The shelves in the large pharmacy on the outskirts of Lviv are emptying at breakneck speed. Like robots in a factory, pharmacists reach for a box of pills here, a bottle or a blister pack there. Others are constantly scanning the prices as more and more people fill the pharmacy space. Those waiting form a line outside the door. They want to stock up on whatever medication they need for an indefinite period of time.
Stuttgart’s Serkan Eren is guided to a rear checkout. He wants to buy medicine for 2000 euros. The helper from the civil aid organization Stelp arrived in the city over the weekend. The money in his backpack is donation money. The drugs are to be distributed to Ukrainians arriving in a swelling stream on crowded trains from Kyiv and other bombed cities in the western Ukrainian metropolis, 70 kilometers from the Polish border.
Lviv is at the maximum distance from Russian missiles
Lviv is considered comparatively safe at a maximum distance from the Russian missile bases and airports in Russia and Belarus. A border crossing to Poland is also located near the city. Only the roads there have been clogged for days by an endless avalanche of refugees. “So many people are now coming here from Kyiv by trains. Among them are children, and many are injured. We need the medicines for them,” says Eren. The helper holds in his hands the backpack with wads of cash in euros and the Ukrainian currency hryvnia.
The pharmacist only packs a handful of boxes and bottles in two small cardboard boxes. With the best will in the world, she couldn’t give out more, she says. The storage room is empty. Eren loses his composure for a second. He has more than enough cash in his backpack. But the pharmacy’s empty supplies cannot be replenished with any money in the world at the moment.
His Ukrainian contact Yelena Komissarova is also close to tears. The Lviv volunteer brokered the deal with the pharmacy. Eren has promised himself a substantial supply of medicines for the refugees from the embattled Kyiv and other parts of the country. She talks to Eren, explaining to him that the pharmacies in Lviv are getting fewer and fewer deliveries via the streets of the Ukraine, which are blocked by refugees or shot up by the Russians. Eren soothes her. “I know it’s not your fault. I’m just running out of time,” he says.
Time is a limiting factor for the German helper, and he is just one of many in the war in Ukraine. Eren left Stuttgart on the second day after the Russian invasion began with two trucks full of relief supplies. Each wagon was loaded with 2.5 tons of food, blankets, medicine and toiletries. During the night, the convoy reached the border crossing closest to Lviv from Korczowa in Poland to Krakowets in Ukraine.
Then the first shock for Eren: the Polish border officials refused the truck the crossing. Allegedly, papers for the formalities were missing. “I begged her, I was close to tears. There was nothing to be done,” says Eren. He decided to continue the journey to war without the trucks with the reporter Sophia Maier from Stern TV, a cameraman and a backpack with 25,000 euros. The vehicles turned around and headed for reception centers for Ukrainians in Poland. After all, the goods benefit the people who reached their destination in Poland while fleeing Russian bombs and rockets. “If we had got through with the trucks, our impact would be 10, it would be 7,” says Eren.
Eren and the journalists get stuck in traffic jams between the border and Lviv for hours. Men who have taken their families to the border and are now required by law to return to war are clogging the road. Eren’s group reaches Lviv in the morning hours. The receptionists in every hotel just shake their heads when asked if there is a free room. Lviv has been bursting at the seams ever since Ukrainians have been fleeing here from other parts of the country. A hotelier finally takes pity. He lets the Germans sleep on the floor of a conference room. The following day, Eren and his companions find a free apartment in Lviv through their Ukrainian contacts.
Eren is now behind the wheel of his Audi and, after a disappointing trip to the pharmacy, is already stuck in traffic on the way to the city center. It seems that all of Ukraine is on the streets, aimlessly, the main thing is to get from one place to another. The helper from Stuttgart is on his way to the Lviv train station. The next drama awaits him there.
In Lviv, people crowd the train station
Thousands flock from all sides to the magnificent 19th-century neo-Gothic building. The entrance sucks people in and spits them out in the crowded waiting room. In the corridors to the tracks, the fugitives stand even closer together. Grapes form in front of the stairs. Some scream their desperation at the top of their lungs. People climb from the platforms over the tracks. Eren grabs an old lady’s arm and helps her across. He thinks hard about how he can help the people at the train station. You will get food and water in tents in front of the building. He decides to first explore with his Ukrainian contacts whether he can still provide support here.
Later that afternoon, Eren is sitting with two Baptist pastors in the church conference room, a few kilometers from the Lviv train station. One of the pastors, Dmytri Kolesnyk, is also a city councilor in Lviv. He describes to the helper from Stuttgart how the supply situation in the city continues to deteriorate hour by hour, day by day. “Ukraine is wonderfully self-sufficient. But now all supply chains in the country are disrupted. Roads are destroyed or the transport trucks are stuck in traffic jams,” says the pastor. He estimates that there could be food supply problems in ten days at most.
Eren wants to use his money to buy food or mattresses for the refugees who find shelter in the community center. But just like in the pharmacy, the answer he gets is that the supplies in the supermarkets are getting smaller and smaller. “We can place an order and then hope that they can deliver the stuff,” explains Kolesnyk. His fellow pastor Yaroslav Nazarkeyvich adds that the most important goods have long been hoarded: flour, sugar, vegetable oil, everything that has a long shelf life.
When the conversation with the pastors ends, it is already dark. Every evening at 6 p.m. the Sirens rehearse in Lviv. There is a curfew from 10 p.m. Eren has arranged with the municipality to make another attempt to buy groceries the next day.
Eren spends the last hours before curfew in a restaurant that has been converted into a volunteer base in Lviv’s old town. In the kitchen of the “Prague” vinotheque, Ukrainian volunteers top sandwiches with cheese and sausage that Eren bought. The helper takes stock of his first days in Ukraine. “The problem is the broken supply chains in the country. This makes it difficult to organize relief supplies on site. There’s just not enough there,” he says. He reminded the Europeans and the international community of their responsibility towards Ukrainian civilians. “These were the first chaotic days of this war. We urgently need a humanitarian corridor from Poland to Ukraine for the aid workers as soon as possible, so that the trucks with the aid supplies can simply roll over the border,” he says.
The next morning, Eren sends a photo. During the night he used his contacts to guide two families from Kyiv from the train station to his apartment. They have two newborns, one of whom was born a few days ago under rocket fire in the Ukrainian capital. Eren’s plan is to bring the two families across the border to Poland and from there to Germany. He also managed to find food for the refugees in the Baptist church in Lviv. He bought food for 7000 euros.