A man from Perth has successfully escorted a large group of Ukrainian orphans out of harm’s way and into Poland. The plan is for them to come to Scotland as soon as possible.
Steve Carr - an alarm security specialist based in the Fair City and chair of a charity that has supported the children for years - was part of a chain of logistical support that saw 70 kids and their ‘mothers’ leave orphanages in Dnipro.
The evacuation began on Monday of last week, with the Scottish charity Dnipro Kids Appeal desperately trying to lay on buses to take the orphans west away from their endangered city.
When the decision to get everybody out was taken buses were not available and the children were taken to Dnipro station to try to get onto trains.
Mercifully, the group of orphans and their accompanying adults were given priority to board trains and over three days the various groups made it to the ‘relative safety’ of the city of Lviv on Ukraine's western edge.
On their Facebook page, Dnipro Kids Appeal gave updates and, on Wednesday, reported: “Thirty children from the Shevchenko, Svyatkova and Sobolyev orphanages have arrived in Lviv.”
More made the journey to Lviv on Friday.
"A further 18 orphans have managed to board a train at Dnipro station today. These children are from two orphanages we have not previously worked with. But the people running the orphanages were extremely keen to evacuate the children, " reported the charity page.
Pete Wishart, MP for Perth and North Perthshire, spoke in the Commons about Steve and the evacuating orphans.
He used the case of the fleeing Dnipro children to press for action by the UK Government on speeding up visas for refugees from Ukraine.
On Friday, Russian missiles were launched at sites in Dnipro, further vindicating the decision to move the children out.
Having flown from Scotland to Poland, Steve organised a coach to take him over the border to Lviv, meet up and get the children out of Ukraine and into Poland. He and two "fantastic" Polish drivers went back and forth on several return trips.
By Monday, March 14, 51 children and their chaperones had safely arrived in Poland.
Steve spoke to the Perthshire Advertiser from the Polish town of Znin, where the orphans have been put up in a hotel for a week while documentation for their travel to the UK is prepared.
“The children are very resilient,” he said. “The older ones know what is going on, but the younger ones are embracing this as a big adventure.
“This is their first time out of Ukraine. The ‘mothers’ who look after them day to day are more aware, but even they do not really appear to grasp the size of what is going on.”
Steve explained that the orphans had come in various trains from several different orphanages and it was not until Saturday that the whole group was reunited in a Polish hotel.
He was due to fly back to Edinburgh at 11pm Monday night, home in Perth by midnight. He expected to start his day job the next day.
The PA asked him what kind of a week he’d had since leaving his home to rescue the kids.
“I’ve been on auto-pilot,” he replied. “It has been full-on.
“I’ve gone through all the emotions.”
He explained that various options were being “checked out” by representatives from Dnipro Kids.
There was the need to find locations in Scotland that could keep groups of 10 or 12 youngsters together and also the ideal location would have room for double or triple that so that the orphanage mothers could be together for moral support.
Locations in Callander, Kirriemuir, Loch Lomond and Edinburgh were being visited and no decision had been made yet where the Dnipro orphans would end up.
