Several Portuguese came together to help survivors of the war in Ukraine

Many kilometers later and without sleeping for a few nights, António Silva arrives in Dnipro, Ukraine, to hand deliver the humanitarian aid collected in Portugal.

The people living there are, above all, internally displaced people who came from villages in Donbass, currently occupied or under attack by Russian forces. They live in a shelter, in a community, waiting for the war to end.

“Right now Ukraine needs it more than ever and people seem to have had enough. Many of them probably don’t even remember that there is a war here and that every day young people die here, or that they are left without legs or arms (…). This is our last trench, because if we don’t stop them here, they will enter Europe and tomorrow we will have our children in the war to defend Europe”, businessman António Silva told SIC.

265 people occupy a building that was abandoned two years ago. Little by little, they are recovering the space that previously didn’t even have a bathroom. Now, they have a bathhouse, a kitchen and rooms where up to 11 people live, as is the case with Svitlana’s family. Single mother with five children, who fled Kreminna, Lugansk region.

In the shelter’s auditorium, boxes with food, medicine and clothing that arrived from Portugal are opened. Companies and associations from several Portuguese cities came together to bring this help. Rio Maior, Santa Maria da Feira, Aveiro, Braga, Esposende, Lisbon, Ovar, Trofa and Famalicão.