Express & Echo (City & East Devon Edition)
Wrecked vehicles don’t stop man helping Ukrainians
AN East Devon man has not allowed two vehicles being written off to chalk up two years of helping those caught up in the war in Ukraine.
Former Royal Engineer Andy Matheson, from Beer, felt he couldn’t sit idly by and watch the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
With his local community he gathered supplies and drove to Ukraine in 2022 in a Ford Galaxy to deliver aid and evacuate people.
His original intention was to gift the Galaxy to a charity that could use it and return after 21 days, but Andy quickly realised the locals’ need was significant so, he drove that Galaxy across Ukraine and the Polish border until the transmission fell out.
Andy has so far crossed the Polish border 170 times evacuating people from all over Ukraine.
In January 2023, he returned to the UK, raised money to buy a bigger van and returned to Ukraine.
Following the Russian destruction of the Nova Kakhovka Dam, Andy delivered 150,000 litres of emergency drinking water to people whose drinking water supply had been destroyed or contaminated.
He has now teamed up with Exeter-born Danny Potts who, as an English teacher living in Plymouth, had been teaching Ukrainians English free of charge.
One of his Ukrainian students told him about Andy and the muchneeded aid other volunteers were taking to the people. Danny decided to go to Ukraine during the school summer holidays to volunteer.
He made contact with Andy on arrival in Kyiv in August 2023 and they headed straight to Donetsk to deliver aid to hospitals in Kramatorsk and Kostyantynivka.
Shortly after Danny left, Andy’s van was destroyed when it was hit by a drunk driver. Without a van, he found a new way to serve the people of Ukraine.
A bricklayer by trade, Andy found himself in the small village of Blahodatne, not far from the front line in Southern Ukraine, which was nearly levelled by the Russian army when they used it in a propaganda film to show everyday Russians how ‘successful’ the war was going.
In January, Danny returned to Ukraine and spent three weeks with Andy rebuilding Blahodatne and delivering aid throughout the country.
To support Andy, his fundraising page is aidandy4ukraine.org.