While family unwrap presents, he’s defusing bombs in Ukraine

British volunteers in Ukraine will spend Christmas training soldiers in the snow and unwrapping bombs instead of presents.

Chris Garrett, an explosive ordnance disposal expert from the Isle of Man, will be defusing anti-tank and anti-personnel mines to clear paths to the front line for ambulances over the festive period.

The former tree surgeon, 39, spoke from a safe house in eastern Ukraine last week during a power blackout caused by Russian missiles targeting energy infrastructure. He is the only member of his five-person team who has stayed in the war-torn country over Christmas to continue delivering life-saving equipment, humanitarian aid and food to medics and military personnel.

Garrett said he hoped the deliveries would “spread a bit of Christmas cheer” and joked that he resembled a “soldier Santa” with a “big sack of explosives” that he had defused and was taking to a detonation site.

Describing his supply runs, he said: “The first 30 to 40 minutes of the drive is fine, but once I get to a certain point you’re then running the gauntlet for another 35 minutes down tracks that are being targeted. We were targeted by tank and mortar fire this morning. If you have a cloudy day it’s good because it’s a lot harder for the scouting drones to spot you.”

Despite being a self-funded volunteer and not participating directly in the combat, he often comes face to face with the horrors of war. “I don’t know what the casualty rate is, but I do a lot of runs to the hospitals with donated medical kit, and every time you go to these places there’s people coming in and out of that door every minute. It’s pretty bad,” he said.

“It’s mostly artillery, but we have seen four mine casualties personally. A lot of vehicles are getting hit by anti-tank mines, so they stopped taking vehicles into those areas. But that meant they were having to carry the casualties for anything up to 5km.”

His job over the past few months has been to clear roads of explosives to allow ambulances through.

On one occasion last week he was cutting about 750kg of explosives out of a tree. “When you take into account that an average anti-tank mine weighs about 7kg, that’s a lot,” he said. “It was right at the front line, where you’re getting shelled. Spicy, I think, is the term.”

He added: “I was considering taking some time out and going to Kyiv or back to the UK, but I’ve got a lot of donated kit that was coming in and I’ve got to be here to organise it. There’s plenty of other people not getting Christmas off, so why should I get Christmas off?

“We’re probably going to spend Christmas Day dropping off some food aid, humanitarian aid.”

Further from the front line but carrying out one of the most important roles for the Ukrainian army is Dan Ridley, 27. The former infantryman in 2nd Battalion, the Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment is the founder of the largest military training organisation in Ukraine.

Over the past ten months his Trident Defence Initiative has trained more than 4,500 Ukrainians, providing them with basic infantry and medical skills.

Ridley works with four British instructors and volunteers from Ukraine and abroad. His team is spending the Christmas holiday at its base in Kharkiv, where it has just trained 120 students in cold and snowy conditions. The recruits are given courses on defending positions, delivering orders and dealing with prisoners of war and also receive medical trauma training.

Ridley and his team were saluted for their bravery by President Zelensky after continuing to teach despite their base being struck by Russian missiles in October.

“We were going to take a Christmas break but the majority of the instructors want to keep training,” Ridley said.

“Normally on Saturday and Sunday we don’t have training, but our medical course will be running this weekend due to the fact that we had an urgent request from a unit whose medical evacuation vehicle had been hit and all their medics killed.

“They need to replace their medics, so they’ve pushed us 15 medics to be trained mostly from scratch. That urgent battlefield replacement takes priority.

“We’re not training people to go out and kill people — we’re training them to defend their country.”