Alison King says she has never seen devastation like that which she is encountering Poland, the country which has become a refuge for more than one million Ukrainian refugees.
After Vladimir Putin's Russian army began its invasion of Ukraine, Alison, a 60-year-old woman who lives in Thornbury, left her life in the Westcountry behind temporarily to travel to eastern Europe. Since then, she has been helping the people of Ukraine in their time of need - and she says the experience has been sobering. "The hopelessness of it is just heartbreaking," she told Bristol Live.
She arrived in Poland on Saturday, March 5, and has been doing everything she can to help people fleeing the conflict. After setting up an online crowdfunder, which has raised around £1,500, she flew to the country and started driving to its border with Ukraine to offer her help to anyone who needed it.
