From Luxembourg to Kyiv: the story of a humanitarian mission
From 27 March to 9 April 2024, a team from the Luxembourg Red Cross carried out a field visit to Ukraine. Its humanitarian teams have been working in the country for years, focusing their efforts on rehabilitating the country’s hospitals. By modernising equipment or repairing damage caused by the conflict, they are enabling many health establishments to continue to receive patients and the injured. This is the account of one of the participants in that trip.
It will soon be a year since I went to Ukraine. I’m not a humanitarian: until now, my trips abroad were limited to those of a normal tourist. I had built up an image of the country by following the news and hearing about it from colleagues, but I had no prior experience of what it would be like there, or how I would react.
I went there with the intention of keeping my eyes and ears wide open and turning myself into a blotter: the aim was to absorb everything I could, and then write about it.
It wasn’t until several months later that I managed to do this: it was particularly difficult to sort through, and it took time to manage to make a selection from the enormous volume of information received, experiences had and people met. With time, the brain and the memory have sorted through them, leaving what are, at the time of writing, the most striking impressions of these two weeks.
This is not an objective account of Red Cross activities in the country. These are memories, various elements and personal reflections that have left their mark.
Before the departure
Initially, we were due to leave earlier, but the departure had been postponed due to a combination of two factors. A snowstorm and an increase in night-time attacks. Given that two members of the delegation were novices – myself included – caution prevailed. The decision came at exactly the same time as I was in the process of buying myself a pair of walking boots that would stand up to the Ukrainian snow. I bought them anyway, as I sometimes go walking in the mountains.
The trip actually begins before the official date. There are safety training courses available online from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). What I learnt from it: in a conflict zone, you don’t have the right to be a passive passenger. You have to look around you, detect possible dangers and not let yourself fall asleep. In the event of danger, the first imperative is to take cover yourself. Humanitarians are not suicidal: if you are injured or killed, you can no longer help. So you have to be careful.
In addition to the training, there are preparatory meetings and some paperwork to fill in. The meetings enable us to agree on the destinations, the projects and the objectives of the visit: we don’t leave with our noses in the wind, we follow a planned itinerary for good reasons.
Among the documents to be filled in, one stands out: a questionnaire to be filled in so that you can be identified if you are ever found to be a hostage. Do you have a remarkable physical characteristic that is difficult to reproduce and that allows you to be recognised? In my mind, it also allows the body to be recognised in the event of death. And then there are the security questions: find details of your life that are simple enough to remember, and that you can answer even under intense stress. They have to be personal, not public knowledge. The name of your first dog, the model of your first car, the nickname you gave your grandmother…
Heading to Ukraine
In practical terms, there are no commercial flights into Ukraine: too many risks. So it will be Luxembourg-Turkey-Moldova, with a night in a hotel in Chisinau, the capital. I didn’t see much of it. The city is a mixture of skyscrapers and more modest districts. Just a normal city.
Second day: early morning departure by taxi to the border with Ukraine. A peaceful atmosphere and roads of rather mixed quality. Some are potholed because of a lack of maintenance, others because of work in progress. Some – a minority – are in better condition than Luxembourg’s smoothest motorway. Half a day’s journey in a big German SUV, with peaks above the official limits, on bumpy national roads: technology works miracles, you don’t notice a thing if you’re not careful. There are fields and fields and fields. A few villages. The landscape and the houses are reminiscent of Greece or Turkey, but greener and less touristy.
Once you reach the border, the atmosphere changes. The closer you get to your destination, the more you slow down. After the planes, then the car, you take to your feet.
Entering Ukraine
First stop: the Moldovan border post, to get your passport stamped and validate your exit from the country. Next, a bridge over the river that marks the border. After three or four hundred metres, it’s back to the drawing board. A bit more stress: what if you’re turned away or searched? All went well. The most striking memory: the fingernails of the customs officer checking my papers. They’re well groomed and covered in a light mauve varnish. They match – at least in my memory – her discreet make-up and her earrings. You can be a soldier in a country at war and not let yourself go. I interpret that as a sign of resistance. I’ll be seeing that mauve again, it must be fashionable in the country.
Just outside the building, a few dozen metres away, our driver is waiting for us. From the German behemoth, we switched to a small van with the Luxembourg Red Cross logo, which was better suited to transporting the team and its luggage. When you go on a trip for a fortnight, you take big suitcases with you.
Once we’ve said our goodbyes, the car starts. We’re off again for several hours of driving, with a driver who respects the speed limit. Why would he do that? So as not to brake too visibly as we approach a checkpoint guarded by soldiers? So as not to risk blowing a tyre on a pothole? To avoid losing your licence – and your job? As a courtesy to visiting foreigners? These are not essential questions, but they do occupy our minds during the journey.
After a long hour’s drive in Ukraine, we had to make our first stop. An alert: a missile attack has been detected, apparently in the oblast (administrative region) where we are. The ICRC’s instructions are clear: if you’re on the road, even in the middle of the countryside, stop at the side of the road and wait for the alert to be lifted. It’s less risky to stop on the side of the road, in the middle of the countryside, than to drive into a town, a potential target. Nothing happens, but it’s the first real sign that you’re in a country at war. Never before had I had to take a break because of a flying bomb somewhere in the vicinity.
The landscape? It looks like Champagne: not vineyards, but cereal fields. No small fields, just huge ones that remind us that Ukraine is Europe’s granary. It’s not flat, it’s hilly. The combine harvesters and tractors are two or three times bigger than those you see on the roads of Luxembourg. Some plots seem bigger than the entire Kirchberg district.
Arriving to Kyiv
The city of Kyiv can be seen from afar: the motorway leading into it is straight for dozens of kilometres. You can see the tops of the skyscrapers long before you reach the suburbs. We pass along a road that the Russian army ‘used’ in the first weeks of the conflict. Traces of the clashes are rare. The Ukrainian government has focused much of its efforts on rapidly rebuilding the damage, as if to demonstrate the resilience of the country and its people. From far and wide, a few destroyed buildings can be seen, still blackened by the flames. Our driver explains to me, in English that he has learnt on the ground: ‘If you see a new roof, you can bet that it was destroyed a year ago, and that we’ve rebuilt it’. There are a lot of new roofs. The motorway was burnt down too. The tarmac is now smooth. The marks have disappeared: you have to have been there at the time to realise that, under some of the new buildings, the bodies of dead people were piled up.
Arrival in the city. It’s a capital city, a large conurbation with over 3 million inhabitants… The closer you get to the centre, the more storeys the buildings have. The architecture isn’t all that different, which is almost a disappointment. The towers are tall, made of glass and metal, and built in the contemporary style: straight lines, few curves, some twenty storeys high. The Cyrillic alphabet is the obvious confirmation that this is Ukraine. We pass a large building with a giant ANTONOV sign. The aircraft manufacturer is Ukrainian.
Before leaving, I read that it should not be confused with the Russian Cyrillic alphabet: a few letters differ, as well as the pronunciation. At lycée, I took Ancient Greek. They’re the same letters, but they don’t sound the same. From then until the end of my stay, my brain will be trying to decipher the markings and signs. That keeps me busy too.
It’s time to arrive at the offices rented by the Red Cross. Meeting with the local team. Safety briefing. Details and final updates on the visits we’ll be making over the next ten days. One trip is cancelled: the region we were due to visit is too risky at the moment: too many bombings. Each trip has to be submitted to the ICRC several days in advance to be authorised. It can be cancelled up to the last minute for security reasons. At each departure, a call is made to say ‘Car one, with X, Y and Z on board, heading for so-and-so place’. And a declaration of arrival once there. The ICRC keeps a close eye on the teams to ensure their safety.
The first night
After the office, the hotel. A modern Ibis. The room is spacious, just as it should be. The shower door isn’t watertight, it lets water in every time it passes and makes a little puddle every time. It’s strange how the mind clings to these details, which in fact aren’t details at all: they provide a link to other moments, other experiences. I’ve seen leaky showers before. So I’m in real life, not a dream.
If the bed is comfortable, the night is less so: it’s the discovery of repeated alarms.
The Ukrainians have developed a smartphone application that warns of the risk of bombing by sounding a particularly loud siren. It wakes me up when I’m asleep, that’s for sure. For the older readers: the sound reminds me of Les Têtes brûlées. This series recounted the life of a squadron in the Pacific during the Second World War. The credits began with a siren. In my brain, the two alarms make the same noise, and I feel like Pappy Boyington.
The Ukrainians have not abandoned their sense of humour. In addition to the siren, there is a voice that specifies the nature and intensity of the risk. For the English version, Mark Hamill lends his voice. For a fortnight, Luke Skywalker will call out to me, often several times a day: ‘Attention. Air raid alert. Proceed to the nearest shelter. ‘The alert is over. May the Force be with you. ‘Don’t be careless. Your overconfidence is your weakness.’ A choice which, in a totally different style, reminds me of my customs officer’s purple fingernails.
So, first night, first alerts. I’ll be spending some time with Rémi, the director of International Aid for the Luxembourg Red Cross, who is also staying at the hotel. He often arrives with his computer, to work: just because we’re in Ukraine doesn’t mean there aren’t other emergencies or requests in other countries. We often bump into each other in the lift, going from the 6th floor to the ground floor, heading for the shelter. Other times, we talk. About ourselves, our colleagues, the mission, our families. Taking shelter under the threat of a bombing gives us a chance to chat and create a special relationship.
Nights in Ukraine are a kind of walrus: not a continuous line of sleep, but long lines, dots, following one another at an irregular rhythm.
Each hotel has its own shelters. It’s never a ‘bunker’, but the part of the building best able to withstand a missile or drone crashing into it and exploding. In practice, this means that part of the cellar or car park has been converted. The more upmarket the hotel, the more services it offers. At the very least, there’s water, herbal tea and coffee, chairs and blankets. As you move upmarket, you can add heating, televisions, meeting rooms and children’s play areas.
Roads and check-points
For more than a week, we will be visiting projects carried out with the support of teams and funding from the Luxembourg Red Cross. The funders are private donors, companies, other national Red Cross societies and various national and European public institutions.
Ukraine… it’s beautiful and it’s big. It’s easy to drive several hours between two towns. Most of the roads are absolutely straight, with a right-angle junction with another equally straight road every fifteen or twenty kilometres.
You come across check-points more or less regularly. Some are unoccupied, but ready to be reactivated if necessary. Most are still active: you have to slow down and wait for a sign from the soldier on duty before you can pass. There are random checks, but we will never be stopped: the Red Cross logo on the side of the car may have helped.
The military
We were quickly given instructions not to film the military. It’s forbidden and could lead to major problems. You can film the police. We can’t film the military. Not necessarily knowing the difference, I put down the phone or the camera as soon as I saw a uniform or a big khaki green vehicle: I didn’t want to be the one to screw up the mission and destroy the reputation of the Luxembourg Red Cross. Nor do I want to return prematurely from the mission with the red of shame on my forehead.
Over the two weeks, we came across a few military transport vehicles, but there was no great activity. It’s logical, we were staying away from the front.
Ukraine: is it Europe?
One of the questions I asked myself before the trip was: is Ukraine European? Or is it not?
Alongside Kyiv, the westernising capital, we passed through smaller towns and villages with Balkan architecture. In the capital, there are the glass and steel towers. There are also the austere and rather sad buildings from the Communist era. And there’s another kind of architecture – the kind I decided was ‘Ukrainian’, without really having had time to find out more about it. A succession of eras coexist along the streets.
I visited several countries on the Old Continent, as well as the United States, Morocco and Turkey. Each country has its own atmosphere. The streets have a different vibe each time, created by the mix of urban geography, crowds and behaviour.
I love walking the streets of the cities I visit, and Kyiv was no exception. It’s a way of getting to know them. In London, Paris, Brussels or Nuremberg, I easily felt ‘at home’, much more so than in Agadir or Chicago: there’s a European atmosphere. And for me, Kyiv is European, like most of the cities I’ve visited. My experience is limited: those who know the country have explained to me that the eastern part is different, so I’m only talking about the atmosphere in the capital.
What changed the atmosphere was the presence of temporary surface shelters in certain areas. The rule is that in the event of an alert, the population must take refuge in shelters. Some refuse to do so, and go on with their lives, refusing to be interrupted. Some have rapid access to a place in the building they occupy at the time of the alert. For those on the move, the authorities have installed reinforced concrete shelters in various places, which are supposed to be able to withstand a direct or close impact.
Why go into the field?
Another question I asked myself before we left was: ‘What’s the point of visiting them? Aren’t we going to be voyeurs? Won’t our presence distract them from what’s essential, waste their time? Will it be more of a hindrance than a help?
Actually no, we have to go.
I felt that our visit was important for the people we were talking to. There’s the human dimension, the desire to show that they’re working and making the most of the support we give them, but that’s almost secondary. What such visits mean is recognition of their existence and their reality, in their own eyes more than in ours.
Let’s put it another way. It is possible to help from a distance, with money and skills. It’s not the same thing as going in person to the site, giving your partners your time and putting yourself at risk.
I said earlier that humanitarians are not suicidal. That’s true, but the fact remains that staying in a country at war is more dangerous than driving an hour to work in a comfortable office in a country at peace. And this ‘risk-taking’ is a concrete aspect of solidarity.
The presence of a team from Luxembourg, who were not forced to come by anything other than the combined will of each member of the delegation, means affirming that the people helped are indeed individuals, who deserve to be recognised as such. It means telling them, simply by our presence, without any words: ‘I see you, you exist, your existence counts, I won’t forget you’. It means adding a human dimension to projects that are technical in nature.
In a way, what was comical was the repetition of the protocols. Arrival at a venue. Small welcome snack. Short speeches to explain what had been done. Short speeches of thanks. Small departure snack. For each place visited, it was a unique event. For the members of the Luxembourg team, it was a series of visits: we weren’t always very hungry when it came time for the ‘real’ meal.
The styles of welcome varied greatly. We went from a very formal welcome, in the town council chamber, in front of a dozen or so officials, to an informal welcome, in front of volunteers who had brought homemade pastries, with toddlers running around.
Stop in the event of an emergency, but not just anywhere
At times, the team split up. I’d go off on one side to visit places to take photos or film, and pick up interviews. During one of these excursions, an ‘alarm’ sounded: the telephones were blaring their sirens. A bomb threat. The driver – still the same guy – turns to us: ‘I know, we should stop. But that big factory on the right is an electricity factory. It’s often targeted. I suggest we drive for another 5 minutes, and stop at the local branch where we need to go. Less risk.’
Everyone in the car bursts out laughing and agrees. I spend part of the morning getting to know the volunteers from a local branch who distribute clothes and food to IDPs, as well as offering first aid training. I even get a quick 15-minute course, watch in hand.
Drone at 800 metres
One of the big thrills was when a drone exploded 800 metres from where we were standing. That’s roughly the distance between the Glacis and Place Clairefontaine. A meeting was about to start at a local branch of the Ukrainian Red Cross. The alarms were sounding, but nobody in the audience seemed to be really reacting… The set-up continued… Then came the noise: ‘Poof-poof-boom! The ‘poum-poum’ are the anti-aircraft defence systems. The Boom! was a drone exploding when it hit a building, in this case a school and boarding school. The result: some injuries, but no fatalities.
A drone explosion is very different from anything I’ve experienced before. It’s not the sound of fireworks… It’s more like a plane breaking the sound barrier next to you: low, round, powerful, shaking the walls.
Then the blast effect. We were inside a house, with a window open at an angle. Between us and the site of the explosion were several hundred metres and several dozen buildings, most of them at least three storeys high, some more. The blast arrives a few tenths of a second after the noise.
And it’s a real invisible wave, but a very sensitive one. All the air in the room is displaced. I feel the explosion with my body, from my ankles to my hair. Every nerve in my body felt it. You can’t compare it to a gust of wind: it’s not a gust between two lulls. It’s unique, rapid, total. Impressive.
The Ukrainians around me were shaken, but not panicked: in a way, they were used to it: they didn’t react with the same emotion as the visiting neophytes.
Some of our colleagues were joining us in another vehicle. At the wheel, a seasoned humanitarian: he grew up in Iraq, under the bombs, before working in many conflict zones. He’s got good reflexes: as soon as the car explodes, he sets off on a rally through the back streets to get to where we are as quickly as possible. Another younger colleague tells me afterwards: ‘It’s amazing the reflexes, the things you think about when it happens to you. I exclaimed ‘Mum! I said to myself, almost in a whisper: ‘Oh yeah, all the same! A different style, but not necessarily different in substance.
A lingering smell
As soon as the alarm was raised, some of us went to the scene. The fire brigade and emergency services had almost finished their work. They don’t wait for alerts to end before going to help the injured.
At that time, the Russians regularly carried out attacks in two waves, a few minutes apart. The real targets were the rescue workers: fire when they were there, to neutralise them, scare them or at least damage their equipment.
All the buildings close to the explosion had their windows destroyed. Warning tape prevented anyone from getting too close. The locals were hard at work, finishing off the job of breaking the damaged glass, which was about to crash to the ground a few floors below.
Specialised NGOs were already on site, distributing OSB panels – chipboard – to insulate the flats until new windows could be installed. You could hear the sound of the crowd’s footsteps on the broken glass.
And there was the smell. Not strong, but pervasive. And this time, yes, it was like the smell of fireworks, only more intense. And longer lasting. Before leaving for another city, we went back there the day after tomorrow. And the smell was still there.
The locals were moved, some distraught. But once again, there was no sense of panic. Just tiredness, sadness and resilience. On the other side of a neighbouring block of flats, there was a square with a playground. The children played there as if nothing had happened. Explosions and attacks had become part of their routine: once the moment had passed, there was no time to lose, you had to hurry back to being a kid and having fun on a swing.
Resilience
After several months, what will I take away from this trip? Resilience. The ability of the people I met not to give the impression of being afraid. The desire to maintain the appearance of a normal life. The alerts? They’ve been through dozens, if not hundreds or thousands, over the last two years. Just an everyday event that doesn’t mean you have to stop living.
Achieving peace is not easy for everyone. During a visit to a hospital, we met a group of children affected by the conflict. We attended two workshops. One with a duo of clowns, who play and make people laugh. The other was a drawing workshop to help the children exorcise their fears.
Some suffer in body, others in spirit. A 6 or 7 year old reminds me of my son: he jumps up and down, laughs, wants to do everything, and has to be restrained so that he doesn’t do everything. There’s a young teenager who’s more reserved. She ends up explaining that her parents are dead. Her brothers are at the front and she only hears from them once or twice a week. The rest of the time, the phones are scrambled. And, of course, she bursts into tears. All Luxembourgers refrain from doing the same. One of us hugs her and lets her cry. I hope with all my heart that one day she’ll be able to laugh again, if not forget. And I appreciate even more the comfort of the Grand Duchy.
I didn’t go to places where the conflict was particularly intense. Where I was, with what I saw, it was impossible to tell, by seeing people going about their lives in a seemingly normal way, that I was in a country at war. You had to look elsewhere to understand it. The destroyed tanks, abandoned on the side of the road, or gathered together and displayed in squares where people came to take photos of them. Damaged or destroyed buildings. Military convoys and checkpoints. Telephones ringing. The eyes could see the war on the objects, but not on the faces I passed.
Catharsis
My stay in Ukraine was well organised. I was picked up from Luxembourg airport to Luxembourg airport. My instructions: follow the instructions. An alert? Take shelter. End of the alert? Back to work. The danger was not diffuse or undetectable: dozens of eyes and hands were watching over us. To warn us if anything went wrong. To make sure there were no incidents along the way. To avoid going anywhere too risky.
Nevertheless, the journey home was a special one.
The first challenge was fatigue. Of the ten or so nights we spent there, only two or three were fully booked. It was tiring and exhausting. When I got back home, I needed to get some sleep and take a breather to replenish my mental energy.
The catharsis came in the form of watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy at the cinema – sorry for the ‘cultural best’. The films served their purpose and helped to unburden my nerves, by providing material on which the brain can let itself go.
And what about the family?
A final consideration, even more personal than the previous ones: a thought for the families of aid workers. Being in the field is stressful: by definition, no area of operation is truly safe. Being a humanitarian means putting yourself at risk in order to help. But there is a big difference between voluntarily living through a dangerous situation and living through it from a distance, by proxy. The families of people going into the field are affected by the situation, even if they agree with the choice made by their absent spouses. They too are stressed by the lack of direct information, and have to take it upon themselves to manage the absences, both psychologically and logistically. I asked to go, but I didn’t really ask my wife’s permission – let alone that of my children. Why did I go? Perhaps to learn something about myself and find out how I react in a situation of atypical stress. Also to try to bear witness, in my own way and with my own resources, to what I saw there.