“When Igor saw the images of the Bucha massacre, he cried inconsolably,” says Salvador Pons
It was a long trip, almost forty hours, with hardly any rest. The three felt an overwhelming desire to get to Ukraine as soon as possible and unload the material they were carrying in the van in which they were traveling. They had been told that they needed all that they transported, because in kyiv there are hardly any resources and almost everything is lacking.
“We managed to gather first aid material, boots, electric generators… and we filled a van until there was no room for anything else.” Salvador Pons began the trip in Murcia with two Ukrainian citizens, Oleg, his employee at the Engineering Quipons company, and Igor, whom he has welcomed into his home, and whom he had known since before the start of the Russian invasion on the trips he made to Ukraine.
“Igor is a dentist and had a clinic in kyiv. When the bombings began, he and his family were sheltered for several days in the basement of that place. I contacted him by phone and told him to leave the country as best he could and come to Murcia, that here I would provide them with a house».
«We wanted to enter the country, but in the Polish city of Przenmysl they recommended that we not do so; it wasn’t safe”
And so he did. With many difficulties, he managed to leave the Ukraine and cross half of Europe through Hungary with his partner and his children, a total of seven people, two of them minors. “It was a tortuous journey, in a small car and without showering for days. Now they are installed in a house that I have on Las Higuericas beach, in the Alicante area, and I have found one of them a job, something that I will also try to do with two other members of the family”, explains Salvador.
Objective accomplished
Once they were welcomed into their new home, the idea arose of transporting material that the people with whom Igor was in contact in the Ukraine were asking for it. Through contributions from anonymous people and Salvador’s own company, they gathered all the resources they had requested and Salvador, Igor and Oleg undertook the trip to the country last week.
“Our intention was to enter the territory in conflict, but in the Polish city of Przenmysl, bordering Ukraine, they recommended that we not do so, because it was not safe.” There, seven people were waiting for them and they unloaded the entire load of the van into several cars. “We couldn’t get in, but we met our goal.”
A week ago they started the trip back, and that’s when Igor’s friends sent him from Ukraine the images of the massacre in the city of Bucha. «Igor began to cry inconsolably, with immense sadness and a lot of anger. Oleg and I couldn’t hold back our tears and the three of us cried together in that van,” recalls Salvador.
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