Chernobyl volunteer ‘in horror’ as town is destroyed

A BRITISH volunteer who has spent a decade helping Chernobyl children has said it is “heartbreaking” to see the town where she worked being destroyed by the Russian army.

Jo Cullimore, 46, from Waterlooville,

Hampshire, has been helping children from the town of Borodyanka in northern Ukraine since 2012.

Russian forces invaded Borodyanka, just outside the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, on February 24 but have since left the town.

In April, the presidents of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia visited Borodyanka with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky after reports that there was evidence of war atrocities in the town.

“It’s heartbreaking and every day I wake up thinking I’ve just dreamt the war, but then I watch the news and remember that it is real,” Ms Cullimore told the PA news agency.

“I started volunteering for a charity in the UK and then went on to helping take aid out to the community and Chernobyl children in 2015, with the help of my mother Lindsay and my 13-year-old daughter Emma, who is now 18.

“We spent a lot of time working in the town of Borodyanka and the children would put on performances at their school for us and we would help with English lessons.

“The Russians have recently been in that school and now it’s no longer useable, they’ve even graffitied all over the walls, it’s just horrible.”

Before the war, Ms Cullimore, who is a mother-of-two, had already formed close bonds with the families she had worked with.

She has remained in constant contact with one mother in particular, Iryna Berdnikov, who has a teenage son who is the same age as Ms Cullimore’s son.