Pick-ups driven to Ukraine are saving lives on the front line

Andrey Ohinok is part of a hardened group of Ukrainian drivers known as the Jackie Chan Volunteers who take the pick-ups on to the battlefield when regular troops can’t.

He says it’s all about keeping their combat comrades on the move.

“The more mobile they are, the more of them stay alive,” he says.

He is not the only one to speak in plain but dramatic terms about the work they are involved in.

Ira Savka helps co-ordinate the charity’s operations in Lviv including distributing the more than £3m of aid that has gradually arrived inside the vehicles.

“We hope we are doing the right job, at the right time for the right cause,” she says.

A few miles from where she is speaking there is a scene that brings the job, the time and the cause, into sharp and painful relief for the citizens of this city.

At the military cemetery of the Field of Mars, the sea of yellow and blue flags fluttering over the graves of Ukraine’s war dead is massive and continues to grow each week.

As the full-scale conflict approaches 1,000 days it is a brutal reminder – if one was needed – of everything this war has already cost their country.