Romanian organisation Fight for Freedom has been working to evacuate orphans from Ukraine (Picture: Fight for Freedom)
Time is running out for a group of orphans awaiting their fate while Russia continues to pound a Ukrainian city on the Danube River where their home is based.
Rusting Soviet-era docks in Izmail and neighbouring Reni have become targets for kamikaze drones after Russian president Vladimir Putin quit the UN and Turkey-brokered deal that had given safe passage to Ukraine’s grain exports through the Black Sea.
For the past two months, Romanian organisation Fight for Freedom has been working to evacuate the children from the line of fire, but bureaucracy is stifling the process.
Fight for Freedom president Gheorghe Ignat told Metro this is a ‘priority’ for his team.
Teams travel to Ukraine every week to deliver humanitarian aid (Picture: Fight for Freedom)
They are feeding up to 10,000 people weekly (Picture: Fight for Freedom)
But he is painfully aware that Russian aggression is inching closer and closer to his nation, an EU and Nato member, where people live in fear that Romania will be dragged into war.
‘Izmail was hit badly two weeks ago. Russia has been bombing everything there,’ he said.
‘There are still at least 20 orphans at a home there. We are working day and night to get the documents ready to evacuate them to the Suceava region in Romania where we are based.
‘Their lives are in danger here, so it is a priority for us to bring them to safety.’
Romanian Army soldiers building a bomb shelter in the village of Plauru, on the Danube Delta (Picture: AFP)
Romania’s defence ministry announced on September 12 that it has started to set up air-raid shelters for residents (Picture: AFP)
Gheorghe, a mixed martial artist known as ‘The Carpathian Bear’, is currently wrapped up in organising the transfer from Ukraine to his home country.
His mobile pings with updates about the situation on the frontline every few minutes while we speak.
In Romania, the atmosphere is tense.
The Defence Ministry installed air-raid shelters in Plauru after attacks on Ukrainian sites across the river and the discoveries of drone fragments on the Romanian side of the border.
Aftermath of Russian drone strikes on Izmail (Picture: AFP)
A marine station building destroyed during a Russian drone strike in Izmail, Odesa region (Picture: Reuters)
Located about 300 meters from Izmail, it is the closest Romanian town to the war.
So far, there are no plans for evacuations from settlements in the region, but Gheorghe stressed that many residents have packed ‘go’ bags in preparation.
He said: ‘The situation in Romania is tough. Both the government and Nato have been very serious in their response.
‘Last week, a third drone was found, some 14km inside our territory, which is a lot as there are villages with hundreds of residents a few kilometers away.
Gheorghe has been working to evacuate a group of orphans from a home in the port city (Picture: Fight for Freedom)
‘The drones exploded, leaving massive craters in the ground, so imagine if it had dropped on a house, school or a hospital.
‘Romania is not at war. We are waiting to see what happens, but there is nothing to do right now. People are afraid of what could happen if we get involved.
‘The Black Sea is full of Russian warships, so close to our country. For people near the river, there is a sense of a war environment.
‘Every night, they watch and film Russian drones target Ukrainian ports. They see explosions at neighbouring villages across the river.
Food distribution in Ukraine (Picture: Fight for Freedom)
‘It is shocking to them and terrifying. The safety of being a member of the EU and Nato does not apply to Romania anymore. It is a fact. Many believe that if Nato gets involved, the war will be over, but it is more complicated than that.
‘Ordinary people suffer. I have witnessed so much suffering in the past year and a half. Nothing good comes from war.’
Romania’s prime minister Marcel Ciolacu has publicly tried to calm nerves, insisting that his country is not being targeted by Russia.
His comments came just as another military drone was discovered in another EU and Nato country, Bulgaria.
The defence ministry said the aircraft landed on Sunday evening in the Black Sea town of Tyulenovo.
‘We can certainly assume that it is related to the war that Russia launched against Ukraine,’ defence minister Todor Tagarev told reporters.
‘This war is inevitably associated with increasing risks to our security.’
Fight for Freedom is preparing to accommodate ‘several hundred people’ if Russiadoes target Romanian shores.
Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Gheorghe and his team have been travelling to villages along the frontline in Ukraine four times a week, delivering food to up to 10,000 people.
Packages are distributed in centres for internally displaced people from Mariupol and Donetsk in the cities of Chernivtsi, Dunaivtsi and Ivano-Frankivsk.
Fight for Freedom also runs four centres for Ukrainian children, from newborns to five-year-olds, and has evacuated more than 500 orphans from hotspots in the last 15 months.
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