First trip to Kyiv, Bucha and Irpin, May 2022

Our orange van, marked with a red cross, at a petrol station on the road to Kyiv

Kyiv, Bucha and Irpin · May 2022

In May 2022, less than two months after Russian troops pulled back from the Kyiv region, Alexandru and the team made our first trip to Kyiv. We made the trip in partnership with Biserica Baptistă Speranța din Baia Mare (BBSO).

On the road to Kyiv

We drove from Romania with our vans full of aid. On the highway into Kyiv, destroyed tanks were still lying by the side of the road.

Our orange van, marked with a red cross, at a petrol station on the road to Kyiv
A destroyed tank on the side of the highway into Kyiv

Aid for the frontline, medicine for a hospital

In Kyiv we sorted the aid and sent it on through Nova Poshta, the Ukrainian delivery company, to cities near the frontline. We also delivered medicine to one of the hospitals in Kyiv.

Volunteers sorting boxes of food and supplies in Kyiv
Delivering boxes of medicine to a hospital in Kyiv

Bucha and Irpin

Driving past the destroyed bridge on the road between Kyiv and Irpin

We also went to Bucha and Irpin, two towns just northwest of Kyiv. We drove past the broken bridge on the road into Irpin, burned houses, shattered windows and whole yards of burned cars. It was hard to take in what had happened there only weeks before.

An apartment block with its top floor burned out
A new building with every window shattered
A burned-out house with burned cars in the yard
Burned cars and scorched trees in front of a ruined house
A destroyed market hall surrounded by rubble
An apartment block burned on one side
Wrecked and burned cars on open ground
The burned State Tax University building in Irpin

Bucha and Irpin in numbers

458

bodies recovered in Bucha by August 2022

~1,800

civilians killed in the Bucha district

~70%

of Irpin heavily damaged or destroyed

What happened in Bucha and Irpin

Russian forces entered Bucha on 27 February 2022 and held the town for about a month. When Ukrainian forces came back in on 1 April, after the Russian withdrawal, they found the bodies of civilians in the streets, many of them on Yablunska Street. By August 2022, Ukrainian officials said 458 bodies had been recovered in the town, 419 of them with signs of violent death (Wikipedia). Across the wider Bucha district, Ukrainian prosecutors counted about 1,800 civilians killed during the occupation, 43 of them children (Ukrinform).

Irpin, right next to Bucha, is where Ukrainian forces stopped the Russian advance on Kyiv. They blew up bridges around the town to hold back the Russian columns, and civilians escaping towards Kyiv had to cross the river on foot, over the wreckage. The fighting left nearly 70% of the city heavily damaged or destroyed, and Irpin was back under Ukrainian control by the end of March 2022 (Wikipedia).

The car cemetery in Irpin: civilian cars shot up and burned

We are thankful to BBSO for making this first trip with us, and to everyone who gave. A few months later, in December 2022, we went into Chasiv Yar and Bakhmut for the first time.