UK pub owner brings much-needed supplies to Ukraine from miles away
(NewsNation) — When Tom Littledyke, a pub owner in South England, saw images of people being taken away from their homes in Ukraine after Russian attacks on the country, it touched him.
“Nobody chooses to be part of this,” he said.
If something like this happened to his loved ones, Littledyke said, he’d want someone to help them.
“I thought, Well, why can’t I be that person to do that for these people?” Littledyke said.
So, he posted on his Facebook page that he left a 16-seat minibus unlocked. Townspeople loaded up the minibus with clothes, food and other essential supplies, and Littledyke drove it to Ukraine, near the Polish border.
And he’s not done. Next week, Littledyke has organized a 12-vehicle convoy to bring even more aid to Ukraine.
“Everybody needs help right now,” he said.
Everything Littledyke is giving Ukrainians is non-lethal: boots, body armor, radios, cold weather gear to keep them warm in the midst of freezing temperatures.
After word got out about what Littledyke was doing, people donated over £25,000 to assist in his efforts.
“It has been overwhelming, and stunningly beautiful, to see how much the people of my town and the local community, and essentially, a lot of the U.K. has responded,” Littledyke said. “They’ve really come together in a very short amount of time.”
Littledyke’s time in Ukraine was ‘incredibly eerie and quite harrowing, he said.
“There were vehicles scattered all over the place left abandoned, either because they ran out of fuel, or because they couldn’t wait any longer to get to the border,” he said. “There were no lights on, petrol was gone.”
At one point, Littledyke said, he saw about 50,000 refugees trying to exit through one border where he was.
He didn’t have trouble getting through the borders, though.
“I think a lot of people understood that this was humanitarian aid, so they allowed a lot of it to go through quite quickly,” Littledyke said. “We didn’t have very many customs checks.”
Littledyke said after the next venture into Ukraine, there are plans for future trips, and to get visas available for Ukrainians coming into the United Kingdom.