This month marks two years since Russia invaded Ukraine. Since then, the war has displaced more than 11 million people, including 5 million inside the country. Human and animal lives and safety are so often inextricably intertwined; some families refuse to evacuate without their cherished pets, who provide love, comfort and a sense of normality to their lives. And many have faced hardship in providing for themselves and their companion animals as their lives were suddenly upended.
Across Europe, our Humane Society International colleagues have been helping Ukrainian refugees and their pets since March 2022, providing emergency funding, access to veterinary care and supplies such as pet food, pet carriers and blankets. With the generous support of Mars Inc., we and our partners have been able to help thousands of people and their pets in the worst of circumstances both inside Ukraine and in other European countries receiving refugees.
Our aid within Ukraine includes helping people and their pets to make it through the bitterly cold winters. We worked with local organizations, such as UAnimals, to assess and prioritize the needs of shelters and clinics in Ukraine actively engaged in relief. Countless dogs and cats are now struggling to survive on the streets in the cold, completely reliant on volunteer feeders, care and rescue by local organizations, and the kindness of other Ukrainian citizens, many of whom are struggling themselves. Some families are living in damaged houses, without electricity, water or heating in temperatures that can plummet to as low as -15 degrees Celsius (5 degrees Fahrenheit).
Our relief work has involved aiding refugees and their pets across multiple European countries. Our colleagues in Germany worked together with local organizations to support refugees arriving in Germany from Ukraine with animals. At Berlin’s main train station, for example, as thousands of refugees arrived, those who had companion animals immediately found pet food and necessary supplies there. We also supported a temporary veterinary practice at the train station and hung posters with QR codes that led to a list of veterinarians all over Berlin that would provide support. The costs were then covered by HSI and our partner organizations. This was a quick fix before our Vets for Ukrainian Pets program launched.
HSI
In Romania, HSI supports partners Save the Dogs and Other Animals in their work to deliver pet food and supplies to deserted areas in the war zones around Odessa, Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, Kherson, Izmail and others, where many pets and other animals have been left behind to survive on their own. So far, Save the Dogs and Other Animals have delivered 325 tons of food and supplies, more than 150 dog houses and hundreds of blankets to keep animals in Ukraine warm during the winter. A valued partner in Romania, Red Panda, continues to support refugees and their pets in Bucharest, in addition to its work helping homeless animals in Ukraine. Since March 2022, Red Panda has been on the scene at an expo center in Bucharest where hundreds of Ukrainian refugees regularly arrive for help acquiring essential items, including pet food and supplies. Red Panda also provides veterinary care.
Another HSI partner, Homeless World, specializes in the rescue and treatment of injured animals. With their fully equipped and staffed mobile clinic that we helped them set up, they respond to calls from locals in the Kyiv, Bila Tserkva, Kherson and Donetsk regions alerting them to animal emergencies. Homeless World’s operations require regular maintenance of an ambulance, and continuous re-stocking of medical supplies and specialized equipment, and our consistent support means that Homeless World staff can quickly respond to calls for help and provide medical treatment to rescued and evacuated animals, including complex cases.
In Italy, we sent several trucks full of pet food and supplies for animals in need from Trieste to Lviv, Ukraine. Thanks to the generosity of Royal Canin Italy, which gifted 12 tons of dog and cat food, we were able to finance and organize the shipments to UAnimals in Lviv, which then redistributed the load throughout the country to areas most in need. We’ve also supported other small animal groups in countries neighboring Ukraine to the west and south, in Poland, Romania, Hungary, Moldova and Slovakia, as they assisted refugees arriving from Ukraine with their pets.
Our Vets for Ukrainian Pets program continues to provide free veterinary care to pets from Ukraine and ensures that refugees can safely stay and travel with their companion animals across the EU. Ukrainian refugees who fled the war with their pets now have access to free veterinary treatments in 38 European countries. Launched in April 2022 in collaboration with the Federation of Veterinarians in Europe and the Federation of European Companion Animal Veterinary Associations, this program covers the costs for veterinary care up to 250 Euros per animal. More than 3,500 animals have been assisted so far, and funding for the program has been extended until December 2024.
In addition to the aid we helped send into Ukraine through our partnership with the Romanian Red Cross, we have also partnered with the Ukrainian Red Cross to provide vital supplies to families in Kyiv, Khmelnytskyi, Donetsk, Rivne, Zaporizhzhia, Chernihiv, Volyn, Poltava, Zhytomyr, Ternopil, Cherkasy, Chernivtsi, Mykolaiv and Kryvyi Rih. Some regions proved more difficult to serve. In the Donetsk region, for example, it is dangerous to congregate in centralized locations, so volunteers from the Red Cross facilitated door-to-door deliveries there to ensure that no one had to risk injury, or worse, to get the pet supplies they needed. In select districts, such as the Podil district in Kyiv, additional partnerships enable internally displaced Ukrainians to access complimentary veterinary care. The partnership has provided emergency relief in 14 regions across Ukraine, reaching more than 19,000 pet guardians and 40,000 pets so far. The relief teams have delivered more than 205 metric tons of pet food, 48 metric tons of cat litter, 3,530 litter boxes, 2,500 pet carriers and 9,000 packages of flea and tick prevention. In the coming months, the project will expand its outreach to three more areas (Zakarpattia, Kharkiv and Sumy) to ensure that aid reaches those in need, and we aim to have helped 40,000 people and 100,000 pets by the end of the year via this Ukrainian Red Cross partnership alone.
So far, over the past two years, more than 250,000 pet, stray and other animals have received help through these efforts. We also created and distributed more than 60,000 emergency relief packs for pets for refugees exiting Ukraine and for people displaced within the country. And we are committed to continuing to help however we can.
You can help by donating to protect animals displaced or imperiled by disasters or humanitarian crises like the war in Ukraine and to support all our lifesaving work.
Follow Kitty Block @HSUSKittyBlock.
