Safe... thanks to you
THESE exhausted children are some of the 52 orphans evacuated from wartorn Ukraine with the help of Sunday Mirror readers.
You raised an amazing £50,000 last week – £25,000 of it on Sunday alone – which went towards rescuing children from their orphanage in Dnipro as Russian bombs rained down. Today they are
recovering in the safety of the Romainian city of Lasi after a gruelling two-day ordeal to escape Russian invaders.
The plan by charity Hope and Homes for Children is to keep them as near to their home country as possible so they can be reunited with extended family who survive.
In the meantime they will be carefully tracked and placed with families in Romania so they cannot fall into the hands of evil people traffickers.
These children aged from just six months to 12 years left Dnipro in eastern Ukraine by train at 8.30 on Wednesday night to make the hazardous journey towards the Romanian border and sanctuary.
The 52, including seven babies, and 11 carers, charity workers and their families, arrived at Vynnytsk at midnight Thursday, a three-hour bus ride from the border where they had to disembark.
Other refugee families helped them cross on foot into Romania and the Blue Dot UN processing centre – and then it was another exhausting 10-hour drive before they reached
lasi by coach. Sunday Mirror readers gave generously to our orphan appeal backed by Labour leader Keir Starmer after we featured other children cowering in the basement of a baby home in Kyiv last week. Their fate is unknown.
Charity patron General Lord Dannatt, former chief of the defence staff said: “Readers of the Sunday Mirror have been incredibly generous. I hope this continues.”
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