I spent last weekend with Parliamentarians from across Europe and beyond in Kyiv in solidarity with our Ukrainian friends marking the second anniversary of the Russian invasion. It was my first visit to Ukraine and on the face of it little clue of the war waging in that country other than the signs to shelters and occasional air raid sirens, one of which I managed to sleep through. In addition, there were road blocks, army checks and plenty of sandbags around Parliament and other public buildings.
The conference we attended constantly praised the lead the UK had taken but urged other allies to make their donations of weapons and funding much more urgently. We should be proud of the role that the UK is playing across so many areas: the British charities and NGOs (including from Sussex) taking vital supplies out as well as volunteers helping rebuild shelled houses; the blood group testing project encouraging more people to come forward and give blood as it’s estimated that 25% of casualties on the battlefield could be saved if blood supplies were more available.
Most impressive, is the work that the British charity the Halo Trust is doing to clear the tens of thousands of mines and booby traps left behind in the formerly occupied areas. We visited an active minefield when we travelled north near the border with Belarus where you see the real horrors of war – hospitals deliberately targeted by missiles, destroyed apartments and the testimony of survivors of a whole village where the Russians rounded up 360 men, women and babies and kept them in darkness and squalor in a school basement for 6 weeks until liberated. The scrawled list of names of those who died there on the back of a door was particularly poignant.
Another deeply appalling war crime is the abduction of 19546 Ukrainian babies and children (and probably many more) now having their identities and nationalities changed in Russia and adopted despite having living Ukrainian parents. This is something I will be taking up further in Parliament and I will produce a more detailed video of my trip shortly.
