I recently spent a week in Ukraine with our incredible UK-Med team.
I went to see the impact of your support first-hand.
When I came home, I couldn’t stop thinking about the people I met there. So, I started writing...
What follows is a collection of those notes.
In Zaporizhzhia, just a few miles from Russian-controlled territory, the marks of war are everywhere: blown-out windows, checkpoints, avenues lined with memorials.
At a veterans’ centre, one of UK-Med’s mobile units provide medical and psychological care. There are 7,000 veterans in the city; 1,200 come regularly for help.
“They want to live, to work, to contribute,” the director told me. “But they need rehabilitation we can’t yet provide.”
At Zaporizhzhia train station, I met Katarina, the Deputy Director.
She saved an elderly passenger’s life on an evacuation train from Pokrovsk, thanks to UK-Med first aid training.
Whilst we spoke she also told me about a missile that struck 20 metres from her home just the day before:
“I was cooking meatballs when my son shouted, “Mum, please leave it. We need to go to the shelter.”
Her husband is on the frontline.
Her plea: “People outside Ukraine, please keep helping.
For two days, I travelled with a UK-Med mobile medical unit: driver Denys, doctor Max, nurse Natalia, social worker Olha, and psychologist Anton.
The team serve villages just 0–20km from the frontline. The queues were mostly elderly women - tired but grateful not to be forgotten.
One widow, Lubof, told me:
“The team helped us in my husband’s final months, and now they care for me too. They make us know we’re not forgotten.
But the war is destroying us. Too many children have died. Villages like cemeteries. We want it to stop.”
On a home visit we met Roslan, caring for his frail mother Tatiana near the third line of defence.
“Even if they destroy this house,” he said, “we will stay.”
Nurse Natalia explained the hardest part of her job:
“The most depressive thing is the villages we can no longer reach - they’re shelled constantly. We knew these people, loved them. Now who helps them?”
Families face impossible choices.
Leave to save their children, or to stay behind with elderly parents.
We met a young widow who had lost her husband at the front. She now dedicates herself to helping those returning from the frontlines. Her quiet grief stayed with me.
On my journey back through sunflower fields - heads bowed after bloom - I thought of the people who had shared their stories with me.
For days I asked them: “What would you like people outside Ukraine to understand?”
The truth is, I can’t fully understand. Not unless I too had lost my brother, my partner, my home.
But I can act. That’s why I fundraise for UK-Med.
© 2026 UK-Med
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