'The air raid app tells us if the Russians are going to bomb' - Christian Aid's Tom Coley

Our colleague Gabor, from Hungarian Interchurch Aid (HIA), picks us up and we set off. It seems extraordinary even now that this everyday act of getting in a car today means driving to a war zone in modern Europe.

Soon we leave the capital behind, talking with Gabor about the possibilities of using Disasters Emergency Committee or Christian Aid funding to distribute pharmaceuticals stored in a Kyiv warehouse by a Hungarian drug company. We agree this would be an effective way of making an impact given the situation inside Ukraine.

Barabas is the last village inside Hungary before the Ukrainian border. HIA has set up a distribution point here for refugees from across the frontier. The system is efficient and effective. HIA picks up refugees in a bus at the border and drives them to Barabas. Here it pauses to allow refugees to pick up whatever they need at the distribution point. Reloaded, the bus then moves to a local town with a train station from which the refugees can go wherever they want or can.

On the side of a bus used in the shuttle runs, a volunteer has marked tallies on the door. It counts how many trips the bus has taken in this rescue operation. I count 107 tallies and estimate that HIA has helped over 5,000 people with this method.

As we walk through the village, we come across a Caritas (relief and development organisation) reception area where some refugees are walking their dogs. At HIA’s distribution point you can pick up dog or cat food. In the almost 15 years I’ve been doing this work I have seen displaced people bring their livestock but never pet dogs. It shows what these particular people most wanted to bring with them despite all the difficulties.

After 45 minutes in Barabas we drive to the border. The crossing of international borders usually fills me with a bit of trepidation but this goes off with only one minor hitch. Gabor misses out a step in the border process and has only one paper chit for the car instead of two. They send us back. “Just like in the communist times,” Gabor remarks.

Perhaps 200 metres after the border post inside Ukraine, we come across more HIA activities. There is a distribution site where fresh food is made for people moving across the border. It’s here where we are greeted by the friendly local volunteers, mostly women, who give us raspberry flavoured tea.

A lady from the Roma community approaches and a volunteer gives her and the young girl with her some sandwiches. Gabor highlights that many people discriminate against the Roma community in this area.

Immediately adjacent to the food point, is another pop-up tent, like the one in Barabas, but this has beds inside instead. It’s a shelter where people can sleep if they are stuck at the border.

The border is quiet today with only a small, yet steady, trickle of cars, but at busy times the shelter has been full.

The only current occupant is a man who turns 60 in May. He’s trying to avoid being conscripted into the Ukrainian military and is trying to run out the clock, because when he is 60 he is no longer eligible to serve. A small reminder that not everyone wants to fight for their country.

HIA has found the man a hotel room in the town as it wants to keep the shelter clear for women and children and it’s a legal issue to be sheltering someone who is breaking the law.

As we move on to the town of Berehove, five kilometres away, another surreal moment is when I spot a Porsche 911 sports car with Ukrainian plates bob up and down on the potholed road towards the Hungarian border.

At around midday we arrive at HIA’s office in Berehove. We have trouble finding a parking space because of the influx of people. This is a sleepy town of 30,000, swollen with double or even triple that number. It is a bit surreal to see people in a country at war order another beer or a pizza at the Parisian themed café across the road, but it’s a day of adjusting my expectations.

Just then, Gabor tells me cheerfully that he’s downloaded the “air raid” app, which tells us if the Russians are going to bomb. We meet HIA’s country director, a genial man name Janos, who looks stressed. I would be stressed too in his position.

One of his main concerns is the martial law passed by the Ukrainian parliament at the outbreak of war. Certain provisions stop the free flow of information to foreign charities like HIA. This is important because humanitarians like us need to analyse data.

If you can get people’s basic information, then you can determine trends based upon someone sex or age. Without this, it makes your response a lot less adaptive to changing needs.

We go to a communal shelter housing 14 people from three families, all women and children. The scenery is very pretty with wooded hills overlooking the buildings. We think it inappropriate to disturb the people living there, so we chat with the government official supervising the site. She tells us there are over 100 shelters in this Oblast (province) alone.

She also gets on the phone to report the visit of foreigners to a government site. Another martial law rule.

It’s almost dusk now and we finally set off back towards Hungary. We follow the sun westwards and out of danger – just like millions of Ukrainians have done in the past four weeks. Unlike them, we know where our final destination will be.

Tom Coley is a global humanitarian manager for Christian Aid. This is an extract of his diary about an aid mission in Ukraine and Hungary.