As much as 11,000 parcels were sent to eastern Ukraine over the past half-year

The initiative was launched in July 2014, allowing civic volunteers to receive and send humanitarian supplies for free at all branches of the Nova Poshta delivery service in Ukraine. The initiative has seen 230 activist groups joining it, who have already sent 11,000 parcels, mainly to the anti-terrorist operation area and the liberated cities in eastern Ukraine. “We attempted to calculate how much it all amounted to, and our result equaled six fully-loaded Mria giant aircraft,” CEO and co-founder of Nova Poshta Viacheslav Klimov told us.

Volunteers transport huge quantities of things across the country daily. Representative of the Anyone Can Help Charitable Fund Arsenii Finberh said that his organization sent a 20-ton truck with humanitarian aid to the east of the country in mid-December. The Humanitarian Postal Service collects a lot of clothes in Kyiv, where garments are distributed among refugees from the Donbas. The leftovers are sent to other cities where refugees now live.

“Most cities, even as exposed to fighting as Debaltseve is, may receive parcels through the Humanitarian Postal Service,” coordinator of the Come Back Alive volunteer project Vitalii Deineha noted. “Aid shipments to the frontline village of Pisky or the Donetsk Airport are transported by volunteers or soldiers themselves. For instance, soldiers of the 95th Airborne Brigade, which is based in Sloviansk, received goods in that city and delivered them to Pisky on their APCs. The Humanitarian Postal Service is not a total replacement for volunteers’ vehicles, but it makes our work much easier.”

The humanitarian postal service project will continue into next year, and will not be closed down even after the fighting ends in eastern Ukraine. Klimov assured that “we will transform our militarized service into a regular humanitarian project, as we will deliver shipments for free to charities, orphanages, etc.”