From Niall O’Connor on the Polish/Ukrainian border
ON THE BORDER at Medyka the aid effort continues but aid workers who spoke to The Journal today expect to see those with the most urgent needs begin to arrive.
Aid workers, from Government agencies and volunteer charities from across the globe are now well established at the border frontier.
They are providing services in makeshift medical tents, food stalls and even sweet stands for children.
It is still a constant flow of women and children with the occasional elderly man or woman, with walking sticks being helped through.
Aid workers and Polish soldiers stand at the frontier, helping people across the threshold to safety – soldiers carry plastic bags of clothing, others bring wheelchairs helping the exhausted cross over.
The Journal spoke to medics at one location who said that now is the time when those most at risk begin to make the perilous journey out of the war zone.
They are bracing themselves for the onslaught of the elderly, sick and those who did not have the financial means to escape earlier.
There were reports of one death just one kilometre from the border – exposure and sickness taking their toll on one refugee. Other reports of women giving birth in the makeshift refugee holding centres in nearby Przemyśl.
We spoke to Hans Petters, a German medic and aid worker, who was waiting at the border before making the journey towards Lviv to deliver medical supplies.
He and others in a massive convoy of vehicles had travelled from his home in Hildeberg.
“We have medical help from the hospital in Hamburg and we have got some bandages, needles, some technical equipment and we will bring to Ukraine to help them.
“We will also offer to help in the hospital and on the road – that is what we will try to do,” he said.
Irish aid is arriving in bulk at the former Tesco shopping centre in the town as a fleet of Hendricks Haulage trucks are due to arrive there tonight.
Kevin Byrne of Hendricks is part of the advance party to prepare the ground for the trucks that had earlier today crossed into Poland.
The six trucks are carrying bedding, nappies and other essentials which will then be handed directly to the humanitarian effort.
“The reason we’re here is because we’ve sent out trucks with humanitarian aid. And those trucks are due to arrive here tonight, Friday.
“We arrived yesterday because we wanted to see the lay of the land and what was going on in terms of humanitarian aid, where it was being distributed to, and to find out if it was going to the right places, and to the right people.
“And that’s where we come out in advance of the trucks coming out to the local authorities who will distribute to the needy,” he said.
Kevin spent the day on the border along with his volunteer assistant John Morrissey who also assisted.
The company, under the guidance of Keith Hendricks, decided last Monday to offer their services to move the aid convoy.
John and the rest of the team will assist local aid workers to re-label the boxes in Polish and Ukrainian before they are sent to the various refugee centres.
John said there is a great sense of helping and supporting the refugees at the border, but that within 45 minutes of arriving they are being bussed onto the “more harder”, bleaker aspect of the process.
At the local Tesco Shopping Centre journalists are not permitted access but John, as an aid worker can go there to help – he described the scene.
“They can get hot food here at the border, clothes and other items, toys for the kids, and bedding – but that all stops then for them within 45 minutes and they’re bussed to Tesco.
“It’s a ray of light here for them but then, of course, I know because we’ve been further along the process, that the reality next up is harder because it’s a massive, cramped, packed old Tesco Shopping Centre with 150 to 160 beds in it.
“That’s when the reality of this hits them,” he said.
For Kevin, the scene at the border and in Przemyśl is confronting and difficult.
“They don’t know where they’re going, or what’s going to happen to them. It has left a big impression for me, the kids, the anguish in their faces, the not knowing.
“It’s hard. It’s very hard. And, I’ll be honest with you, when I come out here the first time yesterday, I didn’t expect it to hit me as hard as it did. But it did.
“I think it makes us all the better, that the trucks are arriving here tonight with a little bit that we can do for them. It might not be a lot. But it’s something and that’s it – it makes me happy that we did what we did,” he said.
The scene at the border is getting more difficult – the cold temperatures eased slightly today from minus 5 celsius yesterday during the day to 6 degrees celsius today.
But it is still bitterly cold, and by 4 pm local time a wind blows across from Ukraine gripping the area in freezing temperatures.
In a service centre supermarket, just metres from the border the refugees are huddled keeping warm – journalists and aid workers who buy their lunches are buying extra bars of chocolate to hand them to the rows of children.
Back at the train station in Przemyśl The Journal met a group of former French Foreign Legionnaires, newly arrived. Their plan is to head across the border in the next 24 hours and make their way to wherever the fighting is happening.
The British leader of the group, who identified himself as a former paratrooper, said they would offer their services to the Ukrainian military as a unit.
Ominously, the war moved closer to the border overnight with reports of shelling a short distance away.
There has also been a marked increase in military activity with a Surface to Air Missile battery observed by this website in fields near Przemyśl.
Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) fears that there is now a race against time to get the right medical supplies to the right places before aid can no longer reach militarily encircled towns and cities.
Anja Wolz, MSF Emergency Coordinator in Ukraine said: “And we don’t know how long it will be before Kyiv may be cut off.
“As hospitals in the east become overwhelmed with increasing numbers of war trauma patients, their supplies are dwindling.
“Destruction, aerial bombing, heavy artillery fire, tank battles, encircled towns, the beginnings of urban warfare, people sheltering in bunkers and basements running out of food, water and electricity – this is what is happening; and it is getting worse.
“The brutality, intensity and speed of this war is unlike anything we have seen for a long time. And the humanitarian medical response needs to be at scale and at speed.”
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