A couple from Dordogne recounts their ninth humanitarian trip to Ukraine

Frédéric Brun and his partner Marysia Ferrier, from Saint-Saud-Lacoussière (Dordogne), returned on Saturday December 7 from a new one-week humanitarian trip to Ukraine. They now have the experience of nine round trips, from Lviv to Kyiv to Dnipro, from the start of the war in March 2022.

Both decided to go as close as possible to the needs of the Ukrainians. Frédéric Brun, faithful to his convictions, took the road to Donetsk, to transport donations intended for the populations being evacuated towards Pokrovsk, due to the advance of the Russians. On the way, the Périgourdin made a stop at Châteauneuf-sur-Loire, in Loiret, to collect donations from the Solidarité Ukraine association Châteauneuf-sur-Loire, with whom “Fred and Sia” have already collaborated on several occasions . All donations are recorded and listed.

All different journeys

During previous trips, Frédéric Brun established necessary contacts with foundations in Ukraine, without which any border crossing would have become truly impossible.

Each of the nine trips to this war-torn country was different. The latest one is specific by its destination, very close to the front, and by the meeting made with two young women, Tatou, a Belgian who came to Ukraine at the start of the war, and Ania, both engaged in a unit .

Journey of 7,000 kilometers

A third meeting was notable: that with April, of Canadian origin, who created a foundation within which Frédéric and Marysia completed the delivery of donations.

The Périgourdins then left the Donetsk region to move relatively safely a little further west, near Dnipro. It was at the end of a 7,000 kilometer journey that they brought an elderly person back from the city center of Kviy in France, so that she could join her daughter.

In March 2022, for one of their first trips, Frédéric and Marysia took care of and repatriated to Périgord Vert a grandmother and two mothers with their children aged 3, 7, 9 and 10 years old.

Nearly three years later, they returned from their ninth humanitarian mission, with heavy hearts at having necessarily left many Ukrainians in suffering and need.