Sunny Days in Kramatorsk (part 1) | Ukraine: The Latest | Podcast

Sunny Days in Kramatorsk (part 1) | Ukraine: The Latest | Podcast

It’s the evening of the 15th of June the sounds you’re hearing is laiv here we go driving down a heavily forested mountain now in mid Germany to where we be spending the night and when we stopped on the hard shoulder there was smoke coming out of the engine so we

Lifted the Bonnets and stood back what I noticed in the checkpoints that we passed through is how young the soldiers were and the sight of those boys those sort of quivering teenagers with their AK-47s and brand spanking new uniforms made me absolutely determined to to do what I

Can to make sure that more boys aren’t called up the cars are done materials are packed now off to harke every single house here the Roes has been destroyed it looks almost completely abandoned she’s very very grateful she’s very moved my friends which were gone and these days you cannot ever ever ever

Forget because I lost lots of friends we’ve just passed on the left another destroyed Russian tank it does very much feel like we’re getting closer actually doing this to help them but more importantly on top of that to stop Putin so I’m now in Suburban South London just trying to find the rendevu point now trying to find where these are that must be them yes that’s definitely them and I’m no great believer of pathetic fallacy but I’ve just seen a flash of lightning and a deep Roll of Thunder up

Ahead I’m David nolles and welcome to a special two-part episode of Ukraine the latest in summer 2023 I traveled with a group of British volunteers all the way from the UK to Ukraine the volunteers are taking material and Aid to Ukrainian units fighting on the front line I’ll be with

Them for their journey to understand their motives and what their aid means to the Troops receiving them my my own Journey starts in slightly more praic circumstances I’m on a residential street in South London waiting for a bus to get to the rendevu point it’s deep England here lots of detached houses red

Buses people going home from school just to paint you a bit of a picture the microphone has a large furry top to make sure I can use it outside and I can tell you that’s attracting some Looks So the plan for today is head to the Rev point

And take one of the vehicles over to C I’m curious to hear more about the volunteers where are they from what are their motivations certainly it’s going to be an interesting next 10 days do stay with me the storm passed overhead and we set off towards the channel Crossing I was

Going to be sharing a car with Hugh not his real name all the way from the UK to Eastern Ukraine in fact we’ve changed the names of all the volunteers for their security so first things first I wanted to understand the essentials of the trip well thank you so much for inviting

Me on this trip what’s in Stall well we’re heading off in a convoy of six vehicles and four of them I think are mrl 200s which is the sort of vehicle that’s most popular with Frontline volunteer forces that we’re delivering to another is very very similar vehicle

And we have a Shogun as well and a cord bike and some drones some military clothing sleepy bags lots of Summer boots generator 3D printer various bits and pieces that people have donated that we’ve been told by the units we’re supporting are very useful tool you mentioned the make of the vehicles we’re

Driving there and leaving there giving them to the soldiers why do they like these vehicles what’s the special about them what’s their utility they’re pretty tough Rel Vehicles they’re pretty popular in England actually for people who don’t know what an L200 is like it’s a normal

It’s a normal pickup the type of farmers and Builders use and flat bed at the back double cab usually diesel four-wheel drive not electronically complicated or anything like that something they can easily get spare parts easily work on not too expensive tough reliable etc etc and what they do

With them is they convert them essentially into either small fighting vehicles or small humanitarian ambulances that sort of thing and they mount guns or large rocket launchers on them and what they tend to do is put a drone and some missiles in the cab and then they head off off behind the lines

Buang up a drone find a Target and then zap it and then they knit back over the Border again or wherever they’re going out of H’s way as quickly as they can before a new return fire this isn’t the first time you’ve traveled to Ukraine with this group of

Volunteers how did you get involved I got involved through a family member who done a lot of work in Ukraine and we had friends in K and the immediate concern actually was to get help to our friends in k for them to buy vital supplies and if possible get out

If they wanted to so we oh my wife actually set up a WhatsApp group were friends who we thought might be interested might be might want to be involved might want to contribute we were astonished how generous the response was so we had more money than we needed or they needed for their

Immediate needs and so got in touch with military units and started asking them what they really needed and of course right at the start especially the volunteer units had basically nothing at all so instead of for example these four-wheel drives they were driving up to the Russian lines behind the Russian

Lines in all laders and Fields across Fields so absolutely almost anything military that we could buy legally was useful to me so we raised enough money to buy one of these trucks fill it foot of this little kit I was talking about and drove it out

To the unit who had ordered the stuff the demand from the units on the front line more or less by accident we fell into doing this pretty much every two months it turned out that seemed to be the time frame for blocking out 10 days

For a trip in in my di cuz I still work my time raising enough money to have a reasonable amount of stuff to take out and delivering It Hugh and his group continued to bring Aid to Ukrainian troops every few months and in November 2022 I was put in touch with one of his colleagues and interviewed them you can hear that interview again by searching for the episode heavy shelling in donbass and interview with an undercover volunteer

Supplying the front lines from the 21st of November 2022 little did I know at the time the impact it would have then the telegraph podcast became involved and very kindly gave us some air covering it all went a bit um ballistic after that we got an extraordinary Deluge of offers from all

Over the world actually to the extent it was really quite hard to manage because we we all had our own day jobs as it were but what we have tried to do is to persuade other people to mimic our operation we sort of like to think of it

In terms of the sort of small boats at dun Kirk I SP is getting lots of people essentially doing the same thing what you don’t want is a huge Convoy of trucks with all the usual sort of problems of visibility and administration and complexity and all

That sort of stuff we want really to teach other people to do this same as Us you’ve been to Ukraine many many times over the past year delivering this Aid what are your impressions of the country and how has it changed in the times that you’ve been back and forth the first time I went it was only shortly after the the Russians have

Being kicked out of Q There were huge cues of the Border in both directions enormous numbers of roadblocks a lot of damage particularly rankie lots of t Banks and actually all that stuff you see in the main Square in the center of kid was all along the side of the road

And a sort of sense of determined resistance stoicism what’s happened over the following visits has been markably fast clear up and return to normality the morale is another big thing that’s changed it’s the the change from that sort of resigned sism at the start you know they’ll never beat us cuz

We’re ukrainians but no very obvious way in which they they thought that was going to be achieved then now I would say now I can’t remember the last time I saw I spoke to a Ukrainian who didn’t think it would be politically impossible to give up the war without getting the

Crime a back it’s that much of a change there a s General assumption that they are going to win this One after a long drive we reached the channel tunnel and crossed over the British border the guard took one long look at the line of l200s and said off to Ukraine are you before waving us ahead to board the train in France we arrived at the first hotel of the trip

Close to the tunnel entrance before we could have some dinner however there was work for the volunteers so we’re in a hotel car park in northern France having crossed over on the tunnel uh the volunteers uh all around they’ve taken off quite a few of the things from

The from the trucks just to um split up some of the things they’ve all come in bulk uh so you know there’s a huge bag of tat they have a mix of things that arrive in terms of medical Aid loads of boots and military clothing see some

Drones as well think some ration packs down there as well some this is all happening in a fairly deserted French car park and the first beused locals have just walked past quizzically wondering what on Earth is going on I was curious about what Hugh had said about the utility of the trucks and

Wanted to hear more about how they were used on the front line so I caught up with MAO one of the Ukrainian volunteers traveling with the group to translate so just a couple of ways that those Vehicles can be used in is first off is reconnaissance so we commonly use

One of those pickup trucks in order to drive to the front line or maybe sometimes behind into the into the gray Zone which means no man’s land and get a drone into air which means that people are able to see the front line and enemies advance or our units advance so

That sometimes contributes towards the success of defense or attack and enemy moving in or being repelled could you talk a little bit about how these trucks that we’re taking to Ukraine now are used by the medics in the field and the difference that that makes thanks so

Sometimes people can be put in the back of this truck or just inside depending on the type of injury that they suffered and then there could be a couple of people who are injured inside and it means that they’re going to be delivered to the I’m not sure of the exact term in

English but the stabilization facility that will get them that will get them safe and will mean difference between life or Death there’s awful lot of stuff actually seeing it laid out here and it’s yeah this is our first night this is first night of the trip really in France so yeah just a quick update on the first night in the evening it’s the second day of the Expedition here we’ve been through three

Countries so far in Western Europe setting off from Cal heading through Belgium and then further on through the Netherlands past oven and now we’re coming down through Germany I’m not entirely sure where we are it feels like all the service stations are sort of all the petrol stations are blurring into

One at the moment uh I’ve been trying to pick up sort of during that second day we had the first hiccup of the trip one of the cars broke down the volunteers are crowded around one of the cars which has been making some strange noises um what do we think

Has gone wrong my guess is say this is Michael another volunteer who’s raised thousands of pounds and sourced his own vehicle to drive to Ukraine there’s a lot of I think should we say uninformed unmechanical peering into the engine hoping that somehow the sharper the more intense The Gaze a cure might

Just magic itself one of the volunteers is uh direct video calling the mechanic back in the UK showing them inside the Bonnet of of the truck show them the problem the volunteers managed to fix that quickly 15 minutes at the most but the cars they’re using bringing over to

Ukraine are all somewhat old the risk of them breaking down is high that gives you an idea of just how precarious this whole Enterprise is and what sort of gear Ukrainian soldiers are working with but we couldn’t waste time we still had a long way to go through the Netherlands

To our next stop for the night in central Germany it was a very long drive we’re coming to the end of our second day driving to Ukraine just driving down a heavily forested mountain now in mid Germany to where will be spending the night tonight and it’s a really beautiful evening the

Clouds parts of the tribe we’ve left the low countries and the r far far behind and now we surrounded by forested Hills it’s dusk here you can just hear the the birds I imagine this is what many Ukrainian towns were like at dusk children playing people going to dinner before the

War and that really all these people want is to enjoy the same peace that the residents of this town in Germany Have the days blurred together as we Spar across Germany all seemed to be going well and then the second car broke down this time it was a lot more serious so the Convoy is approaching the Polish border we’ve left Dron behind us but we’ve had to pull in at a service

Station because one of the cars not the car I’m in but one of the cars uh is having engine trouble apparently smoke uh overheating I talked to Alex one of the volunteers who was in that car basically we were driving along in the Convoy no issues at all and then

Suddenly we noticed the temperature gauge was on maximum so we pulled pulled straight in and when we stopped on the hard shoulder there was smoke coming out of the engine so we lifted the Bonnet and stood back to wait for it to cool down uh We’ve checked the oil and

There’s no water in the oil but there is oil in the water but the reality is that it’s an old vehicle and we’ve been driving it yesterday for 10 hours and today we’ve been going for about five do we know what the options are um for the

Things in your truck for you and and your co-pilots what what do we think might happen now so we’ve decanted all the valuable stuff so there’s three drones on the truck which the value is significant so we’ve decanted them into other vehicles you were rescued from the hard shoulder by a Ukrainian what

Happened there yes so we were stood trying to give assistance people our um location and then suddenly this mini buus with a trailer on the back pulled in it had a Ukrainian number plate and within minutes the truck was on the back of his trailer and we were heading

Towards the services to catch up with everyone else they didn’t speak any English but we were able to use our Ukrainian translator to uh talk to them and as soon as they spotted two trucks with GB plates by the side of the road I think they knew exactly where we were

Heading we’re all loaded up with kit so they would have known you know we were pointing in the direction of Poland towards Ukraine so I think they would have known what we were doing and we’re happy to help Alex is one of the people who Hugh convinced to start their own

Operation so the the way they described it is that uh you need to buy a truck which is preferably a mitsubish L200 for about £4,000 travel costs are about ,000 and then for all the equipment that you can load into the truck comes to about six

So I paid for the truck and the travel myself and the business I work in the marketing department helped me raise the 6,000 and we had a set up a GoFundMe page and we just just approached different categories of business people and friends and all the rest of it and

We’ve actually raised nearly £99,000 what for you morally is is at the heart of this what why are you doing this it’s interesting you say that actually because lots of people in the UK have said to me why aren’t we raising money to help people in in the UK why

Are we helping ukrainians we don’t really have much contact with and for me that isn’t the point we’re actually doing this to help them but more importantly on top of that to stop Putin and that’s that that’s that’s my motivation for doing it I also caught up with William another

Volunteer and when he’s talking about small boats he’s of course referencing Dunkirk when over 800 private boats sailed across the channel to rescue Allied soldiers in World War II I’ve heard this idea of the small booat spirit before amongst other volunteers in Ukraine it’s the modern cause that’s

Most like the causes that our ancestors were brave enough to face and uh and if they hadn’t our lives would be very different and I I have a son in the Army and I want to do what I can to make sure that he’s not called upon to to face

This challenge in his professional capacity I think Putin invading Ukraine seems like an attempt to reverse the outcome of the or at least turn the clock back on the outcome of the Cold War which is to me personally quite important and the third reason is that we host a courageous Ukrainian family

Who fled from Essa with very little for whom this is of course absolutely personal well first of all what we’re doing is a lot less courageous than crossing the channel in a small boat to pick people off off a beach but the motivation of the people who took their

Boats over the channel I think is exactly the same motivation that inspires us I think that we’re all responding in in in a way to kind of not a call to arms but something approaching it I think people want to do their bit what I notice and the checkpoints that

We passed through was how young the soldiers were and I say I have I have a son in the Army I have another son who’s definitely conscript and the sight of those boys this is in the west of the country so not in danger particularly but they were nervous and they’d been

Told to be nervous those sort of quivering teenagers with their AK-47s and brand spanking new uniforms made me absolutely determined to to do what I can to make sure that more boys aren’t called up and put into the front line with not enough training and throw their lives Away something that struck me while traveling with the volunteers was how informal this operation really is there’s no website no contact page or FAQs it’s all built on networks of people who know H friends of friends or friends or people like Paul who heard about it by chance or on a podcast there

Are advantages to running this operation so forly so we think of ourselves really like a very small Amazon delivery service for a few chosen units really hoping to avoid all the sort of bureaucratic problems all the risk of things disappearing somewhere along the line for either reasons of corruption or

Incompetence or whatever we don’t want this to become big and unwieldy we want it to remain very agile because more than once we’ve been going to deliver to people and right at the last minute they’ve either been captured or they’ve been injured and we’ve had to change our

Plans and that flexibility is very important to us the other thing that’s very important to us is the fact this is all done on trust the donations are all given to us by people who have absolutely they haven’t got a website to look at they’ve got no guarantee of

What’s happening with it and people are extraordinar trusting and generous and a lot of people actually say this is brilliant this is exactly the sort of organization we’ve been looking at since we featured one of the volunteers on the podcast last November Hugh tells me he’s been flooded with emails and requests to

Get involved I think that’s absolutely true and it is very difficult for us to deal but I don’t see that as um a problem because we’re not like a normal bigger charity after being toed away from the hard shoulder by the Ukrainian minibus the broken down truck ended up being

Repaired at a local polish garage and was left there for a future volunteer to pick up after many hours we were able to get back on the road to get as far into Poland as possible it’s just gone 11:00 p.m. we’re on a Polish Motorway we’ve been on the

Road from Central Germany since 9:00 a.m. all I know now is German and polish Motorway and German and polish petrol stations that is my life just the endless road slowly closer to krov it had already been 3 days and just over 1,000 miles throughout the whole operation he marveled at the solidarity

He found not just among his friends in the UK raising money for his cause but at each and every step of the many Journeys he’s undertaken across Europe and not just in Ukraine we’ve on this trip actually we have for the first time had not one but two breakdowns on the

Way and they were covered by roadside assistance but it was dealt with far more efficiently just by one of our Ukrainian contacts getting in touch with local volunteer contct tax in this case in Germany and them talking to friends who immediately turned up in 10 minutes

15 minutes tow us to a garage did all they could to get the car fixed the things they couldn’t fix they agreed to take the car over get it fixed in time for the next time we come out to pick up and the amount of Goodwill when people

Know not just from ukrainians in Exile but from ordinary Germans working in garages or ordinary polls working in garages he absolutely immens actually I’ve been B by how quickly and efficiently we’ve been helped after 4 days driving across Europe we finally arrived on the Ukrainian border sometimes the line here to get in

And out of the country can be vast but we were in luck The Crossing took just a few hours I was last in Ukraine in summer 2022 and it felt an immense privilege to be able to return although we were far from the front lines signs of the war were present everywhere every

We passed for example contained fresh Graves festooned with Ukrainian flags and arriving in Lviv we were greeted by the first air siren of the trip we pulled up in the beautiful historic center of the city opened the car doors and heard the sound of the siren over

Laid with the Amplified prayers of the local church have a listen lviv’s architecture cult culture and history is a fascinating Confluence of influences that tell the sometimes confusing and often bloody history of Ukraine before we moved on I wanted to talk to someone who knew the city and

Its history inside out in the beautiful renox Square I spoke to Dr cfia diak a historian based in Lviv for the first time in the trip it felt good to slow down and spend some time to understand a place rather than simply racing through

It in a car the city the modern city you would think about modernity coming somewhere from the late 18th century the city was annexed became part of Austrian Empire as a part of petition of Polish liian Commonwealth and the city was a regional center for the Crown Land of

Galum for almost 150 years but if you think and who lived here I you have see a United Nation coming like with big big big cars there are three United Nations trucks the UN all over them undp just making the rounds in the Square nobody

Is a lot you have to have a special permission to do that do do you have a sense of what they’re do where are they going they’re going into the they’re going into the courtyard of the Town Hall so the the town hall has an inner Courtyard like coming from back from

Buildings into the people so who live here beginning 20th century so the city is around 50% by people who would be defined as po but also none of the groups is homogeneous and polish in the meaning of the Contemporary word so then you would have like 30 to 35%

Jewish hassidim Orthodox are cultur rated speaking yish speaking Hebrew speaking German speaking polish and then you would have 15% of people who are ukrainians sometimes before so called ruthenians here and so you would have that those who also religion mattered much more so religion was also was a big denominator so big

Chances if you polish so that’s Rome Catholic ukrainians Greek Catholic and Judaism for for Jewish population so you think about different religions you think about different languages people communicating in many ways and this is this is working as a part of austr Hungarian Empire which stopped existing as a result of World War

One what do you think the impact of not having the sort of Russian influence until or so much not so much Russian influence until 1939 unlike lots of Eastern modern Ukraine I mean that that that’s a really interesting fact I think we’ve had more connection to kco frag Budapest

Vienna Berlin and by that also to Paris people were traveling studying and so there was very physical closeness which was enhanced by infrastructure by Railways which would take you to places and then it would impact knowledge production economy exchange I mean in terms of diversity eastern Ukraine or central

Part of Ukraine which was a part of Russian Empire was also incredibly multi- diverse because you think that there were many polls living there in K polish was language spoken in K extensively in 19th century eish because it was a part of pale of settlement which is like this regulation

Which restricted Jewish habitation and permission to settle to what is the territories which are now now basically Central Ukraine and Belarus but the difference would be that there was a different legal framework of political activities political pluralism so this being a part of Polish state it actually was a parliament were

Parties you could vote and we don’t know how the state would develop because this development was interrupted with the war right but in Soviet Ukraine there was one part and here there were a couple you might not like all of them but there were party there were elections there were

Demonstrations there’s a different format of political and social engagement and even if new state comes in and sets up new laws and new regulations old things linger even if they don’t have legal power they still influence the way people relate relate to space relate to each other but grew

Three times during the Soviet period became quite a big and established new relations with the cities in in in Soviet Ukraine and becoming part and it was not the only city because we actually would see that cities like CH became part of Soviet Ukraine you know after the second world war

Experiences do not go away even if they are not noticed on the first glance then you look at that you would never ever thing that this is a Soviet City so just to say we’re looking out across this incredibly beautiful Central Square there’s loads of as as if here as

You said 19th century buildings facades there’s a beautiful Town Hall there are cafes everywhere people walking past you’re right I I look at that and think I don’t see the Soviet what am I missing but you’re missing that this whole Center was created like a historical

Heritage site by the Soviet in the 70s creating it is something that you have to preserve we share much more with places which look much more different and I think that that’s a good beginning for conversation what would you want listeners to understand about Liv as it

Is today right now so if listeners would go on Google and have a look at the images of the city it’s quite obvious that the city was and is a touristic Center so the city for last two decades really in in the context of Ukraine made

A huge career as a tourist City in Odessa people would go for the sea in leiv there was a policy of creating like all year long festivals Museum activities tourism restaurants eating food and I think that is quite extraordinary to think how this whole Hospitality complex in the way of hotels

And people and food and culture was mobilized to help refugees because hotels and theaters which had SP space accommodated the big wave is over City kind of absorbed there are many people coming we say that around 150,000 people came and stayed in leiv as Refugee and the city

Is around 750 to 8,000 it’s quite a lot but the city is also a place which is relatively safe in Ukraine because we are sitting here having not really very much bothering of air rate which was before we started our conversation so the city is now becoming

A place of Refuge but also a place of Rehabilitation so the whole infrastructure of medical is really becoming an infrastructure of dealing with the with Wounded with soldiers who are wounded with civilians who are wounded and I think it’s actually quite quite extraordinary to see how it is a

Probably a new chapter for the city maybe from entertainment and tourism to care to welfare but also maybe to a way of having a conversation not only to show things about history but also to think about contemporary challenges of how to how to the war the effects War Has the sounds you’re hearing is leiv the city is alive it’s a beautiful evening here I’m standing in Rano Square the bars and restaurants are full I can see teenagers taking selfies um as man dressed as Mickey Mouse wandering up and down somewhere playing music in the

Corner of the square there’s a ornate lamp post pum with flowers there’s a man beneath it selling balloons the center of Lviv is this sort of to Forest Paradise really it’s beautiful wide open squares pretty streets bars and restaurants sort of Everywhere thank you for listening to the first part of sunny days in katos after many days traveling across Europe speeding past the wind farms of the Netherlands the industrial rur the quiet German towns warmed by the summer sun and then over to Poland to get through the breakdowns to get

Into country and see Lviv for the first time it was an immense trip over a thousand miles and I was already exhausted but from now the story starts to change we’d left the EU behind and the next few days of traveling would take us to keev then harv and finally katos do

Come back tomorrow for the second part of sunny days in katos I’m David nuls this episode was produced by childes gear Louisa Wells and adley poan Ponte

In June 2023 Ukraine: The Latest presenter and host David Knowles accompanied a group of volunteers delivering aid and vehicles to the Ukrainian armed forces. Over 10 days they drove around 2000 miles from suburban south London to a Ukrainian front line city.

On the journey, David spoke to the volunteers, Ukrainian civilians and of course, Ukrainian soldiers to understand why ordinary people would commit to an extraordinary mission and what it means to the people on the front lines.

In Part 1, David and the volunteers drive from London, through Belgium, Germany and Poland and into Ukraine, spending a night in the western city of Lviv.

A message from the volunteers:

‘If you would like to donate time, equipment or money, or are interested in buying your own vehicle and delivering it to Ukraine, you can get in touch at: ukraine.supply@proton.me’

Subscribe to The Telegraph: telegraph.co.uk/ukrainethelatest

Email: ukrainepod@telegraph.co.uk