors from Nome, who got together at a pancake breakfast at the VFW and gave my wife an envelope full of cash, saying, ‘Hey, we want to help Mark in Ukraine,‘” Hayward said.
Mark Hayward with a family in Kherson, located in southern Ukraine. Photo courtesy of Mark Hayward.
Hayward says Alaska2Ukraine’s leadership team and many key supporters have ties to Alaska, like Nome resident and mechanic, Rolland Trowbridge. The two traveled to Ukraine together last year.
“In 2024 Rolland Trowridge went over to Ukraine with me, looked at a couple of things and said, ‘you know? I bet we can help out with some of the technology solutions’,” Hayward said. “And we wound up starting a little workshop for drone jammers in Nome’s old hospital there on Fifth Avenue.”
In 2025, Hayward travelled to Ukraine with a new project in mind. This time, he interviewed Ukrainian Christians about practicing their faith in the midst of war.
“The two principles that I keep coming into contact with as I interview people all over Ukraine are the principle of forgiveness, which is something I wrestle with, and the principle of gratitude,” Hayward said.
Elijah Perevozniuk is a pastor at the Victory Church in Mykoliav, about 250 miles southeast of the capital of Kyiv. Perevozniuk said although the city of nearly half a million people remain resilient, they suffered during the first months of the war.
“We had none of our general things in our church, because we could not spend time together because of daily shootings, bombings, attacks, and we had no Sunday ministries or different ministries, but we had daily Zoom calls. We prayed all the time,” Perevozniuk said.
Hayward returned to the U.S. for Thanksgiving with his family, but plans to be back in Ukraine by Christmas. He said Alaska2Ukraine’s work was just getting started as the war rounded out its fourth year.
Pastor Elijah Perevozniuk with his family. Photo courtesy of Mark Hayward.
KNOM will air interviews of Ukrainian Christians conducted by Mark Hayward.