The story of Saint Javelin

That understanding started during my childhood.

I was born in Canada to young, immigrant parents who had fled communist Poland in their late teens in search of a better life. My mom’s parents had both been born in Poland during World War II, and as children, they survived the horrors of Nazi occupation. Her father, my grandpa, was an avid Radio Free Europe (RFE) listener, who listened daily; patiently waiting for the day that Poland would be scoured of the stain of the Soviets.

My father was also born in Poland, but to Ukrainian parents who had been forcibly relocated by Polish authorities loyal to the Soviets during “Operation Vistula”, which was an attempt to eradicate Ukrainian partisans in southeastern Poland.

One of my formative life moments occurred during my very first trip to Ukraine as a naive 17-year-old. During that trip, I had the opportunity to meet the recently elected, and recently poisoned, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko. I was so young and immature that I remember recoiling at the sight of his horrifically scarred face, the result of a failed assassination attempt by Kremlin operatives.

Years later, some of the most important lessons I learned about Russia’s brutality towards Ukraine would come to me while I worked as a journalist in Ukraine between 2015 and 2018. One experience sparked the motivation for building Saint Javelin more than any other. It happened while I spent a week in a tiny village deep inside the Carpathian Mountains of western Ukraine with a group of widows and their children. The women had each been married to members of the Ukrainian military who had lost their lives in combat following Russia’s illegal annexation of Ukraine in 2014.

I was invited by the organisers of the retreat, a Canadian charity called “Help Us Help”, which supported these women and their children as they navigated life after their loss.

I remember thinking that this is a side of war that people rarely see. We see the shock-and-awe violence during the immediate TV coverage, but we usually don’t watch long enough to understand the quieter trauma that follows, like these widows left to pick up the pieces of their lives and raise their children on their own.

They were the ones I was thinking about when I “officially” started Saint Javelin on 15 February 2022. I say “officially” because I’d already been frantically posting news, and my opinions, about Russia’s build-up along the Ukrainian border for weeks.

At that point in my life, I had left journalism, moved back home and built my own little business. Since I was free from the constraints of professional journalism, but I had all the knowledge from years of reporting in Ukraine, I made it a point to mock the hypocrisy of Russia’s propaganda, frequently through memes.

It wasn’t until 15 February, however, that I actively began to raise money by selling Saint Javelin stickers.

Here’s a quick backstory on the image that came to be known as “Saint Javelin”:

First, I didn’t create it. I’m not an artist or an illustrator. It’s based on the work of an American artist named Chris Shaw, who originally created “Madonna Kalashnikov” around 2012. That image, of the Madonna carrying a Kalashnikov rifle, would become a popular patch amongst Ukrainian soldiers around 2014 (the year that Russia illegally annexed Crimea and the war in the Donbas began). It only became “Saint Javelin” years later when Ukrainian officials asked the Americans to supply the world’s most advanced anti-tank guided missile system, the Javelin. They asked for the Javelin because they knew if the Russians ever launched a full-scale invasion, they would do so with masses of tanks, and the Javelin would give Ukrainian soldiers a fighting chance to push back the Russian military.

When “Saint Javelin” first appeared, it was an extremely niche meme joke that floated around a small community of journalists, analysts, soldiers, bureaucrats and military contractors. It only gained steam in 2022, when a friend reminded me that he had sent stickers of Saint Javelin around so others could stick them on their laptops to show support for Ukraine. That idea inspired me, because at that point in early 2022, I was convinced that Russia was about to invade, and I wanted to do anything I could to help.

On Valentine’s Day, I asked a local print shop in Toronto to print 100 stickers of Saint Javelin, which they nicknamed “Bazooka Mary”, and on 16 February, I posted a picture to my Instagram explaining that I’d be selling them for CAN $10. My goal was to donate some money to Help Us Help, the charity that had brought me to interview the wives of fallen soldiers in the Carpathian Mountains.

I remember that on the first night, two people ordered the sticker, and I was thrilled. I couldn’t believe this idea resonated with someone.

The next day, I sold over $1,000 in stickers, and I panicked because I realised I had no idea how I could pack that many orders. I didn’t have envelopes or stamps. I wasn’t prepared at all.

On the third day, I think I sold around $5,000 in stickers, and I knew something special was happening. Up until then, the names of the people ordering were all pretty familiar to me, but then it started to change. I started to see orders coming from all around the world.

By the fourth day, I realised I would be able to donate over $10,000, and I began to feel a tremendous sense of responsibility with Saint Javelin. In the coming days, I met with a representative from Help Us Help and we spoke about how this money would be used to fund scholarships for the children of deceased Ukrainian soldiers. They estimated that it would already be enough to put at least 15 kids through school.

Still, the campaign continued to grow, so I reached out to old friends in the Ukrainian community and quickly built a team of volunteers. Those early helpers are the true reason Saint Javelin scaled up as fast as it did, because I never would have been able to meet the demand all alone.

Within a week, the campaign had become surreal, having gone viral around the world. At this point, I had no time for anything besides Saint Javelin. I abandoned my regular work, my friends, any semblance of a healthy routine, and focused all of my attention on it. In between managing the operation, I was speaking to old colleagues, analysts, activists, soldiers, and journalists in Ukraine about the reality of what was unfolding on the ground. I remember hearing about certain indicators, like Russians setting up field hospitals, and it became blatantly clear that a brutal war would soon unfold.

On 24 February, when Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his brutal invasion, we decided that the Saint Javelin money had to go towards immediate needs in Ukraine. We began to campaign for things like individual first aid kits, bulletproof vests and helmets, and other humanitarian life-saving tools.

On the day of the full-scale invasion, I remember talking to my dad, who lives in Przemysl, Poland, a small historic city right on the border with Ukraine. Up until then, he’d been extremely sceptical about the possibility of war, telling me that it was just Western fear mongering. But on that day, he called to apologise and to describe the heartbreaking chaos unfolding along the border.

By mid-March, within a month of starting Saint Javelin, we’d already donated $500,000 to Help Us Help.

At this point, I was sleeping in short shifts and working day and night. I had to manage critical problems - like when the bank shut down my accounts because the volume of transactions flagged money laundering alerts - as well as dozens of media interviews about Saint Javelin, while continuing to post memes.

That March, I made two trips to Poland to help set up aid logistics for the Ukrainian World Congress, as they built what would eventually become their Unite with Ukraine campaign. That programme has grown into one of the world’s largest non-governmental aid projects focused on supporting the Ukrainian military.

In the midst of this, my fiancée was pregnant with our first child, and the community of Saint Javelin was growing quickly. I would post “Ask Me Anything” (AMAs) on Instagram, where the community would tell me what they wanted from Saint Javelin. We were inundated with requests from people around the world for new “Saints”. Everyone wanted a Saint that represented the particular weapons system that their nation was supplying to Ukraine. For example, our second Saint was Saint NLAW, which was a request that came from our British audience, as the Brits quickly supplied the “Next generation Light Anti-tank Weapon” (NLAW ATGM).

Soon, we had Saints for Canada, Sweden, Germany, Poland, Slovakia, and more.

In April 2022, as the Russians retreated from Kyiv and the world woke up to the horrors of Bucha, I made my first trip to Ukraine since the full-scale war broke out. At 6:00 am, as my train pulled into Kyiv’s central station, I read the news about a deadly Russian cruise missile strike next to the Lviv central station, where my train had departed from just hours ago. From Kyiv central station, I drove through a ghost town that was wholly unrecognisable from the vibrant, loud, bustling city I had always known. Military checkpoints patrolled by young Ukrainian soldiers were still standing all throughout the city. The always-congested city had next to zero car traffic, and many stores were simply shut down because both the owners and the employees had fled.

My goal for this trip was to set up operations for Saint Javelin in Ukraine, so we could begin to produce clothing in the country. I figured that if we were selling hundreds of T-shirts around the world, we should find a way to make those shirts, and more, in Ukraine.

Moreover, I also wanted to find a way to “upcycle” destroyed Russian equipment into items we could sell on Saint Javelin. My idea was to use the remnants of Russia’s destroyed gear, like tanks, BTRs and BMPs (Russian armoured personnel carriers and infantry fighting vehicles), aircraft, and more against them to help fund Ukraine’s war effort. I figured we could melt the metal, then repurpose it into trench art and auction it off.

During my trip, I spent time with old friends, including Ukrainian journalists such as my former landlord, Associated Press and now Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Evgeniy Maloletka, who had recently survived the siege of Mariupol. He told me about his life altering experience there, which is now documented in the Oscar-nominated film “20 Days in Mariupol”, directed by his colleague, my friend Msytyslav Chernov.

I leaned on old colleagues like Maloletka to help me understand where the attention, and the funds, of Saint Javelin should focus. Old friends, Katerina Sergatskova and Roman Stepanovych, now founders of the 2402 Fund, explained the dire situation for Ukrainian journalists. Many of them, especially outside of Kyiv, were risking their lives every day, reporting in deadly environments wearing next to no protective equipment. With the guidance of the 2402 Fund, Saint Javelin helped to outfit Ukrainian journalists with bulletproof equipment, and run Hostile Environment and First Aid Training (HEFAT) courses across Ukraine, which were instructed by my good friend and frequent collaborator, photojournalist Anton Skyba.

The story of Saint Javelin really took on a life of its own on my penultimate day in Kyiv that April. That day, I went to Bucha, Irpin and Borodyanka to see the realities of what the Russians had done. Even though I’d seen horrific destruction on the frontlines in Donbas between 2015 and 2018, I’d never witnessed devastation like this. The pain and suffering that the Russians had inflicted on these people was indescribable. Nothing I write can explain the feeling of seeing entire apartment buildings cut in half by Russian bombs dropped from jets and helicopters. Standing on the ground, we could see the remains of people’s apartments through the open concrete. The remnants of a destroyed kitchen, half a living room, whole lives left visible to everyone passing by. On the playground beside me, I noticed a little teddy bear left behind by an innocent child.

As we drove away from this nightmare, a friend reached out to then-Ukrainian Minister of Defence, Oleksii Reznikov, sending him an image of Saint Javelin, and explaining the story. He wrote back saying he needed that T-shirt… by tomorrow.

I’d already given away all the Saint Javelin shirts, stickers and patches I had with me, so I scrambled that night to find a print shop in Kyiv that could press a couple of shirts by the next morning. I also figured I’d make a third shirt for President Zelenskyy, and ask Minister Reznikov to give it to Zelenskyy himself. I never thought he’d actually do it, but I figured why not try?

The next day, we drove through Kyiv and into the central government district. Altogether, the meeting with Mr. Reznikov lasted about three minutes, but before leaving, I handed him the shirt for President Zelenskyy, and he said, “Great! I’m seeing him later today.”

I figured he’d just hand the shirt to one of his staff, and it would be forgotten about. But a few hours later, as I waited in my hotel room, I got a message from Mr. Reznikov.

“I just want you to know that the President has your shirt!”

About five minutes later, President Zelenskyy’s official TikTok account shared a video of Minister Reznikov handing President Zelenskyy the Saint Javelin T-shirt. The video reached millions upon millions of people, propelling Saint Javelin into the stratosphere.

Across the world, we saw people begin to repurpose the Saint Javelin image themselves, producing 3D-printed statuettes, video games, Legos, graffiti, Halloween costumes, NFTs and protest signs. We saw pictures of Saint Javelin stickers in Venezuela, in the Philippines, in Taiwan and in Mali. We had orders from places I never ever expected, like China, and we even had messages from Russians who wanted to order, but couldn’t because we did not ship to Russia. The Russian police even targeted a 10-year-old girl in Moscow, detaining her because she was using Saint Javelin as her avatar in a class group chat.

The Saint Javelin symbol and our usage of memes led the way for others to use the power of humour and social community to help Ukrainians when they need it most.

At this point, we have donated over US $2,000,000 via Saint Javelin, and have helped raise countless more by running crowdfunding campaigns like our recent Christmas push for first-person view drones, which raised over $500,000.

Saint Javelin became a beacon of hope in the midst of absolute darkness, and I hope we will continue to be a source of inspiration and tangible support for a long time to come. We’ve evolved enormously since that first day in February 2022. We’re in the midst of publishing a book. We’ve produced a concert, and been featured in a Washington Post documentary. We’ve opened and closed two offices in Kyiv, and in Toronto. We’ve had ups and downs, but our core goal is to evolve into a brand that lasts long-term and produces all of our products in Ukraine.

For our new Defender Collection, which consists of winter fleeces, socks, sweaters, T-shirts and more, every single item has been made in Ukraine. We also donate a large quantity of our clothing production to Ukrainian soldiers. Last winter, we gave out over a thousand different items, including fleece jackets, socks, beanies and balaclavas. In 2024, we are focusing on improving all those products and evolving into a brand of the highest quality; making everything in Ukraine; and supporting defenders for years and years to come, because the sad but blunt reality of this war is that it will not end soon. Russia has been offered every possible opportunity to drop their weapons and stop their war of aggression. Instead, they have sacrificed hundreds of thousands of their own men to die in pursuit of miniscule territorial gains. They have lost tens of thousands of tanks, troop carriers, aircraft and vehicles. They have destroyed their own economy. They arrest anyone who speaks against this war. They have mobilised their entire country in one direction: to destroy the sovereign nation of Ukraine. And they have proven that they have no intention of stopping. In return, we must prove the same: that we are committed to stopping the Russians no matter what it takes, and that we will support Ukraine until Ukrainians win this war. That is the only option on the table.