Sunday Mirror (Northern Ireland)
HELP SAVE THEM
100,000 kids are at mercy of Putin’s troops Mirror joins Brit charity in huge relief bid
HELPLESS and bewildered orphans cram into a basement as Vladimir Putin’s grotesque bombardment echoes all around them.
Babies, six to a cot, lie unaware of the horrors that have condemned Ukraine to a living hell.
Toddlers sit compliantly, cajoled by carers doing their best to maintain some calm amid the madness.
The sad scene in Kyiv is echoed in 700 children’s homes housing 100,000 orphans, half of them disabled.
Food and water is running out. Staff numbers are hit as 60,000 seek sanctuary with their own families.
Carers say they rush the kids to safety below ground by announcing “Children – explosions”.
They also tell them to eat every scrap on their plates – unable to guarantee when the next meal will be.
Just 2,500 orphans have been evacuated – with the British charity Hope and Homes for Children helping 100 to safety in Dnipro and Vorzel.
Relentless shelling means it is too perilous to move the youngsters in our Page One picture.
Today, the Sunday Mirror launches an urgent Orphan Appeal to send out supplies.
Labour leader Keir Starmer, ex-forces chief Lord Dannatt and Bond actress Olga Kurylenko – who has Ukrainian, Russian and Belarusian ancestry – are backing our campaign.
When siren goes we say ‘Children, explosions’ ...they head for cover
SHOCK
Hope and Homes rescued 50 children, including two babies and two with disabilities, from Dnipro, in central Ukraine. Another 50 from Vorzel, near the capital, were bussed away when their orphanage was hit by an illegal Russian cluster bomb. Mercifully there were no casualties. In Dnipro, Hope and Home aide Daria, 40, explained how the horror unfolded there.
She said: “When the first rockets fell it was a massive shock. We said, ‘Children, today your life changes. Rockets could fly in at any moment, soldiers could walk through the door’.
“We started to very quickly instruct them how we should go down to the basement during an air raid.
“We told them, ‘A war has begun, we must be nice to each other, we shouldn’t argue’. We told them make sure you finish every morsel because we don’t know when the next delivery of food will come. Even now we can’t tell them when they’ll next eat.
“On the third night we heard bombs nearby. I walk into the dorm and say ‘children, explosions’ and they quickly and orderly go to the basement. Sasha, who is 12, said ‘I worry Putin will fire a nuclear bomb – he will destroy the world’. They dream the war will end, that they can go to summer camp, to school, on holiday.”
Ukraine has the most orphans in Europe and 100,000 were already in care. But each day more need help as war claims the lives of their parents. Daria went on: “We are trying to offer humanitarian support to children from places like Izyum and Kharkiv that don’t have parents because of the war. “Our aim is that no child goes hungry. Countless children have been evacuated from the areas of the worst fighting. We try to find foster families.” In Kyiv, Hope and Home’s local director Halyna has managed to relocate some children.
Halyna is separated from her family and is terrified for her 86-year-old mother in eastern Ukraine, where Russian troops are massing. She told us: “Orphanages, boarding schools, baby homes and hospitals are being bombed. I’m used to the sound of constant explosions and sirens.
“The bridges have been blown up near my home to prevent any tanks crossing, so it’s difficult to help everyone we would want. But we expect many evacuees in Donetsk and
Lugansk and Kharkiv city to need our support in the coming days. Most children won’t be able to be evacuated as it’s too unsafe.
“And I’m worried the few who can be got out are not being monitored properly while moving over borders. They’re disappearing. Some are even being taken overseas.
“We could be looking for children like them all over the world for many years to come.”
Charity CEO Mark Waddington, 53, – a veteran of similar work in Afghanistan and Iraq – is directing operations from the Ukraine-Moldova border.
Mark, from Bakewell, Derbys, said: “There’s no central tracking system to know which children are where. They are going missing.”
And that, says Hope and Homes, puts them at risk of beatings, rape, torture and trafficking. Worried Mark
added: “Many children have some sort of family in Ukraine. The key is to keep them close because the further they go, the more dislocated they become from those families.
“My big worry is the unaccompanied children, who will have fewer resources. Some will be destitute.”
That is why the Sunday Mirror has teamed up with the charity to help – with details of how you can donate displayed above.
There is urgent need for life-saving aid packs of food, water, clothes, medicine, pillows, sleeping bags, torches – even tape for windows to stop shattering glass causing harm.
The charity has been working in Ukraine for 25 years and is dedicated to getting children into loving homes with extended family or foster parents. Patrons include Bond girl Olga, 42, who said: “These children are stranded without staff, food and water while under attack from bombs and bullets. I struggle to comprehend the suffering of millions of families, including my own, caught up in this war. So imagine the suffering of children who are totally alone.”
Former Chief of the Defence Staff Lord Dannatt is a patron too and has been associated with the charity for 30 years.
He said: “Children are being left behind in the war zone to live feral in bombed-out orphanages.
“I’ve seen refugee children separated from family and thrown into dangerous orphanages in foreign lands. We cannot allow history to repeat itself in Ukraine. Children belong in families.”
Aid workers are working in hellish conditions to save as many children as they can. A Polish charity has taken in 2,000 children, while a mission in Donetsk saw 85 led to safety. And Londoner Jeremy Posen, 53, was dubbed the “Angel of Odesa” and likened to a “British Schindler” after helping to lead 1,000 Jewish refugees – including 270 orphans – to safety. Jeremy is chief financial officer for the charity Tikva, which cares for homeless, abandoned and abused Jewish children.
To donate: Text HOPE 5, HOPE 10, HOPE 15 or HOPE 20 to 70300 to donate £5, £10, £15 or £20 to Hope and Homes for Children Or go to www. hopeandhomes.org
Orphan Appeal