An Irish tech boss and a former professional poker player carry out supply runs in besieged city of Kharkiv
Maxim Khaustov - Head of Health department, Kharkiv with the full load successfully delivered to destination
An Irish tech entrepreneur and a former professional poker player have set up a rapid response medical supply route through the battlefields of Ukraine to the besieged city of Kharkiv.
Former rally drivers and truck drivers are bravely running the gauntlet of Russian bombs and shells with vital medical supplies and body bags thanks to the ingenuity of Story Tracks app founder Fergal Nealon and Sligo Casino owner Mark Walsh.
Their drivers are going where the larger organisations cannot go until humanitarian corridors are officially open.
The two Sligo men travelled to Poland last week originally on a mission to bring humanitarian aid to Ukraine.
However once their aid was delivered, they quickly realised there was more they could do.
A Polish contact of theirs, a CCO of a gaming company had downed tools and begun bringing refugees further into Poland as soon as the war began but then wanted to bring medical supplies back into Ukraine.
Through him, Nealon and Walsh made a crucial contact.
“I got into a WhatsApp group chat with the Head of the Health Department in Kharkiv and he’s been sending us their medical needs daily, such as drugs and bandages, body bags,” Mr Nealon told the .
After emptying their suitcases of Irish donations, the men began driving around all the pharmacies they could find in Lodz along the Polish-Ukrainian border to find supplies for war victims in Kharkiv.
Once they had filled their pick-up truck, Nealon and Walsh, along with Clonmel native Dean Hogan, realised they would have to cross into Ukraine themselves.
“We had to cross the border because our drivers couldn’t come up to us because of conscription, they can’t leave Ukraine,” said Nealon.
An eery scene met them.
“It was like an abandoned petrol station in the west of Ireland. They [the Ukrainian drivers] were blinking at us to come over. One of them is a truck driver and a rally driver.
"They then drove non-stop for 40 hours taking shifts at the wheel to get the goods to Kharkiv,” said Nealon.
Mr Nealon said the supply runs will continue as long as the medications can be bought.
“We’re able to rapidly respond to the medical requests of that day and get them through back channels and through the rubble to the battlefields,” he added.
Once the supplies were handed over, the three men had a six-hour crawl 500 yards to the Polish border where a very different scene awaited them.
“It was quiet, but it was minus 4 degrees, snowing. We were in the luxury of a warm pick-up truck but there were old people, women and children standing out waiting to be processed,” he said.
The men visited the refugee centre where they distributed toys to young children and diaries to older teenagers.
“What really struck us was how stoic and polite everyone was, even the children when we were giving out the toys, there was no whinging,” said Nealon.
He said that most of the older teenagers have excellent English.
“One of the girls wrote a note to my six-year-old daughter, that’s getting framed,” he added.
Nealon and Walsh, with the aid of Sheila Scanlon from Sligo Food Bank along with ex-Unicef logistics professional Peter Marron and others have established Rapid Response Ukraine to continue running the medical supplies to Kharkiv.
“We’ve all our ducks in a row in terms of governance. We’ve got to the point that when donations come in, we know the drivers and pharmacists to source supplies and transport from, we have established and verified the supply chain,” he said.
Nealon hopes the runs will be temporary - once the humanitarian corridors are open, the men will shift their focus to bringing refugees to Ireland.
“If you told me a few weeks ago that we’d have set up this supply chain I wouldn’t have believed you. But it’s war,” said Nealon.
- Anyone wishing to donate to the group's supply runs in Ukraine can do so via their iDonate.ie page.
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