Jorge Nacher has just returned from Ukraine and when he explains what he has seen there, his eyes well up: “An experience like this stays with you forever”, he explains. This construction worker resident in Sant Antoni has participated in a collection of sanitary material for Ukraine through the association Ibicencos Solidarios Por el Mundo. Thanks to the collaboration of various companies and entities -Vuelta a Ibiza BTT, Grupo O Beach, Farmacia Manzano, Policlínica del Rosario, Grupo Mambo, Club Petanca Sant Antoni, Galeno Clinic, Administración de Lotería nº 1 de Sant Antoni, Apima Can Coix, Suma, Apneef, Clínica Asepeyo, Clínica Ortodoncia María Ribas, Baleària, Hostal Florencio and SD Portmany- they have collected sanitary material worth 20,000 euros, including wheelchairs, walkers, crutches, gauze and scalpels. This material has already reached its destination.
Nacher drove 3,000 kilometers between Barcelona and Lviv, a city in western Ukraine, over two days, accompanied by three other vans loaded with humanitarian aid: one from a campaign carried out by officers of the Policía Local from Palma, and the other two from a solidarity initiative by retired firefighters from Tomelloso (Ciudad Real). The organizer of the trip was a firefighter from Tomelloso, Joaquín Acedo. “We delivered all the material to the Ukrainian State Emergency Service, who welcomed us to their facilities at the University of Lviv. They are the ones who coordinate the rescue teams in the bombed areas,” he explains.
A city at war in Ukraine
Once on the ground, they had Olga Simonova, a Ukrainian woman living in Barcelona who has returned to her country to do translation and aid work, as a liaison. Simonova, like so many Ukrainians, has seen her loved ones directly affected by the war: “The village where her family lives, near Kiev, was occupied by the Russians”, explains Nacher, “now her parents have been able to return home, but one of her grandmothers cannot be found, they do not know her whereabouts”.
Lviv is far from the military front. Although during the day it lives a semblance of normality, the presence of the conflict is constant: “During the day life is almost normal. You see animation in the streets, open bars with people drinking coffee. But at ten o’clock at night there is a curfew”, and he points out that what impressed him most was the total darkness: “ At night there is not a single light on. Everything is turned off, so as not to give clues to the Russians during the bombing. A whole city in darkness and in a total, ghostly silence”. A silence broken only by the sirens of the anti-aircraft alarm. On Friday night they had to quickly abandon their bunk beds and move to the shelter: “They detected that the missiles were approaching and they quickly relocated us to a basement that they had set up as a shelter. We had to go down in the dark, illuminated only by telephones.” Although Lviv is one of the least hit cities, last April 18th an attack caused seven deaths among the civilian population, and this past Tuesday several missiles fell on the city’s power plant.
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