Poland sends over 2,500 cargoes of aid to Ukraine since start of war

Since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, more than 2,500 truckloads of humanitarian aid have been sent to Ukraine by Poland, mainly food, medicines, sanitary products and clothing, the head of the Prime Minister's Office has said.

Summarising a month of activities by Poles, Michal Dworczyk told a joint press conference with Ukrainian Ambassador to Poland Andrii Deshchytsia and Deputy Foreign Minister Paweł Jabłoński, that hundreds of NGOs had sent aid to Ukraine, mostly by truck but also by bus. "Everything has reached our neighbours in Ukraine from Lviv to Kharkiv and Sumy," he said.

He also pointed out that on March 5, the pomagamukrainie.gov.pl (I help Ukraine) internet platform was launched to help all NGOs go through a simplified system of customs clearance for humanitarian aid being sent to Ukraine.

According to Dworczyk, more than 1,700 transports of aid have used the service. "At the moment we're seeing a certain drop in the number of transports organised by NGOs to Ukraine," he added.

Ambassador Deshchytsia thanked everybody who had contributed. "Very efficient actions by the central government, but also at the level of local governments and NGOs, as well as individual people," Deshchytsia said.

He pointed out that Poland is a distribution centre of aid coming from other countries. "To a significant degree, the coordinator of that is the government’s Strategic Reserves Agency, with whom we're working, and they are managing to transfer the aid very efficiently," he said, explaining that the aid was sent very quickly, sometimes within one day.

He added the aid was still needed and that the most important goods were food and medicines.