Ukraine, Sardinian humanitarian caravans return with 160 refugees. Many orphaned children

The two humanitarian missions that left Sardinia for Ukraine are returning with about a hundred refugees, who will be welcomed on the island.

Two Sardinian solidarity caravans left in recent days to deliver medicines and other aid on the border between Ukraine and Poland and to recover families fleeing the country invaded by Russian troops.

The first, under the aegis of the interparliamentary union for friendship between Italy and Ukraine, is led by the president of the group, the Forza Italia deputy Ugo Cappellacci, and by the honorary consul of Ukraine on the island Anthony Grande and after having brought medicines and other comfort goods, she returned to Italy with about 60 children, many orphans between the ages of 6 and 12, and about twenty women.

The second, organized by the volunteers of the Anas network of Sardinia and led by Claudio Cugusi, has transported a load of medicines and is traveling with 80 people divided between ambulances and a bus of the Sos of Elmas association. In this case, a stop in Trieste is also planned to leave refugees who will continue their journey to Calabria and Puglia.

In the next few hours, from Livorno, the refugees will embark - after a buffer - to Olbia. Then the move to Cagliari. Only a small unforeseen event risks postponing the departure: one of the cars of the mobile column of the Anas Sanità network stopped due to a breakdown between Austria and Slovenia and waited for help; the rest of the personnel have already reached the port of Livorno.

During the checks, two children tested positive for Covid and therefore, overall, 13 people will travel in isolation on board the Grimaldi ferry.

"We are bringing to safety - adds Cappellacci - about 80 people, of these 57 children mostly between 5 and 12 years old, some come from Donbass, in particular from Donetsk, and arrived in Kharkiv while the city was under Russian bombing. : they are saved by a miracle. Then they reached the Lviv region, on the border with Poland, where we loaded them on our buses and took them to safety. "

"For us it is a great emotion and a great personal gratification because it is enough to look these children in the eye to have an elixir of life", explains Cappellacci. "They seem serene, they play and the little ones think that it is a kind of trip. One older and more skilled at football has already been enrolled in the Cagliari youth academy, after I spoke with president Giulini ", added Cappellacci.

"After having brought medicine to the border and having recovered about fifteen people from Kiev and Odessa and Lviv, including women and children who will arrive in Sardinia tomorrow - says Cugusi - yesterday, while we were already in Slovakia, the request arrived from the our coordination center in Lviv and 11 children and 7 women who have to go to Bovalino in Calabria have gone to recover at the Polish border. We will take them to Trieste where civil protection and a bus are waiting for us, another 50 will go to Puglia, while the the Sos association of Elmas is bringing another 50 refugees to the island, but we have more than 500 requests and in the next few days we will organize other trips ".

The structures that will host minors in Cagliari have been identified: one was made available by the Municipality, the second was selected by the Regional Labor Department through Caritas.

(Unioneonline / lf)