Taras Kulbaba is an accomplished IP lawyer and managing partner at Bukovnik & Kulbaba IP Guardians in Brussels.
But he is recognised here for his other role – as a fundraiser and volunteer who has spent much of his year on 17-hour drives to the Polish-Ukrainian border.
Kulbaba has been raising funds to source and then hand-deliver tactical equipment, such as first aid kits, to the Ukrainian soldiers fighting the Russian invasion.
It’s a personal mission for Kulbaba, who studied at the National University of Kyiv and has friends and family in Ukraine.
Since he began his trips in March, little over a week after the invasion began, the daily news cycle has moved on and the plight of Ukraine is not as ubiquitous as it was.
But Kulbaba says he will carry on for as long as Ukrainians are asking him for help.
“While foreign governments keep supplying Ukraine with military and non-military aid, for which Ukrainians are very thankful, not all requests can be satisfied via governmental channels,” he wrote earlier this month,
The IP and trademark sectors have been generous, he said, but more help is always needed.
