Bay Area Ukraine-Assistance Organization Lends Helping Hand to Refugees
PLEASANTON (KPIX) -- The escalating violence in Ukraine has now forced more than a million refugees to flee across the border to neighboring countries - like Poland and Romania. A million more people are displaced within Ukraine.
Those here in the Bay Area are pitching in to help with what will surely be an ongoing humanitarian crisis.
"These people will need to be settled. They will need clothes. They will need someone to help them," says Igor Markov, the director of Nova Ukraine, a non-profit humanitarian aid group that has been helping Ukrainians since 2014. Markov says than, right now, many people are leaving their homes with only what they can carry.
"It's shocking. It's unbelievable what people go through," Markov said. Nova Ukraine is helping on a number of fronts, including coordinating transport out of Ukraine for civilians and getting much-needed supplies to refugee camps, like diapers, toiletries and warm clothes.
During talks on Thursday, Ukraine and Russia were able to negotiate safe corridors for civilians to evacuate Ukraine and also for aid to come in.
"The Russians are not totally insensitive to world public opinion.Things like this, they maybe trying to do keep their image from being totally trashed," said Steven Pifer, a William J. Perry Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. He was also the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine from 1998 to 2000. Pifer says the damage already done in Ukraine will not allow anyone to return home or return to normal life anytime soon.
"Damage to roads, damage to apartment buildings ... There's going to be a huge amount of damage and it's going to take a lot of time and effort to recover from this but, unfortunately, at this point, there's no sign the Russian military is prepared to stop. They're just going to continue to do more damage," Pifer said.
You can watch Pifer's interview with KPIX on CBS Bay Area.