Ukraine trip ‘opened my eyes’, says Kelleher

“IT opened my eyes to the humanitarian crisis that is there,” said Fianna Fáil MEP Billy Kelleher after visiting Lviv in Ukraine.

Ireland South MEP Mr Kelleher travelled with Fianna Fáil senator Timmy Dooley to Poland and Ukraine recently. During their time in Lviv, they met Mayor Andriy Sadovyi and the governor of the Lviv region, Maxym Kozytsky.

The Cork politician said it was an eye-opening experience.

“There is a human catastrophe unfolding both in terms of military strikes on civilians by the Russian army and the number of people fleeing their homes and their cities,” he said. 

“We travelled to Poland first and we saw the people crossing the border from Ukraine into Poland after walking many miles over a few days. Others would have got trains, but it would have taken a while to get them to where they were.”

Mr Kelleher said the processing of the Ukrainian nationals arriving in Poland is leading to enormous queues.

“The problem is that it is very slow to process the people coming over the border, and they are waiting considerably long periods of time,” he said. “We saw massive queues of people standing, which included a lot of young families and elderly people. Some of them were standing for 48 hours in very cold temperatures.”

The MEP said he was unprepared for the ‘scale’ of the current situation after he crossed the border into the war-torn country.

“I am as hard-nosed as the next man, having been in politics a long time, but after we crossed into the Ukraine, we really saw the scale of what was unfolding,” he said.

I visited Polish/Ukrainian border with ⁦@timmydooley⁩ last weekend. Harrowing scenes there.

I’m posting pictures of people before or after they crossed into #EU.
Some people traveled for days to get here.

It is a human tragedy for #Ukraine #Russia what have you done? pic.twitter.com/tPrOExiTt5

— Billy Kelleher MEP (@BillyKelleherEU) March 8, 2022

“I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. We saw thousands upon thousands of people just standing on the side of the road waiting to get to the border. We also saw a queue of cars 15km long just waiting to get across.

“This is the biggest crisis facing Europe since the Second World War. It is estimated there are probably four to five million Ukrainians on the move. Already 1.7m have come into the European Union, and there are probably another 2m-3m on the way. As the Russians advance further into the Ukraine, we are going to see a mass displacement of people.”

Mr Kelleher said the political leaders in Ukraine emphasised that they need as much support as possible following their meeting.

“They said the Russian artillery and air bombardment is causing huge difficulties for civilians, especially in the east of the country. They need as much support as we can possibly give them.”

The MEP praised the response from the Cork public in Cork to the unfolding humanitarian crisis.

“Money is probably the most important thing to the non-government organisations such as the Red Cross because people are providing shelter, food, and clothes,” he said. 

“The amount of money that has been raised by the Irish people and the amount of goodwill has been great. People want to help. We are also clearly going to have to assist in the relocation and housing for those refugees in the short, medium, and long term.”