From Cisco to Kharkiv: John Wyatt and the Quiet Determination of a British Volunteer in Ukraine

By Matthew Parish

Monday 2 November 2026

There comes a point in some people's lives when the pursuit of professional success ceases to provide the satisfaction it once did. The targets have been met, the meetings attended and the corporate ladder climbed, but the rewards begin to appear increasingly disconnected from the things that really matter. For John Wyatt, a British businessman who spent 35 years in sales and sales management, including a lengthy career with the American technology giant Cisco Systems, that moment eventually arrived in the form of professional burnout.

Wyatt's response was not to seek another well-paid position in the technology industry, nor to embrace the conventional comforts of early retirement. Instead he began driving second-hand vehicles thousands of miles across Europe to Ukraine, carrying humanitarian supplies and delivering four-wheel-drive vehicles to Ukrainian medical personnel and others who need them. It is an unusual transition from the corporate world of international telecommunications to the battered roads of a country fighting for its survival, but one that Wyatt increasingly sees as the most meaningful work he has undertaken.

Since March 2026 he has been working with Drive 2 Save Lives, a British volunteer initiative coordinating the acquisition and delivery of vehicles and humanitarian equipment to Ukraine. His journeys have taken him through Lviv, Kyiv and Kharkiv, bringing him into contact with Ukrainian soldiers, medical personnel, humanitarian workers and ordinary civilians whose lives have been transformed by Russia's full-scale invasion. His experiences reveal both the extraordinary commitment of individual foreign volunteers and the immense practical difficulties involved in sustaining humanitarian assistance over years of war.

The work is physically demanding, often emotionally exhausting and increasingly difficult for him to finance. Wyatt typically pays his own travel expenses, sleeps in his vehicle to save money and returns to Britain by a combination of public transport and aeroplane before preparing for the next journey. He is candid about the limitations of his contribution in the context of a vast humanitarian emergency, but equally convinced that the value of a single vehicle cannot be measured merely by its monetary cost.

There are also questions concerning the corporate arrangements of Drive 2 Save Lives itself, which has applied to have its British limited company struck off the Companies House register. The Lviv Herald has sought clarification from persons associated with the organisation without receiving a substantive response at the time of publication. Those matters warrant explanation, although they should not be confused with the personal efforts of volunteers such as Wyatt, whose accounts of delivering practical assistance to Ukrainians deserve to be heard on their own merits.

I interviewed John Wyatt in writing about his decision to abandon corporate life, his experiences in Ukraine, the practicalities of humanitarian volunteering and the uncomfortable question of how much responsibility ordinary Europeans ought to assume for a war taking place on their own continent. His answers have been lightly edited for clarity and readability.

Matthew Parish: You enjoyed a successful career at Cisco, working in business development and international commercial relationships. What led you to exchange that corporate world for volunteering in a country at war, and how did the transition change your sense of purpose?

John Wyatt: Burnout, quite simply. Having spent 35 years in sales and sales management, chasing deals, attending endless forecast calls and sitting through meetings, I reached the point where I needed to bring that period of my life to a close in order to protect my physical and mental health.

I reassessed my goals and decided to focus less on making money. Volunteering seemed much better suited to my character and outlook, at least until the money runs out and I have to find a real job again.

Several friends asked why I did not apply myself to the charity sector in Britain instead. However, I felt very strongly about Ukraine's cause, which I regard as a just struggle for the right to self-determination and the refusal to submit to bullying. That is something with which I can personally identify and for which I have considerable empathy.

I am also embarrassed by the collective West's lukewarm and inconsistent response to Ukraine over the past several years. Rather than simply complain about it around the dinner table, I decided to do something practical and drive vehicles and humanitarian supplies directly to Ukraine.

Initially I intended to make only one or two journeys. However, I quickly became more engaged with the country and increasingly outraged by what I witnessed happening to it. Ukraine is a beautiful country and what is being done to its people is appalling.

Matthew Parish: You were already raising money for Ukraine with Cisco colleagues in 2022, but your direct involvement with Drive 2 Save Lives began in March this year. What inspired you to make that further commitment, and what were your first impressions of Ukraine?

John Wyatt: Having resigned from Cisco, I suddenly had a great deal more time available. My two boys had grown up and flown the nest, so it seemed an appropriate moment in my life to do something different.

My first few journeys were rather chaotic because I discovered that I was not nearly as well prepared as I needed to be. There is quite a learning curve involved in transporting vehicles and humanitarian supplies across Europe and into a country at war.

What struck me most profoundly was the overwhelmingly positive response from the Ukrainians I met. I must admit that this gave me something of a high. It was tremendously encouraging to discover just how much people appreciated what we were doing.

But I also began to realise that the value of our visits went beyond the material assistance we delivered. There was a significant psychological benefit in showing Ukrainians that people from other countries still cared about their predicament, had not forgotten them and were prepared to make a personal contribution to their struggle.

That feeling has remained with me throughout my subsequent visits. Sometimes the act of turning up is almost as important as the equipment you bring.

Matthew Parish: Could you take us through a typical mission, from identifying a suitable vehicle in Britain to getting it across Europe and into the hands of Ukrainian volunteers or medical personnel? What are the most difficult practical obstacles you encounter?

John Wyatt: I rely upon Drive 2 Save Lives and similar organisations or individuals to identify the intended recipients of vehicles and humanitarian assistance. They validate the contacts through military channels and I have to trust that the people receiving the equipment are genuine and that the assistance is needed.

The same applies to the humanitarian supplies. There is a patchwork network of non-governmental organisations, charities and individual volunteers operating across Ukraine. You gradually develop relationships of trust as you learn more about the various organisations involved and discover who is particularly effective at delivering assistance.

A typical mission begins with collecting a second-hand four-wheel-drive vehicle in Britain. These vehicles have been thoroughly inspected and tested by dedicated volunteers, while the purchase itself has generally been financed through crowdfunding by individuals or groups of supporters.

Along the journey we collect additional donations, which might include bicycles, toys, food, clothing, bedding, stretchers, wheelchairs or medical equipment. We then distribute those supplies to their intended recipients in places such as Lviv, Kyiv and Kharkiv before delivering the vehicle itself.

Once the vehicle has been handed over, I make my way back to Britain by whatever combination of bus, train and aeroplane is practical. Then the process begins all over again.

It is a fairly improvised operation in some respects, but it depends upon a remarkable number of people contributing their time, resources and expertise. Without those volunteers, none of it would be possible.

Matthew Parish: You have delivered vehicles and equipment to several Ukrainian cities, particularly for medical personnel involved in evacuating the wounded. Can you describe a particular delivery or encounter that brought home to you the importance of your work?

John Wyatt: The reality is that each individual delivery represents a mere drop in the ocean when measured against the scale of Ukraine's needs. Nevertheless, when you deliver a replacement vehicle to an army medic whose previous vehicle was destroyed in a drone attack, you feel that you are doing something worthwhile.

That vehicle may enable the medic to operate more effectively and help evacuate wounded soldiers from the battlefield. Similarly, delivering four bicycles to social workers means that they can reach their clients more quickly, while delivering cooking oil to a kitchen in Lviv that reportedly produces 40,000 meals every week contributes to an enormous humanitarian effort.

You know that your contribution represents only a tiny percentage of what is actually required, but it still feels good to help. At the same time, it can be daunting when you consider the sheer scale of the humanitarian operations taking place around you and the enormous amount of additional assistance that is needed.

One encounter in particular has stayed with me. A couple of journeys ago, I delivered a vehicle to a Ukrainian soldier south of Kharkiv. He told me that his two brothers were also serving in the Armed Forces and that one of them had lost both arms and a leg.

He recounted this terrible family story very quietly, without any theatricality or self-pity. It had a profound emotional impact upon me.

It sometimes seems that almost everyone I meet in Ukraine has lost someone close to them or has been affected by the war in ways that those of us living in Britain cannot fully comprehend. These are not abstract stories about casualties and statistics. They are the experiences of real people trying to continue with their lives amid extraordinary suffering.

Matthew Parish: Kharkiv and the surrounding region face relentless security threats, civilian displacement and enormous pressure on medical and humanitarian services. What do you think people in Britain fail to understand about the realities of life here?

John Wyatt: I doubt that anyone who has not visited Ukraine can truly understand what is happening here. Newspapers, with all due respect, rarely manage to convey the human consequences of the war adequately.

Walking your dog while air raid sirens are sounding and then hearing an explosion that does not seem particularly far away is a rather unnerving and surreal experience. Seeing a school that has been destroyed by bombing makes you angry. Reports of repeated attacks upon maternity hospitals and other medical facilities are particularly disturbing, and they raise serious questions about the deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure.

There are many people considerably more knowledgeable than I am who are working out what Ukraine needs and how its humanitarian priorities should be addressed. I would not presume to tell them how to do their jobs.

Nevertheless, I do sometimes wonder whether more could be done to involve the large number of internally displaced people living in Kharkiv in activities that actively support the country. Providing additional opportunities for meaningful employment and public service might give people a greater sense of purpose and pride while also contributing to the local economy.

That is simply my personal observation, rather than a developed policy proposal. But I suspect that the country has considerable untapped human resources that could make a real difference if they were properly mobilised.

Matthew Parish: What have you learned about the physical dangers and emotional pressures faced by Ukrainian soldiers, medics and volunteers? Has your experience changed the way you understand the psychological consequences of war?

John Wyatt: I think that any human being exposed to this sort of environment for too long eventually reaches a point where they need a break. There are limits to what people can endure indefinitely, however resilient they may appear.

I remember one soldier telling me that he now freezes whenever he sees birds in the sky. That was an extraordinarily saddening and sobering thing to hear, and it brought home to me the psychological consequences of living under the constant threat of aerial attack.

Another danger is that people can gradually lose their connection with the society, friends and family from which they originally came. If you do not occasionally step away from the environment and decompress, the stresses can become overwhelming.

Obviously, as a foreign volunteer, I have the option of leaving Ukraine whenever I choose, even if many volunteers are reluctant to exercise that option. I am acutely aware that Ukrainian soldiers and civilians do not necessarily enjoy the same luxury.

I have been evacuated from trains on numerous occasions because of air raid alerts. On each occasion I have been struck by the extraordinary stoicism of Ukrainians standing around for hours in the rain, simply waiting for the journey to resume.

They are incredibly resilient people, but I worry about the cumulative consequences of these experiences. My fear is that eventually more and more Ukrainians will decide that they have endured enough and leave the country until this madness is over.

Matthew Parish: Cisco is a company built around sophisticated technology, international supply chains and organisational coordination. How much of your corporate experience has proved useful in Ukraine, and what have you learned from the volunteers with whom you now work?

John Wyatt: Teamwork, trust and accountability were fundamental to being successful at Cisco, and they were values that I always tried to embrace throughout my professional career. Those same principles are equally important in my present activities.

Every vehicle and every delivery of humanitarian supplies represents the collective efforts of dozens of volunteers. People contribute their time, money, resources and specialist expertise to make the entire operation possible.

What I find remarkable is that everyone I have worked with so far gives the task their absolute best, despite having numerous other commitments and priorities in their lives. I have met some extraordinary individuals during this period, and their dedication has inspired me to raise my own standards accordingly.

Another useful skill acquired during my years at Cisco is the ability to remain calm under pressure. When you are tired, confronted by unexpected problems or operating in stressful circumstances, it is important to retain your humanity, decency and sense of proportion.

I think those qualities are as important in humanitarian work as they are in business. Indeed, they may be even more important when the consequences of making a mistake extend beyond a missed commercial target.

Matthew Parish: You have encouraged donors to become involved in choosing vehicles and recipients and to follow their journeys through regular updates. How do you establish that assistance reaches the intended people, and what would you say to potential donors who want evidence that their contributions are making a difference?

John Wyatt: The more frequently you visit Ukraine, the more conscious you become of the immense scale of the challenge confronting the country. Roads are badly damaged, buildings have been destroyed and millions of people have been displaced. Everyday life is disrupted in ways that are difficult to imagine from Britain.

You realise that a few dozen vehicles and carloads of humanitarian assistance will have only a minimal impact upon the overall situation. But that is not necessarily true for the individual recipients, and it is important to keep that distinction in mind.

The collective contribution of tens of thousands of volunteers can be enormous if their efforts are properly coordinated. Each individual contribution may seem small, but collectively they can achieve something substantial.

The process can sometimes feel chaotic and rather dependent upon things arriving just in time. You have to place considerable trust in the non-governmental organisations with which you work and rely upon them to undertake sufficient due diligence to ensure that assistance is distributed appropriately and according to genuine need.

My own anecdotal experience has been reassuring in this respect. I have remained in contact with many of the people to whom I have delivered vehicles and humanitarian equipment, and they regularly send me photographs and updates explaining what they have achieved with those donations.

Receiving those messages and telephone calls gives me an enormous sense of satisfaction. It provides tangible evidence that my efforts have had a positive impact upon people's lives.

Just as importantly, the recipients often tell me how encouraging it is to know that they have not been forgotten and that they are not alone in their struggle. That is something I think we should never underestimate.

Editorial note: The corporate status of Drive 2 Save Lives

The Lviv Herald has undertaken independent enquiries into the legal and administrative arrangements of Drive 2 Save Lives, the organisation with which John Wyatt has been working.

According to the British Companies House register, Drive 2 Save Lives Ltd, company number 16695173, was incorporated on 4 September 2025. On 1 October 2026 an application was filed for the company to be struck off the register, followed by publication of the first Gazette notice on 13 October 2026. As of 2 November 2026, the company's status remained recorded as active, with an active proposal for voluntary strike-off. It had not yet been formally dissolved.

The company's recorded management history is also noteworthy. Toni Annette Edwards, previously a director, resigned on 17 June 2026 but was reappointed on 1 October 2026, the same date as the application for voluntary strike-off. She is currently recorded as the company's sole active director.

These administrative developments do not necessarily mean that the volunteer network has ceased operating, nor do they establish that anything improper has occurred. Organisations can change their legal structures, transfer responsibilities or reorganise their activities for entirely legitimate reasons. Nevertheless, the company's website continues to present Drive 2 Save Lives as an active humanitarian initiative and identifies Drive 2 Save Lives Ltd as responsible for managing certain non-charitable donations. Its donation page currently describes the British company's donation facility as forthcoming, while directing American donors towards a separate US charitable organisation.

The precise relationship between the continuing volunteer operations, the limited company and the administration of financial contributions therefore merits clarification. Members of the public considering financial support are entitled to understand which legal entity is responsible for receiving and administering their contributions, especially where the company previously identified with those activities has applied for voluntary dissolution.

The Lviv Herald raised these questions with John Wyatt, who explained that he had met Toni Edwards in Kyiv during June or July 2026 and had understood that she was stepping down from her management responsibilities. He indicated that responsibilities had subsequently been distributed among other team members and suggested that a colleague named Ben would be better placed to provide a full explanation.

Following that suggestion, the Lviv Herald attempted to contact Ben by email and WhatsApp, without receiving a reply as of 2 November 2026. Attempts to reach Toni Edwards were also unsuccessful. A telephone number supplied for her did not appear to be connected to an electronic messaging service, while her LinkedIn account did not provide an available means of sending a direct message.

The absence of a response should not be interpreted as evidence of financial irregularity, nor is there any basis on the information presently available for attributing responsibility for these administrative arrangements to Wyatt personally. His description of his work concerns the practical delivery of vehicles and humanitarian assistance, rather than responsibility for the governance of the British limited company.

Nonetheless, the outstanding questions are legitimate matters of public interest. The Lviv Herald would welcome a response from the present management or authorised representatives of Drive 2 Save Lives, and will publish any substantive clarification received.

Matthew Parish: Looking towards the coming months, what do you hope to achieve personally in Ukraine, and what does Drive 2 Save Lives most urgently need? If you could convey one lesson from your experiences here to people back in Britain, what would it be?

John Wyatt: I intend to deliver another two vehicles before the end of this year, but after that I am going to struggle financially to continue at the same pace.

Each journey costs me approximately £700, with fuel accounting for more than half of that amount. Then there are the trains, buses and flights needed to get back to Britain. I generally sleep in the vehicle until I reach the Ukrainian border to keep my costs down, and I eat and drink fairly frugally.

It is no picnic!

Unless I can find some additional financial assistance, I shall probably have to return to paid employment next year. That would mean limiting my journeys to Ukraine to whatever annual leave I could negotiate with my employer.

As for my message to people in Britain, I think it is quite simple. We have a very difficult neighbour, and we are all living on the same street. We need to work together to deal with that problem because otherwise it is not going to stop.

Everyone needs to take a little more responsibility and understand that this is a problem for all of us, whether we happen to live immediately next door or several houses further down the street.

Ukraine's struggle is not merely Ukraine's problem. It concerns all of us.

A Final Reflection

There is something revealing about John Wyatt's account of his experiences in Ukraine. He does not describe himself as a hero, nor does he pretend that the handful of vehicles he has delivered will determine the outcome of the war. He is quite open about the limitations of his contribution, the financial pressures that threaten to bring it to an end and the practical uncertainties inherent in the extraordinary network of volunteers and organisations that has emerged to support Ukraine.

His modesty about the scale of his achievements should not obscure their significance. A single vehicle delivered to a medical evacuation team may enable wounded soldiers to reach treatment when they might otherwise be left without assistance. Four bicycles delivered to social workers may make it possible to visit more vulnerable people in the course of a working day, while relatively small quantities of donated supplies may contribute to feeding people who have lost the means to support themselves.

These are practical consequences rather than grand political declarations, and they take place largely beyond the attention of the international media. Much of Ukraine's humanitarian assistance now depends upon individuals who have decided that expressing sympathy from a distance is insufficient and that there are circumstances in which personal action becomes a moral obligation.

The unresolved questions surrounding the corporate structure of Drive 2 Save Lives illustrate a separate but important aspect of this extraordinary volunteer movement. Informal networks of individuals can achieve a great deal through personal trust, initiative and goodwill, particularly in the improvised circumstances of wartime Ukraine. Yet as such networks grow, solicit public donations and develop formal organisations, the requirements of financial accountability, transparent management and accessible communications become increasingly important.

Good intentions and good governance are not alternatives. Indeed, the credibility of humanitarian volunteering depends upon both. Those who give their time and money to Ukraine deserve confidence that the organisations through which they operate are administered transparently, while those receiving assistance deserve assurance that the supply of indispensable vehicles and humanitarian equipment will not be interrupted by avoidable administrative difficulties.

None of this diminishes the personal commitment demonstrated by Wyatt. His account suggests a man who has found in humanitarian volunteering a sense of purpose that decades of corporate success could no longer provide. His willingness to live frugally, undertake exhausting journeys and repeatedly expose himself to the uncertainties of wartime travel is an expression of practical solidarity rather than merely rhetorical sympathy.

There is also a certain poignancy in the fact that Wyatt's voluntary work may be curtailed not by any loss of enthusiasm, but by the exhaustion of his own financial resources. He left a successful corporate career because he wanted to do something more meaningful with his life, only to discover that meaningful work is not necessarily remunerative. His situation illustrates a broader difficulty confronting the international volunteer movement supporting Ukraine: the people most willing to give their time and energy are not always those with the financial means to continue doing so indefinitely.

Perhaps the most important observation in Wyatt's interview concerns the psychological importance of being remembered. Ukrainians have endured years of air raid warnings, separation from their families, destruction of their homes and the constant uncertainties of a war whose conclusion remains elusive. Against that background, the arrival of a foreign volunteer with a second-hand car or a modest quantity of humanitarian supplies represents more than the material value of the donation itself. It is evidence that, somewhere beyond Ukraine's borders, another human being has decided that their suffering matters enough to justify a personal sacrifice.

Wyatt's final analogy, describing Europeans as neighbours living on the same street, deserves particular reflection. The consequences of allowing aggression to go unanswered are not confined to the people whose homes happen to stand closest to the danger. Responsibility for resisting such aggression may be unevenly distributed, but it cannot indefinitely be passed to those who have already borne its greatest costs.

John Wyatt has found his own answer to that problem, at least for as long as his resources permit. He gets into a second-hand four-wheel-drive vehicle in Britain, fills it with whatever assistance he can carry and begins the long journey eastwards towards Ukraine. It is a simple undertaking, but it embodies a principle that ought to command greater attention in contemporary Europe: solidarity is ultimately measured not by what people say they believe, but by what they are prepared to do for one another.