Braving air raids and bomb craters, Kilkenny man Jim brings aid to help Ukraine

Kyiv city “is fabulous and seems vibrant with large volumes of people, as you would expect in any modern capital,” Jim said.

Jim’s mission began earlier this year, when he first travelled to Ukraine with a Tipperary-based aid convoy. When he returned to Kilkenny he told the Kilkenny People: “I couldn’t come back here, having seen what they are going through, the battles they are fighting, the friends they are losing, and do absolutely nothing.

“Ireland as a country may be neutral but the Irish people cannot stand back and see this nation, which shares a background eerily similar to our own in terms of famine colonisation and character, defend their country against the world’s second largest military machine without doing everything in our power to help.”

Jim’s way to help was to appeal for vehicles and medical aid. On this trip his group have taken a large amount of medical aid, which has been handed over to a disability charity in Kyiv for onward distribution.

Those defending Ukraine also badly want four-wheel vans and ambulances, Jim said. The need for ambulances is self explanatory, he said, and is central to his aim of saving lives.

Four-wheel drive vehicles are needed to bring people to and from frontline areas. They will bring injured people away from the front and to ambulances and treatment centres. Ambulances are kept back from the frontlines because they can’t afford to lose them.