The three of us left with the ambulance and an escort car on Friday afternoon to a village called Palanca at the Moldovan-Ukrainian border, which is about 1000 km from Eger.
We spent the night in Oradea due to a flat tire, which was repaired next morning. After that we drove through the beautiful landscapes of Transylvania, crossing through the Békás Strait to find accommodation in Târgu Frumos.
Soon we entered Moldavia, the poorest country in Europe on Sunday, which reminded me of the 90ies. In Palanca, at the border crossing to Ukraine, we were shocked to learn that they failed to give us an important document at the prior border. The solution would have been to drive back and procure this document in person. At the end the border guards saved us by have this document sent to them directly. We still spent 9 and a half hours at the border, sitting in the cars.
While waiting, we saw many Ukrainian children and their mothers arriving in buses and cars, some of them were crying.
There was also a Russian man, who exited from Ukraine, but the Moldavian border guards did not let him into Moldova and the Ukrainians did not allow him to return. He was in the neutral zone between the two countries since the morning and he was making calls to Kyiv to find a solution.
We didn’t plan to cross into Ukraine, but the only accommodation we found was in Ukraine, in Bilyaivka, not far from the border.
It was adventurous to get there: in pitch dark, during the curfew (it was after 11PM) and we were passing through military checkpoints while using a translator app to communicate. Almost everyone in the area spoke Russian.
We handed over the ambulance Sunday morning to the representative of the hospital and left to our journey home. At the Moldovan-Romanian border we had to pay a fine of $15 for not having the documents from that prior notorious border crossing. We arrived to Huszváros, Romania by the evening, where we stopped for the night.
Next day we drove north and crossed the Hungarian-Ukrainian border through Maramarossziget. We visited a refugee shelter in Aknaslatina, Transcarpathia - where we are planning to bring Christmas gifts for the children soon.
Later that night we arrived home safe in Hungary.
We also learnt that our ambulance was already put in work.
We continue our mission to help, while Russia continues to attack civilian infrastructure and making life terribly difficult for millions of Ukrainians this winter.
Hospitals have priority power supply, but handling blackouts puts extra strain on the already exhausted hospital staff.
Ambulances can help in these situations: 1) by transferring patients to other hospitals that are less affected by blackouts 2) and each ambulance is equipped with its own generator and can serve as a mini hospital until power is restored.
We have already delivered 4 ambulances to Ukraine. And while they don’t provide long term solution to problems of blackouts and water supplies, they help with immediate solutions. That's our goal, and with your help we can send more vehicles, more humanitarian aid, at a time when it is needed more than ever.
Gábor Prokaj, volunteer
You can support our work here:
https://www.karpatokalapitvany.hu/en/medicalassistancetoukraine