The scenes coming from Ukraine are so upsetting there are times when it feels too difficult to watch. Babies being manhandled to try to get them to safety, fathers handing their children over, not knowing whether they’ll ever see them again, older people who are barely able to walk stumbling through rubble, trying to get out.
As I’ve been watching the news footage, I’ve tried to imagine how I would feel to be caught up in that. I’ve been imagining the women in labour and the newborn babies at the maternity hospital that was hit on Wednesday night.
And imagining what those people are going through whose lives have been turned upside down, who have had to leave their homes — the places where their whole lives have been lived, the history of everything — and have had to leave all that behind, with nothing but what they can carry.
It’s amazing to see how brave the women are, where they’ve managed to get over the border and are sleeping on the floor, with their little children around them.
Half of those who have already fled Ukraine are children. I visited Kosovo, in 2000, shortly after the war had ended there, with Save the Children. Then, as now, schools had been hit in the fighting. And it was utterly awful.
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I really remember the children talking about the fear. Fear of uncertainty. Fear of losing their parents. Fear of the chaos.
Because the chaos of conflict, in Kosovo, and now in Ukraine, is terrifying for a child and it’s chaos from day one. Seeing their parents frightened will be in their psyche and in their bodies for the rest of their lives. They will have to carry this with them.
I remember in Kosovo it had all been so devastating, and heartless and inhumane that it had created something terrible in some of the young people I met then.
And while it’s heart-breaking enough to see a healthy child having to endure all of this, leaving their fathers, often seeing people that they know killed, it’s even more appalling for anyone who’s vulnerable.
I think about my own daughter, who had been so gravely ill (with leukaemia) when she was two, and visiting a hospital in Kosovo and it being so cold and them having very little and children being really ill. I remember thinking what would I be doing now, in their position? Because they weren’t able to get the drugs. We wouldn’t have been able to save my daughter’s life. There will be mothers in that situation in Ukraine today.
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And, having had cancer myself in 2018, I’m also wondering what I would be doing if I was in Ukraine, and in the middle of a cancer treatment? We must get help to those there who are fighting illnesses.
Millions of people inside Ukraine are over the age of 60. For this to happen at the end of their lives is too devastating for words. 2.7 million people have disabilities. People of colour have in some cases been denied the right to cross the border. All of these people are hugely vulnerable and need our help.
It’s easy to feel impotent when you’re faced with so much suffering, and many of us in the UK are so desperate to help that we are organising collections of things we think that people will need: blankets or nappies. But to protect these groups, the traumatised children, the sick, the elderly, the disabled, the people of colour, what’s needed is money for organisations on the ground.
The Disasters Emergency Committee’s appeal is one of the easiest ways to give and is funding the work of 13 charities working inside Ukraine and on its borders. Donating will allow DEC charities like Save the Children to quickly provide what people really need.
Julie Walters is an actor, author and comedian
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Also in Red Box today
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•Robert Courts: Lifting travel restrictions means Britain is open for business
•Lord Bilimoria: Raising taxes is not the way out of this economic crisis
