The Oxfordshire man who drives to Ukraine to deliver aid
In 2022, Matt saw a video online which showed a Russian tank drive over the top of a car driving in the opposite direction, and afterwards he "couldn't stop thinking about it". He resolved to collect medical aid locally, making the arduous trip into Ukraine via the Channel Tunnel and through several countries while "everybody was coming the other way".He says: "We drove in and managed to meet people and share some aid out and help a little bit and it started there."
Matt works with a group of local school parents who raise money for medical and surgical equipment.He and his team distribute aid to five hospitals in Sumy, then leave the vehicles at the frontline, to be repurposed as ambulances, troop carriers and assault vehicles, before hitch-hiking home."When we're dropping off in Sumy, we speak to the doctors and the surgeons in the hospitals," Matt says."The day I get back, we start again. We're on it and we've got a list. We know what they really, really need."
Matt's wife, who we are not naming in this feature, says her husband previously mentioned travelling to Ukraine in passing but one night broke the news over dinner that he was going the next day, which was a "massive shock".She says: "It was really hard because at that time, it was so unknown... it was quite scary because I didn't know what was on the other side."He was away the first trip, either four or five days, it was really quick. And he literally drove without stopping and drove straight back, he was exhausted."She adds: "I had no communication with him. "Once he'd got across the border, I didn't hear anything else. So it was a waiting game."
Anna and Iryna, who have been working with Matt from their Oxfordshire base, say as the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine unfolded they knew they wanted to help.They have accumulated about £1.5m through fundraising and donations since 2022."There was one morning when nobody heard from Matt," Iryna recalls."We are sitting and thinking 'Where is he? Where is he?' And then eventually Matt pings a message and you're like, 'phew'."It's not easy. He is almost like a member of the family... we've adopted Matt."Anna says: "It's really tricky because Matt's a grown man and he's really sensible, and we know that he's going to look after himself and he's not going to do anything stupid... and we know he's got some great, great friends out there."You've just got to trust and hope that he's not going to be one of the unlucky ones that gets hit. You know, what more can we do? "We're always on slight edge when he is out there. We are always slightly anxious."
The Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office advises against all travel to Sumy.It also says there is an "ongoing risk of harm to British nationals from Russian attacks across all of Ukraine", including from "missiles and drones that hit unintended targets or from falling debris"."We keep our travel advice under constant review to ensure it reflects the latest updated information for British nationals travelling abroad," a spokeswoman said.
Iryna's cousin is a trauma surgeon in Ukraine who was having to use household drills during surgery to "put metal plates in people's bodies". "They had absolutely not been prepared for this," she says about Russia's full-scale invasion."We send a lot of out of date medication, which otherwise would go to landfill, which absolutely is life-saving in Ukraine."
Matt shows the BBC around his 4X4 to show what else is being transported on his latest expedition.It is stacked with crutches, Zimmer frames, wheelchairs, tourniquets, bandages and handheld ultrasound scanners, which can be used to detect internal bleeding and shrapnel.There is paracetamol and some veterinary equipment too, which he says is "dual purpose". "If it's syringes and stuff like that, you can use it on humans as well... if you're desperate, then you make things work."Matt has been known to bring protein shakes in the summer, handwarmers in the winter and even a bit of cake to brighten spirits.
Yevgen is Matt's local contact, and sometimes joins him in a convoy on his travels.He owns a garage but since the conflict has been busy fixing military vehicles."I can say it's life now," he says."I cannot believe people from a far away country just keep supporting us. They do a big thing."He calls Matt a "friend for life".
Matt's wife says he "doesn't talk to me about guns, he doesn't talk to me about warfare or anything like that, because I can't deal with that"."I probably reconcile it in my head with the charitable stuff that he's doing," she continues."When he's going to the hospitals, or the orphanage, or to see the things that they've set up for the children out there... I think that's what probably helps me to kind of not lose it every time. "But he doesn't talk to me about war. He talks to me about the people, and that's probably what pulls me forward each time."
Matt, Anna and Iryna have been awarded medals from the Ukrainian government for services to the country during the war.Matt says their mission is not just about providing the physical aid but about bringing a "bit of hope"."If you can imagine saving someone's life, I mean, that's got to be the ultimate thing for a human being."
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The Guardian
a day ago
- The Guardian
Mass starvation spreading across Gaza, aid agencies warn, as pressure on Israel grows – Middle East crisis live
Update: Date: 2025-07-23T08:18:57.000Z Title: More than 100 aid organisations warned on Wednesday that 'mass starvation' was spreading in', 'Gaza', ', Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports. Content: More than 100 aid agencies, including Doctors Without Borders, Save the Children and Oxfam, say 'our colleagues and those we serve are wasting away' Joe Coughlan Wed 23 Jul 2025 09.18 BST First published on Wed 23 Jul 2025 07.45 BST From 7.45am BST 07:45 More than 100 aid organisations warned on Wednesday that 'mass starvation' was spreading in Gaza, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports. Israel is facing mounting international pressure over the catastrophic humanitarian situation in the Palestinian territory, where more than 2 million people face severe shortages of food and other essentials after 21 months of conflict, triggered by Hamas's attack on Israel. 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Israel says humanitarian aid is being allowed into Gaza and accuses Hamas of exploiting civilian suffering, including by stealing food handouts to sell at inflated prices or shooting at those awaiting aid. In their statement, the humanitarian organisations said that warehouses with tonnes of supplies were sitting untouched just outside the territory, and even inside, as they were blocked from accessing or delivering the goods. The signatories said: Palestinians are trapped in a cycle of hope and heartbreak, waiting for assistance and ceasefires, only to wake up to worsening conditions. It is not just physical torment, but psychological. Survival is dangled like a mirage. The humanitarian system cannot run on false promises. Humanitarians cannot operate on shifting timelines or wait for political commitments that fail to deliver access. Updated at 7.49am BST 7.45am BST 07:45 Hello and welcome back to the Guardian's coverage of the Middle East. 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The Guardian
a day ago
- The Guardian
Eleven-minute race for food: how aid points in Gaza became ‘death traps'
Raed Jamal sends the message shortly after he returns, empty-handed, from an aid distribution point to his tent in the al-Mawasi displacement camp in south-west Gaza. 'The tanks came and started firing. Three boys near me were martyred,' says the 36-year-old, who has four children. 'I didn't even get anything, just two empty boxes.' Jamal's journey involved a long walk to and from a former residential neighbourhood bulldozed by Israeli forces and turned into one of four militarised aid distribution centres run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which is based in Delaware in the US. The GHF sites – Tal al-Sultan, Saudi neighbourhood, Khan Younis and Wadi Gaza – are located in evacuation zones, which means civilians seeking food have to enter areas they have been ordered to leave. According to GHF's Facebook page, the sites remain open for as little as eight minutes at a time, and in June the average for the Saudi site was 11 minutes. These factors have led to accusations from NGOs that the system is dangerous by design. The Unrwa chief, Philippe Lazzarini, has said 'the so-called mechanism … is a death trap costing more lives than it saves.' The system favours the strongest, so it is mostly men who travel along the designated routes. Then they wait – often for hours – for a centre to open. Finally, there is a dash into the centre of the zones and a scramble to grab a box. At every stage, those seeking aid pass Israeli tanks and troops, as quadcopters fly above. In another clip shared by Jamal he ducks as bullets pass overhead. 'We have purged our hearts of fear,' Jamal says of his near daily walks to the site. 'I need to bring food for my children so they don't die of hunger.' GHF, a startup organisation with no experience of distributing food in complex conflict zones, employs US mercenaries at the sites, which opened in May. They replaced 400 non-militarised aid points run under a UN system that Israel claimed had to be shut down because Hamas was diverting aid from it. No evidence for this has been provided. Since May, more than 1,000 people have died while seeking food from the centres and other humanitarian convoys, according to the UN. The sites' opening times are usually announced in posts on a Facebook account and, more recently, messages sent through a Telegram channel. A WhatsApp channel was also set up in the first weeks. People have been warned not to approach the centres until they open. As the chart below shows, for the site Jamal visited, the amount of time between the site's opening time being announced and the opening itself decreased dramatically in June. Mahmoud Alareer, a 27-year-old living in a tent in western Gaza City, says the opening time announcements for the aid site he uses – Wadi Gaza – have become useless, because of the distance from where he is living. Instead, he travels to the edges of the site in the middle of the night and gambles on it opening at 2am, as it has on every visit so far. First he climbs on to the back of a truck for the long ride south from Gaza City through the militarised Netzarim corridor. Then he waits in the dark until Israeli forces allow him to enter. 'You get there and you slowly, slowly advance,' he says. 'You always know that it could be you who gets shot, or it might be someone next to you.' Alareer says chaos always ensues when the aid point opens, as people start running towards the packages, which are left in the middle of the distribution zone. People trip over craters and tangled wires. GHF has faced severe criticism from the humanitarian community due to the dangers posed to Palestinians both at the sites and on the roads around them. In early July, more than 170 NGOs called for GHF to be shut down, accusing it of violating the principles of humanitarian aid, and calling for the resumption of non-militarised aid in Gaza. Médecins Sans Frontières' (MSF) emergency coordinator in Gaza, Aitor Zabalgogeazkoa, says night-time distributions are particularly dangerous because so many roads in southern Gaza have been made unrecognisable by Israeli bombing, making it hard for Palestinians to stick to routes designated by GHF. Zabalgogeazkoa is scathing about the GHF system. 'This is not humanitarian aid,' he says. 'We can only think that it was designed to cause damage to the people seeking aid.' A GHF spokesperson denied that their system was unsafe, claiming that the danger was outside their distribution zones. They also accused the UN of using 'exaggerated' casualty figures. The IDF have been contacted for comment. GHF has previously defended its operations and accused its critics of engaging in a 'turf war' over humanitarian supplies. It says it bears no responsibility for deaths outside the perimeters of its sites. The Israeli military has previously acknowledged firing warning shots at Palestinians who it says have approached its forces in a suspicious manner. It has also disputed some of the death tolls provided by the Palestinian authorities. GHF runs only four sites to feed 2 million people, in a territory where extreme hunger is widespread and food security experts have warned of looming famine. According to figures released by Gaza's health ministry 33 people have died due to starvation and malnutrition since Sunday. It says it has delivered more than 85 million meals 'via roughly 1,422,712 boxes' since its operations began. According to these figures, each box would provide a family with about 60 meals. The organisation has posted photos of GHF-marked boxes that have items such as flour, potatoes, beans and oil. However, Palestinians in Gaza have shared pictures showing open boxes at GHF sites containing a smaller range of items. Olga Cherevko, a spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, says she could not comment on the specific logistics of GHF, but that aid should go beyond food and should include water, cooking gas or other cooking facilities. 'If you look at Gaza now … people have been deprived of everything that sustains life: shelter materials, fuel, cooking gas, hygiene materials, everything that one needs to feel dignified, to have some sort of semblance of normality,' she says. According to the World Food Programme (WFP), nearly a third of Gaza's population is going several days without food, and 470,000 people are expected to face the most severe levels of hunger between May and September this year. The WFP has also warned that dietary diversity declined sharply in May and continued to worsen in June. Damage to farmland over the course of the war has only increased Palestinians' reliance on aid. A study published this year using satellite imagery to assess damage to farmland found up to 70% of tree crops had been damaged. A Unosat assessment from April found that 71.2% of Gaza's greenhouses had been damaged. This sequence shows damage to greenhouses and orchards in Beit Lahiya. In late March, dozens of bakeries supported by the WFP halted production due to the Israeli blockade. A handful briefly resumed bread production in May when some trucks were allowed into the territory, as this timeline shows. Jamal reiterates that he has no choice but to return to his nearest GHF site, despite the dangers. 'I have gone four days in a row and not brought anything back, not even flour – nothing,' he says. 'Sometimes you just can't beat the others. But what else can we do, our life is a struggle.' This article was amended on 22 July 2025. An earlier version said the price of flour in Gaza had risen by 31 May to $420 per kg. This was based on a published UN figure that had later been corrected to $420 for a 25kg bag.
BBC News
2 days ago
- BBC News
SEN and disabled children in Littlemore to get bespoke playground
Plans for an accessible playground to make life easier for SEND children and families have taken a step Parish Council has chosen a supplier for the play area, which will have rides suitable for a range of disabilities and special could include a sensory area, wheelchair-friendly equipment and a communications board for non-verbal Carter, who runs an SEN learning provider and has been advising the council, said: "It's really important that these vital spaces are inclusive for our community. "If you get things right for children and young people with SEND needs then you get it right for everybody - but it doesn't always work the other way round."Unless things are fully accessible, people with a physical or learning won't be able to take part in things and be a full member of the community - and surely that's what we we want."The current site includes swings, a log walk and picnic Parish Council submitted an Invitation to Tender for the site in April, meaning contractors and suppliers could bid to take on the building allocation of £90,000 in Community Infrastructure Levy money has been made to the project.A investigation by disability charity Scope in 2023 found only two out of the 19 playgrounds they visited in Oxfordshire met a high standard of assessed the sites on criteria like step-free access, colourful equipment, wheelchair-friendly equipment and handrail support. You can follow BBC Oxfordshire on Facebook, X (Twitter), or Instagram.
