Stamford area group Helping Our Ukrainian Friends deliver 4x4s to Kyiv to help wounded troops

Aid volunteers have handed over rescue vehicles to the Ukrainian army thanks to a major town fundraiser.

Helping Our Ukrainian Friends members Richard Astle, from Helpston, and Dave Ribakovs, from Maxey delivered two 4x4 vehicles to Ukraine last week.

They were joined by Mark Asplin, a director of construction firm Princebuild, an active supporter of HOUF which is aiming to raise £50,000 for the group this year.

Princebuild recently raised £20,000 at an evening event in Eye, largely thanks to an auction, supported by former Peterborough United boss Barry Fry, which raised more than £11,000.

The trio flew to Romania where they bought a second-hand VW van and Nissan X-Trail which will be re-purposed as medivac vehicles to remove wounded Ukrainian troops from the front in the Donbas region.

“The money for one of these had been raised by a group of Ukrainian ladies in Peterborough and Stamford through a race night at Burghley Golf Club in January,” said HOUF founder Richard.

“The other was bought with general donations to Helping Our Ukrainian Friends.”

After arriving in Bucharest on Thursday, March 13, their drive to the border the next day was delayed when the Nissan broke down.

“We had to have emergency repairs, including a new clutch, but amazingly we got these done the same day and were able to reassemble at midnight back at the border,” Richard said.

After crossing into Ukraine, they stopped off in the town of Chernivtsi to visit families who fled Kharkiv at the beginning of the war and have been helped by HOUF since 2022.

An eight-hour drive then took them to Kyiv where the vehicles were given to two separate military units.

There they met with HOUF’s charity partners Cross Charity, which provides field kitchens to soldiers and civilians at the front, and Person to Person, which takes aid to frontline communities.

HOUF, which carries out several aid missions to Ukraine each year, also took £16,000 of donations to be split between Cross Charity, Person to Person, Sustain Ukraine and another charity working in western Ukraine.