A Lifeline to Ukraine

Lifeline CIC founder and nurse John Gilmour recently undertook a huge journey thousands of miles across Europe with one goal – to deliver an ambulance full of supplies to the front of Ukraine.

John had made the journey once before to Ukraine, delivering much needed essentials such as sanitary products, toys and much more as – in his words – “they just had no access to them.” Little did he know that one year after the journey, John would be embarking on a second trip to the region.

“It just came out of nowhere,” John said. “Lancashire Ambulance Service had donated the ambulance to Ukraine, and they needed somebody to take it to Ukraine. I hadn’t gone over the border last time, but I offered to do it this time with one of my staff called Steven.”  

The border John is talking about is the Poland Ukraine border that runs 530 miles along the Eastern area of Ukraine. The closest city to the border is Lviv, which lies around 40 miles from the crossing into Poland.

“On route, the owner of Lancashire Ambulance Service flew out to Poland as he wanted to be there to donate his ambulance. It was an extra driver as well which helped the camaraderie. We got over the border and it was quite strange – because it is a warzone, you had to be in a vehicle to cross, but we did not know that at the time.”

Once inside Ukraine, the team drove the ambulance up to the town of Svityaz, where they were able to hand over the vehicle and supplies to the volunteer groups.

“We handed it over to 198 Volunteers Batallion who were an army of different nationals,” John explained, “Polish, Ukranians, New Zealanders, and a lot of English chaps who were ex-army and wanted to go and help from a volunteer perspective. The highest in command was a Polish woman who was with the Red Cross.”

The volunteer army were thankful for the donation given to them by John and the team and they were able to head off. It was at this stage that they ran into some trouble, as John explained.

“The border is very strict and is not as you’d expect it. There are Ukrainians that go to the Polish side and then come back in with more supplies. But some who had crossed the border in transport were trying to come back into Ukraine and were not allowed without transport. It was upsetting to see. We ran into some difficulties as we had no transport, but we were able to communicate via google translate and get someone to get us back across the border back into Poland.”

The Russia – Ukraine war still wages on, and civilians have been living day to day in terrible conditions and in fear for their lives for over 600 days. To help out with the struggle, many charities are accepting donations including but not limited to – Unicef, British Red Cross, and War Child UK.