This project would not be possible without the help of so many people, which I have met after starting it! Sergey Tabulovich deserves a special mention. He is a Ukrainian anaesthetist from the East of the country, who had emigrated to Germany with his wife, also a medical doctor in 2014 just before Russians seized Donetsk and proclaimed a fake puppet state of “DPR”. They have both finished their specialist training programmes and have now settled in a historic town of Minden in the central Germany. Since the start of the war, Sergey has managed to get his hospital behind him, and raise an incredible amount of several hundred thousand Euros for the cause.

With Sergey’s tireless energy, which has been fully backed by his hospital, as well as an incredible support by the people of Minden it has been possible to organise regular shipments of medical equipment to a hospital in the Eastern Ukraine, which has now become their sister hospital. I first met him virtually in March when I placed a request for military-grade binoculars on my social media pages. My new friends from the Lviv Volunteer Battalion needed them badly, as military supply chains were not functioning well then, and were primarily aimed at regular army units. The war effort was largely supported, and in some cases fully depended on the amazing work of numerous volunteers both in Ukraine, and abroad.

I have had a look around and discovered that the kind they needed were not available to buy in the UK. The closest place I could source them at was Germany. After placing my post on Facebook, I got an instant reply from Sergey, who not only offered to source the binoculars, but also pay for them with the money he had raised. It turned out that he had been a member of an educational website or Russian-speaking anaesthetists that I had been moderating previously and used the materials that I had shared to pass his German Anesthesiology Board exams.

We have met in person since then during our previous trip to Ukraine, when I passed through Minden, and collected some tactical medical stuff that Sergey had kindly bought for the medics that I have been in contact with. This time, I had had requests for specific items from a few teams that I have been working with. I only mentioned that to Sergey in passing, and he got to work straight away, and had everything sorted, and ready for me to collect in a couple of weeks’ time!

I had some funds left on my JustGiving page and bought a box of tactical medical stuff including tourniquets, Celox gauze, and bandages. Also, I looked at my bookshelf and realized that there were a few medical texts that my Ukrainian colleagues could benefit from. I posted the pictures of them on my social media and had an overwhelming response. In fact. I had to make people place their bids for them! I wrote to my colleagues at the Hospital and had an outpouring of good will in response – in no time there was a pile of books in the Anaesthetic seminar room. I packed a couple of boxes of the best ones and was off to Germany to meet Sergey.

The drive was easy, and I was in Minden in the evening. We had a few beers at an Argentinian steak house and planned our next mission. We then packed my car with boxes like Tetris, and I was off to Krakow on the following morning to meet with Olena, a volunteer I wrote about in one of the stories here. I did make it to Krakow in the evening of the same day and managed to have an excellent meal at a Georgian restaurant on the main square, and soak up the atmosphere of the Poland’s Independence Day, which they were celebrating on that day.

There were lots of Ukrainians among the revellers, and you could tell how poignant that day must have been to them, how hopeful and uplifting, with a pinch of sadness they must have felt.

On the following morning, I was supposed to meet Olena, but it turned out that she was away in Kyiv on an urgent business. I had a carful of good stuff, and no contact to pass it on to. I was reluctant to cross the border this time, as I simply did not have annual leave time left and wanted to come back to the UK ASAP. Crossing the border adds two more days to your roundtrip on average, and I simply could not afford that. I headed towards the border anyway, in the meantime trying to make a contact with various people I knew could be helpful.

I was on the motorway leading to Przemysl, a border town with a border checkpoint several miles away, when my friend Dmytro from Lviv called me, and said that he had managed to make a contact with Ukrainian volunteers there. I made my way into town and managed to leave all the stuff with the Ukrainian volunteers, who do regular trips across the border. Allegedly, Dmytro paid for diesel for their van as a wager later. He got the goods in a few days’ time, and sent them to the addressees, which included:

• Sterile covers for ultrasound probes, and endoscopic instruments as requested by a children’s hospital in Lviv.
• Needles, and sterile kits for regional anaesthesia for a field hospital in Kharkiv.
• Tactical medical stuff for medics in Bakhmut, which is currently seeing the worst World War One-style trench warfare. That delivery was particularly challenging and had to be send with a military convoy. The comments of the guys at the receiving end have been passed on to me – “Everything is incredible – quality, quantity, and in good taste!”
• Medical books for a regional teaching hospital in Western Ukraine for their Departmental library.
• Some warm clothes, and jetboils with gas cylinders to soldiers I have been helping, who fight in the East.

The car was loaded in Minden using a Tetris method.

Krakow on the Poland’s Independence Day

Medical books were received, and appreciated by anaesthetists at a teaching hospital in the Western Ukraine.

Dmytro, the Anaesthetist at a field hospital near Kharkiv is receiving a much-needed kit that will improve the care of the wounded.

The most difficult delivery of them all – tourniquets. bandages, Celox gauze, tactical backpacks with medics in Bakhmut.

Sterile covers for ultrasound probes, and endoscopic instruments were delivered to St Nicholas Hospital in Lviv.