Two East Aucklanders who have travelled to western Ukraine to help distribute aid say they are pleased to have been able to enter the besieged country to meet their contacts face-to-face.
Ukrainian-born Valeriy Boyko works in procurement and logistics and travelled to Poland before crossing the border into Ukraine this month with his wife Elena.
The pair organised the shipment of aid by airfreight from New Zealand, which they followed and have helped unload and sort items for distribution in central and western Ukraine.
“There’s risk obviously because it is a war zone, it’s not an active war zone but…things happen,” Boyko told 1News.
They said it was a relief to be able to cross the border and meet their contacts on the ground.
“It was great to cross into Ukraine and speak face-to-face to our contacts and simply to everyone we met on the streets of Lviv,” Boyko said.
“I am short for words. There’s such a high level of pride for the country and a sense of unity among the people and for being Ukrainians and fighting for the freedom for a whole country and for the whole world.”
Boyko said all of the goods have been delivered as planned.
“They are currently with our Lviv-based volunteers who will transfer them as per allocations to Odesa, Dnipro, Kyiv, Kharkiv, Kremenchuk and Donbas area.”
Among the aid is 40,000 tins of baked beans which Boyko said are ready to go to various parts of the country “with some of them already given to the displaced families”.
“A full load of medicines has also arrived and is being transferred for further distribution via our volunteers network to local hospitals.”
Howick Ward councillor Sharon Stewart helped collect woollen clothes for babies and children as local knitters banded together to contribute to the shipment.
She was banned from entering Russia in July and said she believes it’s because she’s been organising volunteers to make baby booties, blankets and beanies “for the babies that are now refugees going into a very cold winter”.
January to March are the coldest months of the year for the besieged European country.
Boyko said he is very grateful to the East Auckland community for their support.
“If it were not for them, we would not have been able to gather all this aid.”
The UN Refugee Agency says there have been over 12.6 million border crossings from Ukraine and more than 7.2 million refugees from Ukraine have been recorded across Europe since February 24.
More than 6.9 million people are estimated to be internally displaced in Ukraine.
