Inverness Rotary and Inner Wheel Clubs team up with Highlands for Ukraine with massive appeal to help civilians facing fifth year of Russian attacks
Five local networking and humanitarian organisations are launching a massive appeal to help people in war-torn Ukraine facing a fifth year of conflict.
Children in a home in Kherson with Easter eggs they received from North Kessock Primary School pupils last Easter.
The Rotary and Inner Wheel clubs of Inverness are coordinating the two-day essential donations drive in aid of civilians on the frontline of relentless Russian attacks.
For the past four years, the members of the four Rotary clubs based in the city, along with Inverness Inner Wheel, have been working on a weekly basis to collect donations from businesses, organisations and caring individuals to send to Ukraine.
Working with local charity Highlands for Ukraine, they have sent over thousands of donations of medical, food and hygiene products.
They have also combined their efforts to fund and personally deliver eight 4×4 pick-ups to Ukraine to be used to rescue the badly injured from the battlefields, evacuate civilians from areas about to be invaded by enemy forces and deliver much-needed essential supplies to the “hottest” of the front-line areas.
Since they cannot do any of it without the backing of local residents, they are holding a two-day “bring and donate” effort based in the car park of Asda superstore this Saturday and Sunday.
A family in Kherson receive a donated laptop from Inverness to assist in study at home. There is a great demand for recycled tech for kids that cannot attend classes as it’s too dangerous to have schools open.
Members of the Inverness, Culloden and Riverside clubs, along with the women of Inverness Inner Wheel, will be in attendance near the store entrance from 10am until 4pm on both March 7 and 8 to accept donations.
Highlands for Ukraine specifically deliver to frontline communities where the most need exists and only send what their partners in Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Kharkiv, Sumy and Kramatorsk ask for.
The appeal includes medical and first aid, long-life food, hygiene products and a less well-established category, laptops and tech.
Organiser Sandy Murray of the Inverness club explained: “There is a wide range of essentials our partner charity in this project asks us to collect – anything from a packet of paracetamol to a generator!
Some of the Rotary members from Inverness finishing loading aid into a van to send to Ukraine, with Sandy Murray (centre).Natalia Kusmierczuk (left) the humanitarian aid co-ordinator at PCK (the Polish Red Cross) with driver Piotr Klimek outside the warehouse in Lublin, Poland, where he delivered the Highlands for Ukraine aid.
“And of course, there is the 4x4s that we have been proud to send to the front line for the past three years now.
“We are asking the kind people of Inverness and surrounding communities to help us create a mega-collection this weekend in the Asda car park as the Ukraine appeal turns from winter into spring and different essentials are needed.
“We are happy to accept a new toothbrush or a tin of beans that cost just a few pence or any useful and generous donation people may no longer have a use for in their own homes, such as old laptops or PCs.
Duvets, tents and sleeping bags are among the items being sent from the Highlands to Ukraine where the war is still ongoing.A young man in hospital in Zaporizhzhia is able to leave his bed after a year of treatment, with the help of a wheelchair he has received from the members of Inverness Rotary clubs.
“We have a great demand for all types of technology these days as children in the eastern areas cannot attend school, as it’s too dangerous, so have to study from home or in bomb shelters.
“We can’t supply them with enough laptops, Chromebooks, in fact all types of tech that is maybe old but still working.
“We wipe all personal data securely and refurbish such items so they have a new life with the children.”
One category that is definitely not needed however is clothing, footwear and bedding, and he added: “We would appeal to people not to bring such products as more of these are definitely not required in the front line communities.
“Many people are kind enough to donate such items but there is now such a back-log that it creates issues logistically and financially for the charity attempting to dispose of them, either here or in Ukraine.
Aid arriving in eastern Ukraine that started out in Inverness.
“We do sometimes need new clothing suitable for casualties to wear in hospitals following attacks, but these are the exception.
“For example, the t-shirts MacGregor’s Bar donated recently and featured in the Inverness Courier would fit that bill as they are not only new but lightweight and easily laundered.
“Food is always a necessity of course, so you can’t go wrong by donating a can of soup or something more practical like a packet of bandages or wound dressings.
“We hope the caring folk of the Highlands will make this a really successful collection to help those who are facing almost unbelievably harsh conditions in eastern Ukraine into their fifth year now.
Supplies for hospitals are a vital part of the aid effort.Aid arriving in eastern Ukraine that started out in Inverness
“We cannot begin to imagine their lives as every single day for four years their communities continue to be bombed, targeted by drones or have missiles hit their homes, hospitals and schools.
“And the ones who cannot or won’t leave their homes tend to be the vulnerable, elderly, infirm or the poor. Many are still living among burned out buildings and villages with little more than rubble around them.”
Supplies reach a medical centre in the Sumy region of Ukraine.
Information on which items are most urgently needed in large amounts by front-line civilians can be found on “the spring and summer 2026” list on the H4U website: www.h4u.uk
On display outside the superstore also will be one of the 4x4s that is destined to reach the war zone in the next few weeks to help with the life-saving operations.
It tends to be only at the very last minute that many civilians are persuaded to leave their homes so these pick-ups, four-wheel-drives and jeeps are vital in Ukraine.
