The duty accompanied a Polish citizen in his van carrying humanitarian aid to Ukraine. A story of unfailing solidarity.
The silhouette of a man can be seen through the rain-blurred windshield. Springing into the beam of the headlights, the border guard approaches, his face buried under his hood, rifle slung over his khaki parka. The scene could seem worrying in this nocturnal setting on the borders of Europe, had it not been for the border post opposite, marked in large Cyrillic letters: “Welcome to Ukraine”.
The vehicle of Arkadiusz Malicki, 46, comes to a stop. Behind the dashboard, the Pole with graying hair lowers his window, the time for a brief exchange with the Ukrainian official. “Thank you for what you do for our country! to praise the uniformed officer. This kind of thanks, Arkadiusz has often been entitled to them, these last twelve months. Twelve months that this gentle-looking fellow makes crossings in the neighboring country at war, sometimes accompanied, always at his own risk. With the same objective: to deliver tons of humanitarian aid there in a disinterested way.
It’s past 10 p.m. In the pale light of the border point of Korczowa-Krakovets, in the very east of Poland, vehicles are scarce. “Pretty calm, this evening”, observes, wedged in his seat, Arkadiusz – “Arek” for the close friends.
The evening mission? Far from being the most perilous so far for our man: reaching Lviv, in western Ukraine, a region spared by the fighting, although remaining the occasional target of Russian missiles. There, the material it has to deliver will be sent back, through an intermediary, near the front lines, in eastern Ukraine. This February evening, taking on board The dutyArek is in his 28e journey to Ukraine since the Russian invasion.
Thirty minutes have just passed at the border post. “It’s okay, you can go. The road to the country at war looms straight ahead, in darkness.
Humanitarian baptism
It was at the corner of a gas station next to John Paul II airport in Krakow, in southern Poland, that the meeting with Arek was given, a few hours earlier. Here he arrives at the wheel of his van stamped with a red cross, tips of rust inviting themselves on the white bodywork. The cargo to be transported must arrive any minute at the airport terminal: kilos of equipment, especially medical, intended for soldiers on the front, near Bakhmout, under incessant artillery fire Russian. “It was a Ukrainian doctor living in Chicago who sent a good part of the equipment,” explains Arek.
On the wet pavement of the drop-off point of the airport, dozens of bags pile up, heavy to make the spine crumble. A grimacing Arek pushes them into the trunk. One, two, twenty-six… The van is bent under these drugs, tourniquets, soldiers’ boots, night vision goggles. The doors slam. Departure.
The van is now driving on the deserted Polish highway. Around, fields plunged into darkness. It takes another two hours to reach the border. So, in the privacy of the cabin, staring at the horizon swept by the windshield wiper, Arek tells his story.
On the night of February 24, 2022, like a premonitory sign, the quarantined man had difficulty closing his eyes. “Putin has invaded Ukraine! says his wife, Emilia, in a strangled voice at dawn. “I dropped my toothbrush, my mind was spinning. »
Candles, foodstuffs, fuel jerrycans. The day after the assault, Arek loaded his sedan to the brim. “Standing idly by was not an option,” the Pole explains today. The plan: set sail for Boryslav, a city in western Ukraine, to deliver the collected aid there, then in the other direction, take on board Ukrainians seeking refuge in Poland. Of this first journey, coupled with an evacuation, he hardly said a word to his family. “My wife wouldn’t let me go. It was only in Rzeszów, a Polish town not far from the border, that I informed her. She told me to turn around, to no avail. »
Along the way, friends informed him of the advancing troops from Moscow. In the fog of war, some feared a Ukrainian capitulation. The warning issued by the Polish customs officer made him dizzy: “Do you realize that you are entering a war zone? However, it was when crossing the border that Arek grasped “the extent of the tragedy”. Before his eyes, a veritable exodus of haggard women and children. The queue to cross into the country in peace, on the Ukrainian side, stretched over several tens of kilometers.
Rolling backwards from this rush, Arek noticed in the flood a young mother with her three-year-old daughter, both in tears. “It was cold and dark. I gave them a blanket, tea. And then, the mum gave a hint of a smile…” The scene has remained etched in her mind ever since.
fatigue lurks
Arek’s story is also that of the unfailing solidarity of many Poles who, united by this same sense of urgency, have put their lives on hold for a year. Originally from Dąbrowa Górnicza, in the south-west of Poland, this engineer by training is involved in various networks of volunteers, all improvised humanitarian couriers. “But fewer people are going to Ukraine to help than at the beginning, when the attention was stronger. Some can no longer afford to give out of pocket,” says Arek.
In Poland, at the forefront of the conflict, it is civil society that has taken head-on humanitarian assistance, in particular the reception of exiles. But while record inflation rages (17%), fatigue awaits. The spirit of mutual aid has withered, like the policy of generosity in Warsaw. “The Poles are exhausted, we don’t realize the burden that society has had to take,” says Agnieszka Kosowicz, president of the NGO Polskie Forum Migracyjne.
Empathy, however, goes beyond Arek’s wallet. So he bought his van on credit, betting on an online kitty to pay off his debt by spring. Since the debacle of the construction company he headed until last year, he has kept himself afloat by multiplying odd jobs.
It is difficult to distinguish his private life from that of his humanitarian missions. “To avoid worrying my loved ones, I avoid detailing my activities to them,” explains this father of two sons, 16 and 23, and a 3-year-old girl. On the road, the telephone rings: it is his wife, precisely. “Once she asked me, ‘Why are you doing this? You have children, others could do it”, testifies Arek, at the end of the phone call. In response, I showed him a picture of a girl from Kherson, hugging a soft toy that I had just given her, two weeks after the liberation. Emilia cried. »
brave the danger
Kharkiv, Bakhmout, Kramatorsk… Half of the thirty or so Ukrainian stays concern localities near the front line. “People tell me their stories of occupation. When I come home from a round trip to Ukraine, my daughter hugs me. She is my motivation to continue. He is aware that each of these trips could be his last. In November, during a delivery of food and medicine to Dvorichna, in the Kharkiv region, the convoy in which he was was apparently the target of Russian bombardments.
Part of tonight’s cargo will be shipped to 80 mene brigade, deployed in Eastern Ukraine. “It holds a special place in my heart,” says Arek, three of whose former colleagues who were part of it are no longer in this world.
The GPS navigator allowing him to locate himself in these perilous zones, it was men of this unit who offered it to him, “having stolen it from the Russians”. Arek’s black jacket features a crest in the colors of Ukraine, a gift from “Grozny”, his nom de guerre, a soldier he had become close to. “He died two weeks after giving it to me, the Russians shot him,” Arek says without flinching. Befriending fighters is heartbreaking: “Because it hurts, when a friend is killed, so I avoid it. And then, my visits to the front are often short, the bombardments there are incessant. »
help until peace
Time flies in the vehicle. It’s past midnight Ukrainian time, and the border was crossed several minutes ago. Lviv is approaching. Although the front may be more than a thousand kilometers away, in the Donbass, the war is there, at the gates of the city, with its concrete blocks, its sandbags and its anti-tank hedgehogs. The police officers at the checkpoint give the green light to Arek, who has an authorization to circulate despite the curfew.
The Jean-Paul II church is located a stone’s throw away. This is where Arek will spend the night, and will leave bottles, toys, nappies. Of the approximately 80 war-displaced people hosted by the parish, around 30 are children. From the chapel, liturgical chants will resound between the walls until dawn, at the expense of Arek’s sleep. Buried in his sleeping bag, the latter grumbles, half-jokingly: “I slept better in Bakhmout! »
Eight hours. Disheveled hair, Arek sets off in the morning greyness. In Lviv, unlike the day before, the anti-aircraft alert does not howl. Direction the garage of a suburb, where a Ukrainian couple proposes to store the thirty remaining bags there, before their expedition to the east.
The van emptied, it is the return to the fold which is announced for Arek. The Ukrainian villages parade along the road, in broad daylight now. One question remains, after these hours spent in his company: why? Where does he get this motivation from, even if it means risking his life, for a country that is not his own?
Long silence. The question floods his eyes. He wipes away a tear of emotion that betrays his colossus look. “When I saw all these people in distress at the border, it did not leave me indifferent. He returns to this scene, evoked the day before, of the mother and her daughter frozen at the border. “When I gave the blanket to mum, she hugged me really tight. Then I cried myself. I promised myself that I was going to help until the end of the war, until there was peace. And maybe, thanks to this help, my children won’t have to live through war and defend their country one day. Because if Russia wins, Putin will not stop at Ukraine,” fears Arek.
The journey comes to an end at the sight of the “Rzeczpospolita Polska” (Republic of Poland) exhibited at the border post. A fine rain falls on the windshield, like the day before. The following week, equipped with drones, sights for snipers and medicines, Arkadiusz Malicki will return there, for the 29e time.
With Vladyslava Taranets