Hope in Kharkiv


Kharkiv was very cold overnight and it was snowing in the morning. We had two places to deliver aid - first, the rolls of plastic sheeting to the warehouse of a high tec engineering company that supports the repair of houses damaged by Russian bombs. 
We stopped for a cup of tea with the company's owner, who said that business is down by about 50% since the war. The company now makes very high quality wood burning stoves, half of which are given away. He was kind enough to donate one of the stoves to us to take on one of our aid runs.

Then we made a delivery to a very different warehouse, from where aid is taken to previously occupied villages north of Kharkiv. We took electric hot plates, adult incontinence products (always needed but not often donated) and 50 X 10kg boxes of "family hygiene kits" - washing liquid, soap, toothpaste, etc. Nadiya, one of the volunteers and our English translator, said that her name means, "hope" - which is certainly needed here.
We shared Franklin's cakes between both places and asked for them to be taken to soldiers, if possible. We already know that this has happened - pictures to follow tomorrow...

We saw a little more of Kharkiv on this trip; it's a lovely city, despite its feeling of emptiness and the scars of destroyed buildings, and we'd like to stay a bit longer, e.g. to walk along the river. I had been concerned about staying overnight in Kharkiv because it is frequently targeted by bombs, and so it was ironic that it was, in fact, Lviv region that suffered strikes on critical infrastructure last night.

We have a question for our friends who come from Kharkiv - why does the city have a replica of the Eiffel Tower?
We had another long drive, back to Kyiv, to be welcomed again (and fed well!) by our friends. It gradually became less cold, the snow disappeared and there was a lovely sunset on the journey west.
Tomorrow we have one last thing to do before heading back to Lviv.

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