A message from inside Ukraine

 

 

No, most of you won't be able to read this but it came from a woman inside Ukraine. There is a lot more to the message but this is upsetting enough. She was trying to think in English so we would understand the order of the symbols. V.... was trying to let us know where they were. 

V... works in an orphanage where most of the children are seriously disabled. Before the war started one of my colleagues was working with V... to set up several communication boards for some of the children. All that has stopped of course but V... used the symbols to try and let us know they were, if not safe, at least in a shelter of sorts.

The message reads:

 

Line one : We need help

Line two: I carry many children no parent car safe (I/we carried many of the orphans to safety by car - or she may mean to the railway station)

Line three: need food, need to drink, need to sleep

Line four: soldier many bomb we shelter under street building 

(this suggests that they were sheltering from the bombing in a basement or the underground at the railway station.)

V.... and my colleague have managed to send several messages to one another. They were still not able to leave because the shelling has not stopped. A "safe passage agreement" which was supposedly negotiated was broken as soon as people started to emerge from wherever they are. They now have no food and no water. The shelling has not stopped. Now there is no power and no means of communicating any more. We don't know what has happened to them. This is the reality of war.

Please don't anyone tell me that the Russians are not targetting civilians or that they are allowing people to leave - unless they wish to go to Russia.  It is a brutal conflict. Too much of my working life has been taken up with such situations - in places like Syria and Afghanistan. Too many children and those trying to care for them have been irreparably harmed by conflict. I am so tired of all this. I am one of the lucky ones - able to try and help from the safety of thousands of kilometres away. Their situation is hell on earth. 

If the petrol prices go up here - and everything else with it - please don't complain. We really have everything we need.