‘I was out of work and I felt like I could be an aid worker here’
While most teachers on sick leave might choose to put their feet up, Guy Osborn, 65, drove a minibus from Kent to the front lines of the war in Ukraine.
On a mission to evacuate elderly citizens, the maths teacher at St John’s Catholic School in Gravesend is now just a mile from the advancing Russians. He spoke to The Daily Telegraph from Kramatorsk, in the eastern Donbas region – a town surrounded on three sides by enemy forces. Earlier that day he had driven into Severdonetsk, a town under heavy shelling, to help civilians get clear, among them a woman aged 97.
“It was like bonfire night,” Mr Osborn said, of his first close experience of warfare.
Relying on a local volunteer to navigate, he and fellow volunteer Mark Poppert, an American, passed military checkpoints and drove through cratered streets lined by destroyed buildings and broken power lines.
It had been hard to convince terrified civilians to leave their homes or basement shelters for a risky evacuation, Mr Osborn said. “It’s like being on a ledge on a mountain – you want to stay in the safe place and you don’t want to move.”
He volunteered for this mission after earlier delivering aid to Ukrainian refugees on the Hungarian border for his daughter’s charity, Refugease, back in March. “After I did the Hungary trip, which wasn’t dangerous, I said to my daughter when I came back I felt empty,” he said. “I felt like I should be an aid worker and I’m teaching.”
After a car accident on return to England, Mr Osborn took sick leave from his job. Holding up his broken hand, he said: “I’m not allowed to drive in the UK for insurance but you can’t get insurance at all here, so I can drive.”
Valentina, his daughter, who is now back in Kent, said having him so near the front had caused her a lot of sleepless nights. “My dad was fully intent on doing it, I didn’t want him doing it initially,” she said via telephone. “Since seeing that it definitely is his calling, I now feel less guilty and more proud.”
Mr Osborn said the risk was worth it for the satisfaction of helping people who larger, more risk averse organisations were unable to reach.
“As you get older you probably experience fewer new emotions,” he said. “There’s no way to explain it without sounding corny but I did feel as though I had done something good. I did feel like when I knock on the door of Heaven they might let me in now.”
So far, the mission has helped 20 vulnerable people flee the fighting, Mr Poppert said, while they also deliver humanitarian aid on every run.
“We have five souls on board now, and [we are] on the way to two more. Might get a second load later if curfew permits. Our clients include six fully invalided, two blind and three significant movement impaired,” Mr
‘I didn’t want him doing it initially. Since seeing that it definitely is his calling, I now feel less guilty and more proud’
Poppert’s message said. Those evacuees will go further west, as Kramatorsk has largely emptied out and left an eerie calm as cherry trees blossom and spring poppies and daffodils flower along the city’s broad boulevards.
While the traffic lights are out, the trams are still running and a group of police officers wait outside a shelter as an air raid siren wails. “When the air alarm has been going this long it means something is going to fall out of the sky somewhere,” one said.
There have been several deadly strikes on Kramatorsk in recent weeks. On April 9, the city’s train station was struck by a Russian missile while filled with civilian evacuees. Officials reported 59 killed and another 104 injured. Russia accuses Ukraine of staging a false flag operation.
About 55,000 of the city’s original 220,000 inhabitants of Kramatorsk, remain, city officials say. “They’re mostly people who either don’t have anywhere else to go or who already fled their city once before in 2014 and don’t want to flee again,” said Ihor Yeskov, the city council’s media chief.
In 2014, Russian-backed separatists occupied the city for 10 weeks until they were dislodged. Locals see the Feb 24 Russian invasion as “the escalation” of an eight-year-old war.
The Russians having abandoned the attempt to take the capital, Kyiv, turned their might on Donbas and now they threaten to encircle Krematorsk. Mr Yeskov, whose family have left for safety, doubts they can capture the city. “First of all they will not take this place, we will kick their ass,” said the 32-year-old speaking outside the city hall. “If they did, everyone would leave rather than live under the Russians. The small bunch of people who think Russia will bring any good here are just wrong.”
Like most civil servants he now has a second role delivering aid to 3,000 people daily. With few grocery stores and pharmacies still open, many are dependent on humanitarian aid.
To avoid large crowds that could be targeted, the city decided against central aid distribution, so volunteers deliver to the different parts of the city.
“Stay alive guys,” he said in English as he left.