Our Journey through Ukraine Begins

Our Team

My colleague Peter and I started our journey in Romania, where we met up with three volunteers who had worked with Peter—two Romanians and a retired British military and police officer. From there, we drove through Moldova and crossed into Ukraine near Odesa.

Over the following weeks, we traveled in parallel to the front line. From Odesa we drove through Mykolaiv and Kryvyi Rih, and on to Zaporizhzhia.  We continued on to Dnipro and Kramatorsk, then up to Kharkiv and Kyiv. These are the cities you hear in the news—usually in the context of missile and drone strikes. From Kyiv, we headed west to Chernivtsi near the Romanian border and eventually crossed back over. By the end, we’d driven more than 1,400 miles.

Map of our Route

We were there in April. It was the deadliest month for Ukrainian children since the full-scale invasion began. Also, the deadliest month for civilians since the previous September – and the violence keeps growing.

We reached Odesa late that first night, after a long day of driving and a slow border crossing.  We found a simple hostel-style hotel on the edge of the city. A load of food aid—non-perishables—was waiting for us at a warehouse near the port, but we held off picking it up until morning. The port gets targeted by drones at night.

Loading the Food

Next morning, we picked up the aid, crossed a city checkpoint, and hit the road again. We passed through many towns and villages, but Kryvyi Rih stuck out. It’s Zelensky’s hometown—about 600,000 people. Local reports say it gets shelled whenever Putin’s especially angry at him, which is to say, often.

We drove near a neighborhood where, just a week earlier, a Russian missile had exploded over a residential block with a playground and a restaurant. Eighteen people died—nine of them were kids. Seventy-five more were injured, including another twelve kids. No military targets. The restaurant was hosting a beauty industry business meeting that had been advertised publicly. It was the single deadliest attack on children since the war started.

Most of the drive was quiet. Farmland stretched for miles. Ukraine is called the breadbasket of Europe and Africa, and I could see why. Fields being plowed. Women hanging laundry. Dogs roaming. It looked peaceful—until you spotted the trenches cut into the dirt, the rolls of barbed wire, the bunkers that looked like kids’ forts but were built for war.

A beautiful country—still very much at war.

Jennifer

Slava Ukraini 🇺🇦

Note: I won’t be sharing photos of border crossings, military activity or equipment.  I adhered to the Ukraine law to not.  If one found its way into the hands of enemies, given their GPS coordinates, secret military movement might be discovered.