April 2023 Update
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April 30
While Alex Smirnov is still ill I quickly transported an old man from Konstantinovka who was guarding his home while there was something left to guard, and a mother with three children from near Zaporizhia, to Poland. Everything they have is in the photo.
Now, they are in the hands of friend Jay.
The mother doesn't want to go further than Poland: "So that we can return quickly when the war is over”.
Alexander Zharov.
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April 26- April 27
Total distance: ~1300km
Total cost: ~$610
Przemyśl (Poland) – Lviv – Kiev- Vyshhorod -Lviv - Przemyśl (Poland)
Usually, I try to write the report immediately after the mission. But I got sick and spent three days in bed. I am a little bit better now, and at least I can sit in front of the computer for more than 10 minutes.
Anyway, in the early morning, we intercepted volunteers at the parking lot in Lviv and loaded tactical Medkits for frontline medics into our ambulance. We brought them to the warehouse in Kiev. I contacted our patients, checked the address and time for the pickup.
The next morning, we picked up our clients: a mother who is weak and her son with Multiple Sclerosis. They are originally from Bakhmut.
On our way to the border, we received a call from the coordinator, who asked us to pick up one more family in Lviv. We agreed, and I called them to check the address and time. It was a mother and daughter from Kostiantynivka.
We brought our passengers to the RFU shelter and checked them in.
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April 24- April 25
Yesterday, I spent almost five hours picking up tactical Medkits for frontline medics that needed to be delivered ASAP. Today, we left the base at 5:30 am to meet with volunteers in Lviv and give them the kits so they could mail them to Kiev. However, the plan changed on the fly. Thirty minutes after we crossed the border, we received a call from a coordinator, informing us that we would not go to the train station as planned but instead would pick up a family of five, including parents and three children, one of whom has cerebral palsy. We are used to changing plans on the fly, so we agreed.
Ten minutes later, we found out that we would be heading to the Kiev region tomorrow to pick up our next patients. We intercepted the volunteers, unloaded the kits, and arranged to pick them up again tomorrow. Since we were going that way anyway, we decided to deliver the kits ourselves, which was faster and safer than mailing them. The kits were very valuable and expensive.
After picking up our passengers, we arrived at the border, where we spent almost two hours. It turned out that one of the necessary papers that were sent to the main border guard office two weeks ago had not yet been entered into the system. The border guard, who knew us from previous runs, made several calls to the main office and finally solved the problem. Without her help, we would have had to turn around. After two hours of waiting, we were on our way and dropped off our passengers at the shelter, where they will rest before continuing their journey tomorrow. The poor kids were exhausted.
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April 20-April 22
Przemyśl (Poland) – Kharkiv – Vyshhorod -Lviv - Przemyśl (Poland)
Total distance: 2299 km
Total cost: $805.42
This was a two-part mission.
1. The first part took almost two weeks to plan because we had two elderly people who were not able to maintain a seating position in a moving vehicle. So, we needed one more ambulance. The original plan was to pick them up from their home in Kupiansk and bring them to their relatives in Vyshhorod. Two days before the mission, the plan changed due to security concerns. Two ambulances from ADRA would pick up the patients at their home, and we would intercept them in Kharkiv, load one of the patients in our ambulance and finish the run.
2. After the first run, we were supposed to go to Kramatorsk, but this pickup was canceled, and we headed back to base. On the way, I wrote to several coordinators and asked if they had anybody who needed to go to Poland. Within 30 minutes, we received a request to pick up a family in Lviv. The mother had to travel on a stretcher due to her health condition.
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April 19
We picked up a family from a medical train in Lviv and took them to a rehabilitation center in Poland. They're from near Bakhmut. All four of them are disabled, with shrapnel wounds.
"We lived in a village near Bakhmut. We thought we'd tough it out and didn't want to go anywhere. They were always shooting, but not too heavily. There were no soldiers in the village. One day, the shelling started and we hid in the cellar. The house was hit. The military came, dug us out, and evacuated us on an armored vehicle under heavy fire. Nothing was left of the village."
"I was walking along the road and an evacuation ambulance was driving by. It was a volunteer one, white, with a red cross. They hit it, the driver was cut, and the female medic was thrown out of the car about twenty meters away. I ran over to her, wanted to help somehow, but what could I do - I have only one arm. She was seriously injured. I called for help. Three ambulances came. Well, I went on my way. And then a drone flew in and the Russians shot at the ambulances. Eight corpses and four cars. It's a good thing I have no arm. If I had stayed to help, I wouldn't be here either.”
The things you see in the photo are all they have left. A few bags and an antique suitcase.
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April 17
Lately, we've mostly been transporting severely ill civilians. And then, two missions in a row - children. The previous one had two small kids, and today it's triplets. All girls. Transporting kids...is more fun. Today's family was from the Dnipro, the previous one from the Dniester. That family spoke in an incomprehensible language, and the kids were shy to talk to us. That's probably why a little five-year-old boy handed me a chocolate bar instead of saying "hi." Silently. They had one suitcase for the five of them, and I don't think they had many chocolates.
Alexander Zharov
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April 13-14
Przemyśl (Poland) – Meerane (Germany)
Total distance: 1752 km
Total cost: $512
We received a call from our partner at a local refuge shelter asking us to bring a family of five to Germany, and they said that a "passenger van will do". This is not something we usually do, but it turned out that the older child has epilepsy with possible status epilepticus episodes, as well as many other health issues. The parents and the coordinator requested that a medic accompany them on the ride "just in case".
Everything went without incident, and the journey only took two days on “Juno”.
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April 5 - April 10 (Five days)
Lviv (Ukraine) – Przemyśl (Poland) – Caen (France)
Total distance: 4290 km
Total cost: $3355
So far, this has been our longest mission to date. Our patient was an 85-year-old bedridden woman accompanied by her caretaker, who happened to be her daughter. She was from Zaporizhzhia and had not planned on leaving until her apartment was destroyed in an airstrike. At that point, her daughter convinced her to move to France, where she had lived for over 20 years. They arrived in Lviv on a medevac train, and we picked them up and brought them to a shelter for the night.
The next morning, we hit the road and discussed doing the entire 20-hour drive without stopping for the night. However, we ran into trouble when one of our inner rear tires blew out in Germany. Thankfully, we have four tires at the back axel and didn't end up on the rim. We looked up the nearest tire shop and drove there very slowly. We had to visit three shops, first two did not have the tire of the right size, but finally, the tire was changed. Unfortunately, we lost three and a half hours, so we had no choice but to stop for the night.
We spent the night in a hotel near the Belgian border and then drove for another twelve hours, finally bringing our patient home. The following day, we took a break, and the day after that, we hit the road at 6 AM. For a couple of hours, everything was fine, but suddenly we hit very dense fog. For the next hour and a half, the ride was very hard. Also, we were low on fuel. The markings on the French highways are not the best, even in good weather. After we missed the exit to the fuel station, which we did not see at all, we had to stop and fill up from the jerrycan that we always keep with us.
It took us almost twenty hours to return to base.
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April 9
We have a new delivery. It was collected at the end of March from our doctors Boris and Alexey, as well as from other volunteers. We counted, sorted, packed, and finally shipped it on April 9th. There are 14 boxes that will go to Odessa (hospital, maternity center, and stabmeds to Bakhmut) and one, but valuable, box to Vinnytsia. The shipment weighs 510 lbs and costs $1162.27. The suburban was really full to the roof.
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April 6
Slava Oleinik from "Fly by Night Network" brought another transfer of medical supplies from a friendly group of volunteers for Bakhmut and Kherson, and everything will be gone by the weekend.
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April 2 -April 3
Kryvyi Rih (Ukraine) – Przemyśl (Poland)
Total distance: 1957 km
Total cost: $790.34
Very quick and easy mission. In and out. Brought an oncology patient to the shelter in Poland. Now he is going to be transported by the other team to Germany for treatment. Chances of survival and recovery are pretty good.
