The solidarity fight of a Swiss from Ukraine

Our telephone conversation between Bern and Odessa is interrupted several times. It is in this city of several million inhabitants located on the Black Sea that Bänz Margot lives. In mid-November, Russia again increased attacks on Ukraine’s electricity supply.

“We are currently on generator power,” says this 47-year-old musician, who found his vocation by creating his own aid organization for Ukraine. “For two or three days, since the detonation, they have not yet been able to repair the infrastructure. An invalid woman is currently sleeping in a corridor. I always say go to Switzerland, but people want to stay.”

Music as a guide

But why did this Bernese choose Ukraine? It all started in 2013, during the Buskers street music festivalExternal link in Bern. Bänz Margot saw a popular music group from Ukraine there.

This drum teacher had never heard music like this. “I was so enthusiastic that I contacted the group,” he explains. This music and this singing touched me extremely.”

As luck would have it, her parents knew the singer of this group. Years before, they had performed with her at a concert. Eventually, the singer and her husband invited him to visit them in kyiv. “If I have the chance, perhaps I will go,” Bänz Margot said to himself at the time.

But he didn’t know Eastern Europe at all. He was more of a fan of Italy, the beach and pizza. The images of the East he had in his mind were marked by poverty, wars, Stalin, chaos and corruption.

“And then it started with Maidan,” says Bänz Margot. The latter had been totally captivated by the demonstrations against President Viktor Yanukovych on the main square in kyiv.

A week after the president’s dismissal, at the end of February 2014, a friend spontaneously booked a flight for him, “the next morning at 10 a.m. to kyiv.” But he had barely arrived in Ukraine when the Russian army occupied Crimea. Instead of staying four days in the country, he stayed there for a month.

A rare moment of joy: performing with a band in a jazz cellar in Odessa.

Politics and music

The son of a musician and a musician, Bänz Margot grew up in Schlosswil and Bern. From the age of five, he lived in the Matte district of Bern. Even today, he can give some examples of the dialect specific to this district.

From the age of three, he began playing the piano and banging a drum. It was on this occasion that his passion for drums was awakened. At the end of compulsory school, it was therefore quite naturally towards the professional school of the Berne Conservatory that he turned.

He finally obtained the federal diploma as a drum teacher. He gave lessons for several years, but working in a music school was not for him. “I was more of a survival artist,” he says. And to specify that he felt like he was in a prison. In fact, he always wanted to make music and participate in cultural projects. At the same time, he was also active in politics “for a better world, to support the poor and for the protection of animals.”

“It was new to me”

In the summer of 2014, he visited Ukraine again, but this time for a longer period. It was Odessa that attracted him. “And then I was hooked. Not only the events, but also the gastronomy, the people, this East; it was new to me,” he says. A two and a half hour flight from Switzerland, he discovered “a completely different world”.

In the meantime, Bänz Margot has obtained a residence permit. He has lived in Ukraine for at least two of the last three years and also had a Ukrainian girlfriend for several years. Before the war, he still came to Switzerland from time to time to earn a little money.

But at the end of February 2022, war broke out. When Bänz Margot realized that he could help better from outside the country than inside, he fled to Moldova where he immediately began participating in aid actions for Ukraine.

His commitment was noticed and large charitable organizations were quick to seek his advice. Swiss friends eventually sent him money. “I used it and reported to them,” he says.

Bänz Margot in Ukraine in November 2023. At the time, the aid still consisted of food.

Human Front Aid

Tens of thousands of people helped

With this money, he chartered buses, filled them with food and drove them to the front to evacuate people from there on the way back. “There were children, families in distress, people massacred, raped.” This is how it all began for his humanitarian organization “Human Front AidExternal link».

Eventually, Bänz Margot returned to Odessa and organized aid from that city. After a spontaneous visit from Hugo Fasel, former director of Caritas and friend of his parents, his charity specialized in direct financial aid, on the latter’s advice.

“It was like being unplugged from the Matrix,” says Bänz Margot. Why do we have to bring food here when there is enough there? And why use the funds abroad?

Initially, his organization made it possible to evacuate some 6,500 people. “Now we are supporting 20,000 to 30,000 people with emergency financial aid,” he says, while regretting that Ukraine is receiving too little help with 15 million people dependent on humanitarian aid. .

“The population has been waging a war here for more than a thousand days for democracy, for the Western world. Men are getting killed, it’s just horrible; I know people who died,” he testifies.

More and more buildings and infrastructure are being damaged by Russian missiles. “It farts all the time.”

Text proofread and verified by Balz Rigendinger, translated from German using DeepL/op