"Russia is definitely not going to invade Ukraine" I confidently told a group of friends at a party in late February 2022. As I pulled a sled across the ancient frozen Lake Baikal in the Russian territory of Siberia, close to the Mongolian Border, Putin’s tanks were rolling into the outskirts of Kyiv. I got that rather wrong then! My team and I extricated ourselves from Russia in the second week of the war with a flight from Moscow to London via Dubai at ten times the cost of my original cancelled flight.
Meanwhile, a great friend of mine living in the highlands of Scotland called David Fox-Pitt (who is a Trustee of the Scottish charity Siobhan’s Trust) had driven out to Poland with a small truck load of equipment, supplies and a pizza making machine. After a few days seeing my family and stocking up on supplies at Budgen’s in Henfield, I flew out to join David at Medyka on the Polish/Ukraine border offering help and support to thousands of refugees fleeing the conflict. During the day we would provide hot drinks, food, blankets, sleeping bags and medical equipment as required. At night I would lead a group of volunteers with shopping trolleys stuffed to the brim with supplies and hand them over to local Ukrainian’s desperate for the food and equipment in towns under siege in the North, East and South. After a week, I contracted Covid and food poisoning simultaneously so was pleased to get back home to recover.
As the war rages on into it’s second year, I decided I could not stand back and watch the atrocity of this unlawful invasion of a sovereign country and decided to go back to help the Ukrainians for a few weeks in March 2023. By this stage, the charity had purchased a number of small lorries and had converted them into pizza delivery vehicles. Each day teams of volunteers would drive into a town square or village green and hand out donated pizzas. I flew again to Krakow, caught a train to the bus station, took a coach to Lviv and met up with David and his team. He gave me the keys to his brand new heavy goods truck with six pizza ovens called the Sedburgh Wolf, donated by the Cumbrian school and it’s community. My colleagues Paul Clarke and Mark Cropley joined me as we drove 1,000 km across to Mykolaiv in the south east where we joined forces with other volunteers from Zimbabwe, Canada, America and some local Ukrainians.
Every day we would drive the truck to a new location, fire up the ovens and serve 3,500 pizzas to families of whom up to 50% were displaced and living in basement shelters. One day we were 22 miles from the front line, within artillery range in a recently re-captured Ukrainian village. But we were offering more than just a hot pizza. As air raid sirens wailed, electricity supplies failed and the odd ‘crump’ of an artillery shell would explode a few miles away, we were there shoulder to shoulder with ordinary parents and children struggling to cope with their new reality nightmare. There was a genuine appreciation that they had not been forgotten and that volunteers from around the world were amongst them, offering support, hope and a hot pizza. ‘Slava Ukraine!’
Neil Laughton, BN5 resident
It costs £1 to give a hot pizza to a hungry child in SE Ukraine. If anyone would like to make a donation, please send it to siobhanstrust.uk or to volunteer, email me, neil@neillaughton.com