BTN interviews humanitarian workers in Eastern Ukraine
The warning of the missile attack comes close to the start of the interview. Sitting in the safety of the BTN office, I can hear mobile phones making frantic sounds from somewhere in Eastern Ukraine.
The interview with Dominic Figueroa and Charlie Mendonca had started out as any other chat on Zoom. It’s mid-April and the sun is shining in the UK.
To anyone ‘not in the know’ then it would appear that both of them were in the type of shared accommodation enjoyed by students across the country
Except this is no ordinary shared house. And this is not the UK. True, they may enjoy some of the domestic niceties of being in the company of a host family which includes three cats, a dog and church on Sundays.
But they also have to put up with a troublesome neighbour. One which creates the late night air raid sirens which keep them awake. And then there’s the early morning alarm call.
‘We once woke up at five to the house shaking and the doors swinging because they blew up the bus station,’ says Charlie.
‘They hit our bus station and our train station,’ continues Dominic, a trained medic who left work in America to help people in Ukraine.
‘The bus station is 500 – 600 metres from us and the train station is a kilometre away. They hit a building next door to the train station.’
‘The level of danger in our city is significantly less than if you are in the far, far East where the front lines are more dangerous than being in Lviv or Kyiv.’
‘As we have less air defence then the Russians send over long range missiles, Shahed drones, even surveillance drones into the city.’
Ukraine’s Civil Defence app
Fast forward to mid-May and Russian forces are now pushing their way into eastern parts of Ukraine. You can easily utilise an app which allows the country’s Civil Defence System to provide you with warnings and the all clear signal.
It’s reported that the app has been downloaded 26 million times and is used by two million Ukrainians. Dominic explains air alerts go off frequently and that users have to be very attentive to ‘what’s coming your way.’
‘I try to put it to one side and just manage it,’ explains Charlie, as he looks towards the laptop camera, and away from the alert information on his mobile phone screen.
‘I grew up in the countryside and I would always hear bangs. It’s just a bit louder. That’s how I just process it in my head.’
‘Part of me thinks that I haven’t been here too long and so I haven’t anything too bad happening which is why I think I can manage it more. I just try to stay calm. For the most part it’s been close but not right in your face.’
It might not be ‘right in your face’ but it’s certainly damn close. BTN has chosen not to identify their exact location. Let’s just say they’re based in the East.
Their day to day existence shows how difficult things can be for Ukrainians. Even something as simple as washing becomes virtually impossible. People are reduced to using specially prepared wet wipes to try to maintain some semblance of hygiene.
Illustration: buraktumler / Shutterstock.
Collecting humanitarian supplies
‘We had to pick up these wipes from a warehouse on the other side of a river in a place that we had never been to. It was two pallets worth of just, basically, wet wipes in clear plastic bags,’ explains Dominic.
‘There were about thirty or forty bags and they had to put them in the car. And there were only three seats in the front and there were four of us so we’re bouncing around in the back with these wipes and the whole stack fell over.’
Charlie smiles at the memory of the aforementioned journey before chipping in to explain that the wet wipes are in desperate need.
‘We were trying to pick up some wet wipes as another organisation’s van wasn’t working so we had to step in. We had to find the place and use two translators. This guy who spoke Russia and you (Dominic) who speaks a little bit of Ukrainian to try to load it.’
‘A lot of these frontline places don’t have running water so they use these wet wipes for hygiene so it’s a critical item,’ adds Dominic.
‘The warehouse will prepare them by taking a cloth and putting antiseptic on them and then they send them to a volunteer centre where they’re folded, stacked and boxed to be sent out to people. That was this morning’s adventure.’
‘Sometimes you just want to cry with them’
The pair appear relaxed. Dominic even recounts how Charlie managed to sustain ‘the plank’ for a whole three minutes the previous evening. Life sounds so normal. And yet it’s anything but normal.
‘In the first month I was here, there was a terrible rocket attack in the city and a lot of civilians died,’ recounts Dominic.
‘They still have a memorial at the bus stop across the street for them just across the street which is full of stuffed animals and little carts and a way of remembering them.’
‘And every time you go to the villages and take humanitarian aid to them and hear these stories then it does have an impact on you. And when you do hear these stories then sometimes you just want to cry with them.’
‘I think it’s hard as a foreigner as I don’t have a working knowledge of the language so you can’t always say the right thing.’
The situation in the Middle East currently dominates the front pages. The news of the death of Iranian President, Ebrahim Raisi.
And then there’s the news of the upcoming UK election in July. The US election in the autumn. All are events which have the effect of pushing Ukraine down the global news agenda.
‘Don’t forget about us. Don’t forget about the people of Ukraine. Don’t forget about the conflict.’
‘I know it’s a lot because it’s got a lot of press and we like to move on to the next exciting thing in the news but this is something that still needs to be covered,’ says Dominic.
‘People back home don’t seem to know and they are put it out of their minds,’ adds Charlie.
‘A place that you would call home’
‘It would be sad if they ever got here to where we at the moment as they would do to this place what they’ve done to other cities, I’ve not been here long but this is a place that you would call home.’
‘People are always impressed and even today people want to give us hugs and handshakes and they say that’s the American guy. That’s the English guy,’ says Dominic.
‘We hold an English class once a week and Charlie’s been coming along and it’s been neat to have an American accent and a British accent. It brings encouragement to the people of Ukraine when foreigners continue to help.’
‘I’m scared, for sure. You hear a couple of those artillery shells and they’re booming. You hear the whoosh, the whistle in the air and the explosion.’
