Two former Monmouth pupils have been shuttling supplies and evacuees across war-torn Ukraine in a second hand minibus they bought on Ebay.

Peter Shepherd and Robbie Bott are former Monmouth comprehensive students - Pete started at Overmonnow Primary - and have now been in Ukraine for three months and evacuated over 120 Ukrainians, delivered beyond 30 tonnes of supplies - food, clothing, medicines, power generators and kids toys - and rescued a few dozen pets!

Around a week after the war began, the 27-year-old friends bought a minibus from Ebay and drove it across Europe to Ukraine and have been helping out with the humanitarian crisis ever since.

The impulse buy was a 2002 Citroen Relay minibus from Birmingham. The grand plan was to drive across Europe and assuming the bus didn’t break down along the way, end up in Ukraine. “We’d never driven outside of the UK and we had certainly never been close to a country at war,” said Pete a wedding videographer who used to write film reviews for the Beacon back when he was a teenager: ‘Pete’s Reviews’!

He said that evacuations have slowed down recently: “we’ve been focusing our efforts on shuttling defence gear to Kiev, Kharkiv and Odessa regions. We’re also helping to renovate a dog shelter in Khmelnitsky; it’s seen a 300 per cent increase in residents since the start of the war!”

The pair pay regular visits to orphanages, ensuring they have all the materials required to stay in operation. Similarly, they frequently drop off pet supplies to a dog shelter in Khmelnytskyi.

Currently there are over 300 dogs in this shelter (and a couple dozen cats). Some dogs are having to be tied up to the fencing outside of the huts because they literally cannot fit inside.

Pete and Robbie have been shuttling a little under a tonne of food to this dog shelter every week for the past month. Most of these supplies are of no cost to ‘Foreign Fleet’; they pick them up from a warehouse in East Poland and make the 30-hour round trip across the border and into the shelter.

They have also been paying visits to an orphanage, also in Khmelnitsky. Similarly, this facility has seen a rapid increase since the start to the war. Sadly there is more ‘red tape’ involved when it comes to maintaining and expanding this orphanage, undoubtably due to the fact that they are dealing with children. They have, however, been bringing goody bags to these children; sweets, toys, colouring books and dairies. These gifts have been paid for entirely by donations!

On the days that they are not at the orphanage or dog shelter, they dedicate the remaining days simply shuttling supplies from different warehouses across Poland and into Ukraine. Robbie recently journeyed to Kiev to deliver a van full of peanut butter and donated clothing.

Robbie, a miller by trade, still lives in Monmouth with his three brothers whereas Pete lives in Bristol after studying there.

“In our first month, we spent most days evacuating Ukrainians from the western regions of Ukraine” he continued.

“These were typically Eastern Ukrainians who journeyed courageously through danger towards safety where we would pick them up a take them across the border. Thankfully, we are no longer required to evacuate Ukrainians as there are now large coach companies running shuttle evacuations throughout the country. This has allowed us to focus our time shuttling supplies and taking care of animals.

“Most recently we have been working with a small group of Ukrainians, shuttling supplies, at least six days a week, from a warehouse in Eastern-Poland to a warehouse in a secret location in Central-Ukraine. This secret warehouse has quickly become a landmark location for humanitarians from every corner of Ukraine to collect goods and shuttle them back to their respective regions.

“Throughout all of this, we have taken extra caution to stay safe, we have no plans on getting ourselves hurt. We mostly operate outside of the large cities, away from any red zones or any areas we think could be a target for attack. If anything feels unsafe, we call it off.

“We’ve been fully self-funded until now, we’ve had to tell our family about what we’re doing because we desperately needed cash for fuel. They were a bit horrified at first, understandably. But more than anything, they were proud. And then horrified again when they remembered we called for money!” he added

They have a go fund me page: “I plan to post updates to this page, showing everyone where the donations are going” he added.

If anyone wants to help the boys reach their £10k target you can visit the page: https://gofund.me/ba9e280a.