‘You would love to put your arms around them and bring them with you but you can’t’

A Carlanstown man who fled from northern Ukraine the day after Russia invaded leaving behind his machinery factory business, has spoken of the utter devastation that has befallen the country and told how a friend living nearby had 50 of his cattle shot by Russian forces and all the machinery on his farm destroyed.

Thomas Carpenter was living in Ukraine for six years and had set up a factory manufacturing potato and vegetable machinery in Slavutych located between Chernobyl and Chernihiv. Chernihiv, which lies between the Belarussian border and the capital Kviv, has endured fierce shelling since the invasion and those that haven't fled the city have no access to electricity, water, heat and very limited access to food.

While the Slavutych area where Thomas's factory is located has thus far escaped relatively unscathed, and his factory is still standing, Thomas has no idea what the future will hold and if he will have a business to return to when the war is over.

Thomas previously worked supplying potato equipment in Ireland and saw a big opportunity in Ukraine where there are a lot of potato and vegetable farms.

"Potato farming is massive here. Around 20 millions tonnes of potatoes are produced here per year. I saw a market for more modern equipment and set up the factory six years ago. It was really just starting to go well, it takes people a while here to trust foreigners but we had 12 months of work ahead of us."

Thomas recalled how life was very normal until the Thursday morning when news broke that the Russian had invaded, and then everything changed.

"It was so bizarre really. I was at a potato conference in Kviv on the Tuesday, staying in a hotel and talking to farmers who were getting ready to plant potatoes. On Wednesday I was organising my three-year visa again and got home around 10pm on Wednesday night.

"At 5.05am on Thursday morning, I got a call from another Irish guy that Kviv had been hit and suddenly everything changed."

Thomas told how he had drums filled with diesel and it was "always in the back of his head" to be ready but it was still a shock when it happened.

"Everybody started to panic. But I sat and watched and waited to see what would happen next. I thought there was no point in panicking and that the roads would be blocked up with people trying to go. I spent the day securing the premises as best I could in case of looting.

"On Friday morning when they hit Verkhovna Rada [Ukrainian parliament] I decided to move. I left at 7am on Friday morning and headed for Hungary and brought three people with me. A mother and her daughter and son who worked with me."

A journey that would usually take around 12 hours took 55 hours. Thomas had his car filled with diesel and took drums of diesel with him. "Filling stations were running out of fuel and the ones that had fuel, had a kilometre of a queue.

"Where we were is virtually Belarus. We saw plenty of tanks for the first 100kms, some dug into the side of the road and you didn't know if they were Russian or Ukrainian but we just kept driving and hoped for the best.

"Once we got to the other side of Kviv we were ok. We were afraid they would blow up the bridges and we wouldn't be able to cross the river. I was practically the last person to leave. The bridges were blown up a few hours later."

Thomas drove across the centre of the country and headed to Hungary to make the border crossing there. Before leaving Slavutych, a Dutch farmer rang Thomas to tell him there were only about 10 cars ahead of him at the border crossing, while an Irish friend told him he would be there for two days at the Polish border.

They encountered at least 10 checkpoints along the way. Ukrainian men between the age of 18 and 60 are not allowed to leave the country and Thomas and his passengers spent seven hours in one queue at a checkpoint. When they reached the Hungarian border, it took them about 4-5 hours to cross.

"It was desperate. You'd see two little kids pulling suitcases and their mother carrying another child. It would bring a tear to a stone. You would love to put your arms around them all and bring them with you but you can't.

"It is unreal to think you could go to bed one night and get up and everything has just changed."

Once he crossed the Hungarian border, Thomas drove on into Austria and across Germany and France to get the ferry home. He left his home in Slavutych on the Friday morning and arrived back to Carlanstown the following Thursday morning.

The Russians moved into the Slavutych area last Friday and Thomas said they shot three people. He told how the Mayor showed them around and once they saw there was nothing of any military consequence, they moved off.

However, nearby Chernihiv has endured some of the worst shelling, second only to Mariupol.

"I know one of the farms that was hit very well. I had dinner with the farmer who is a good friend the previous Sunday [before the war started]. He has a farm of 1,500 hectares on the outskirts of Chiernihiv. It would be considered a family farm in Ukraine. He had 200 cows and 180 hectares of potatoes and the rest in crops. They came into his farm and shot 50 cows and let the rest out of the shed and blew up his machinery.

"There is nobody left in Chernihiv. The only ones left are old people that can't go, the army and government administrators. It is a city of 1/4 million people and it is demolished and the villages around it are just rubble. It has been hit every day since it started."

The farmers are trying their best to keep the food chain going but Thomas said big farms are being targeted and dairy farms, anyone that is producing food for the local community. A big potato store was also hit and a big chicken cold store.

It is now a race against time to get crops sown or they will miss out on a full year. While farmers in Western Ukraine are working on planting and sowing and are generally managing, other than diesel being scarce, the east is a very different story where Thomas said everything is a problem.

They are currently looking at just 20 to 30 per cent of usual output for the year.