‘Extremely grim’: Aussie aid worker stunned by toll of Ukraine war

He’s seen terrible stories unfold around the world, but the misery Australian James Elder has encountered in Ukraine has shocked him.

A mother watches her child sleep at Lviv train station in Western Ukraine. Picture: AFP

He has been deployed to some of the most desperate humanitarian hot spots in the world including Angola, Zimbabwe and Sri Lanka.

But as he yesterday pounded the platforms of the central station in Lviv in Ukraine’s west, James Elder was stunned by the stories he was hearing.

“It is extremely grim, it really is,” the lanky Aussie from UNICEF said yesterday as he looked out toward the thousands of mothers and their children sitting in the freezing cold waiting for a train that may or may not turn up to take them out of the embattled country.

The UN agency responsible for providing humanitarian and developmental aid to children worldwide deployed the NSW man as a conduit to tell the world what is happening.

The father of three would normally be in an office in Switzerland but had been sent to Ukraine and was now moving between Lviv and the Polish border to gather the stories from Ukraine mothers looking to flee the conflict.

UNICEF’s James Elder, from Australia, deployed to Lviv in Ukraine as official witness to the humanitarian crisis unfolding. Picture: Viktor Moskaliuk

They are mostly just mothers because under martial law the men up to the age of 80 years cannot leave the country and are expected to stay and fight.

The brutal extent of Russia’s invasion was not expected and Mr Elder said it had to be seen and heard from on the ground to understand.

“On the one hand we have to keep our eyes on every other conflict — Yemen, Afghanistan — but we wake up to another day of another country’s children having to understand what conflict looks like, another nation of kids starting to know an air raid siren means get out of your bed and get to the bunker,” he said.

“We know children are being killed, we know children are being wounded and we know the numbers in a conflict like this one that is escalating are going to get gut wrenchingly worse unless the missiles stop.”

Mr Elder said he could just read “the numbers” but felt strongly about travelling into the conflict zone to hear first-hand the stories to report to the world.

“It’s not dissipating, we’re half a million (Ukraine) people now in Poland and Romania so hundreds of thousands on the move,” he said from Lviv central station from where many are trying to flee.

“Being on the ground it’s not just what you see but what you feel, you feel the bitter cold, you know families are sleeping in cars you see mothers pushing prams setting out on a 30km walk to get into Poland.

“It’s an endless stream of dads trying to explain to their 10-year-old daughters why they have to leave and they are sending the family to a country they’ve never heard of and it’s wives’ tearful farewells to husbands.”

He said his wife Nicola and family were, of course, worried about his security but knew his role in getting the truth out was important, with compassion and donations for Ukraine needed from the rest of the world, as it watched the horror from afar.

Originally published as ‘Extremely grim’: Aussie aid worker stunned by toll of Ukraine war