Former OIC worker helps evacuate a mum and two children from war-torn Ukraine

A former Council employee helped a mother and her two small children evacuate war-torn Ukraine.

After around 1,500 miles and a 12 hour wait at the Ukraine Border Control, Ian Ward, his wife Svetlana and the others have made it out of the country.

Ian and his wife are currently in Hamburg in Germany, but he hopes they will be able to make it to the UK soon.

He told us: “We needed to leave our relatively safe place in Ukraine as the shelling was getting closer by the day, the information we were getting was looking worse. We are OK for now. I have very limited Internet access. It took me 3 days and roughly 1500 miles, but we helped evacuate 2 small children and their mum. They are distant relatives of my wife.

“As I said Internet roaming is not much good, so completing the necessary Visa application is difficult. Today we are resting. Tomorrow we will try and overcome our problems with the Visa, accommodation and other things. We don't have a clear idea of what we're going to do next. But our plans have been fluid, sometimes changing by the hour for the last couple of weeks.

“I need to get a Visa application for my wife. Once we get this sorted, we'll head to relatives in Carlisle area and take the next step. As you can appreciate the situation is unclear.”

Ian, who held various posts in Orkney including as a leisure assistant at Kirkwall Grammar School Sports Centre, had previously told us of the deafening sound of explosions from Russian missile strikes and the rumble of Ukrainian tanks passing by positioning themselves to defend the cities from his city home on the outskirts of Kyiv. They moved to a village south of the capital.

On 24 February 2022, Russia began a military invasion of Ukraine in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict that began in 2014. It is the largest military conflict in Europe since World War Two with over 3.1 million Ukrainians fleeing the country, the invasion has also caused the largest refugee crisis in Europe since then.