Supporting Ukraine - One more truck towards victory (part 2&3)
Haven't read part 1 yet? Here: https://thelittlewhiskyshop.co.uk/blogs/news/supporting-ukraine-two-weeks-in-ukraine-january-2025-part-1
Part two – Our day return to Poland and back to Ukraine
Having entered Ukraine without officially importing the vehicles, we were going to be breaking the law and liable to face massive fines and to being arrested if we left Ukraine without the vehicles! We had not come all this way to leave without formally and legally delivering the vehicles. This meant we needed to take a trip back into Poland and straight back into Ukraine so we could formally import the vehicles. Not relishing the prospect, as we knew we were in for an epic wait at each part of the boarder, we set off at 6am hoping that an early start might mean a shorter wait. Ivan from car4ukraine (more about them later) had arranged for a veteran Ukrainian car importer, Roman, to accompany us to try to smooth the process at the border. Roman did not speak any English but luckily, we had Jonathan Fink with us who was a fluent Russian speaker. Initially Roman was not keen, understandably, to converse in Russian but as he got to know us he dropped into happily conversing in the only common language they had.
As we neared the border Roman went to work at the first military check point and “pressed the flesh” with the guards that saw us quickly waved through. The news was that the border was very quiet and there was no queue. Hopes were high of a relatively quick crossing…… and then the waiting and fun began.…..
Bennie, shown above, with his long hair, quickly got the attention of the custom guards. The first two vehicles had had a cursory inspection, but Bennie…. well that was different! The truck was searched from top to bottom and when the guard discovered a box of Dutch liquorice, things got a little interesting. Bennie was asked a number of times if it was drugs, or contained drugs, or even was concealing drugs, before the guard was finally happy that it was just a box of sweets and let him through. To avoid encountering this same reaction another three times I decided that it would be best if I transported the box in my truck for the rest of the day.
After about half an hour, we were finally through all the Ukrainian checks and were then queued up to enter Poland. We had the pleasure of waiting for about an hour maybe more, staring at the formal Ukrainian exiting point (shown below), before finally being guided to cross and enter the Polish checkpoint, where it ground to a halt once more.
Once across, we discovered why there was so much waiting to be had. Despite there being five or six polish passport booths, only two were being manned. We had to stop, have the car thoroughly searched by a guard four vehicles at a time, including having the VIN checked against the V5, before being allowed to inch forward to the passport control office, where this was all repeated once more. Two vehicles in front of us had ladies in who were clearly fleeing the war. All their luggage had to be removed from the vans and each and every one was hand searched, all done painfully slowly! It was clear there was no desire to make this quick as each vehicle took on average about 15 minutes to process.
Finally, the first of our three vehicles reached the passport control…. There was a flurry of activity and we could see a pack of rolling tobacco being extracted from the vehicle by the border guards and a furious conversation then ensued……Roman was banging out his best Polish and clearly working hard on the guards. The package was returned and shortly after the radio crackled into life….we were going to be refused entry into Poland and were going to be returned straight back to Ukraine. “OH SHIT” was the first reaction….first time I had ever been refused entry to a country….I hope that won’t go down on my record…. But then it became clear that actually this was doing us a massive favour as there was now a six-to-eight-hour tailback on the Polish side trying to get into Ukraine. We would be avoiding having to join the back of that queue but still had to be fully searched and grilled for 15 minutes each before we could be officially refused entry!
Having been “frog marched” from the inbound border post to the outbound border post by the border guard, we were then quickly processed back out of Poland. Quickly being a relatively quick 30 or so minutes! Luckily, we had both the arrivals and exit stamps in the passport, so there would be no record of being refused entry.
Once back on the Ukrainian side, Roman once again set to, and after pressing more flesh, we found ourselves quickly through the checks and the paperwork completed so that the vehicles were now officially imported into Ukraine and able to be left there. We had only been at the checkpoints for a mere 4 hours (and that was on a day with no queue!!!).
Once clear of the border we were able to get to the full story. Dan had bought a box of 10 packets of rolling tobacco on the boat out from the UK. Despite this being the legal allowance in the EU, you are apparently only allowed to bring one packet of tobacco from Ukraine into Poland. So despite this having already been legally transported through the EU and Poland already once before it was not allowed back again once it had entered Ukraine (go figure!!!). The guard apparently had two options –
1. Fine Dan and then have to fill out lots and lots of paperwork
2. Refuse him (and us) entry and only have to fill out a little paperwork……
luckily, she was either feeling generous or hated filling out paperwork!
Part Three - Memorials bring home the horror of this conflict and scale of the losses
For the next 10 days we had a number of events to attend and lots of people to speak to, as well as a bit of tourism. This included visiting the places that would allow us to remind people of the horrors of the war. First was the military cemetery at Lviv, the Field of Mars. I have visited many WW1 and WW2 cemeteries to remember those who paid the ultimate price for our freedom and I have always been moved. I was not prepared for the raw emotions and anger that I, indeed all of us, felt visiting this cemetery.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeEqRrGDr2U (Jonathan Pearse)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIlwx7Q4bIc (Jonathan Fink)
The sheer size of the place, with the massive number of graves was daunting. The fact that each grave had the photo of the loved one that lay there made it even more poignant. Seeing and hearing mourners tending the graves brought home just how raw the losses were. I saw a father carefully cleaning the pictures of his lost daughter, removing the freshly fallen snow and setting the flags back firmly in place, his grief clearly written all over his body.
Another lady in her late 60s was hugging a picture of her husband sobbing uncontrollably, as the loss, just a few months before, was inconsolable. She was crying and wiping the tears from his photo, and then crying some more, before then wiping these new tears off of the photo, before crying some more. Absolutely heart breaking…….
In the toilet block there was a young lady drying the cloth bouquet of flower with a hair drier, a seemingly futile and pointless task as it would be wet again within minutes of her finishing and placing it back on the grave, but to her it was everything and all that she felt she could do for her lost husband.
There were so many fresh graves. Many more graves, indeed a complete new side to the cemetery, than existed just 12 months before when one of the team had previously visited. Many fresh graves were of those whom had lost their lives many months before, some over a year ago, but who had not had their body recovered or had been held by the Russians until recently. Just imagine the pain of their loved ones not knowing for sure if they were alive or dead for such long periods.
I am not ashamed to say I cried several times whilst there, as did we all.
Markus was killed the day after his 23rd birthday
When we arrived in Kyiv, after an eventful overnight trip on a sleeper train (more about this in another post), we found our way to the Hotel Ukraine which overlooked Maidan Square (Or Independence Square) where the 2013/14 Euromaidan protests took place. Here, over one hundred protesters and police lost their lives. In a corner of the square there is a makeshift memorial to the fallen. Since the start of the war, where 50 odd flags had been placed, the site has now grown beyond belief. For the 1000ths day of war, many mourners came from across the country to lay a flag to their fallen loved one. It is now a sea of fluttering flags interspersed with photos of fallen heroes.
The scale of the losses is hard to get across in pictures and even harder to really comprehend. The site is so big and is growing daily. Horribly, it put the losses seen in the cemetery in Lviv into perspective and absolutely dwarfed them. The estimates are that currently there have been over eighty thousand Ukrainians killed by the Russians. This number pales into insignificance when compared to the estimated losses of the Russian troops and others fighting for Russia, like those from Donbas and North Korea.
Estimates of the numbers of dead and wounded vary massively between different sources. The estimate given by President Zelensky in February 2025 in an interview, is that Russia has suffered approximately 350,000 killed and between 600,000 and 700,000 wounded. The numbers given for Ukrainian military personnel at the same time were 45,000 killed and about 390,000 wounded. The wounded numbers included those wounded on several occasions. Incomprehensible numbers!
To put these numbers into perspective the loses in four other recent wars is reported as being as follows:
Afghanistan War (1979-1989): The Soviet Union lost approximately 14,000 to 16,000 soldiers over 10 years.
Chechen Wars (1994-2009): Russian casualties were estimated between 13,000 to 25,000 over 15 years.
Vietnam War (1955-1975): The United States suffered around 58,000 military deaths over 20 years, while Vietnamese casualties (both military and civilian) were estimated to be in the millions.
Iraq War (2003-2011): U.S. military deaths were around 4,500 over 8 years, with Iraqi civilian and military casualties estimated to be over 100,000.
If you watch the news, you will have seen many senior politicians including President Biden, PMs Johnson and Starmer, amongst many others, visiting The Wall of Remembrance of the Fallen for Ukraine. Here over 5000 official photos are posted of those killed fighting Russia in Donbas since 2014, along with many more unofficial photos that have been added by loved ones of those killed since the second invasion in 2022.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
Want to read more? Part 4 coming soon!